Cooking Time Machine

Being that I’m American, it’s nearing the end of the fall, and Thanksgiving is next week, I have been craving all things pumpkin. Being that I’m in France… it’s not so simple to find pumpkin desserts or purée.

So, I had the brilliant idea to make my own pumpkin purée using some of the convenient pumpkin slices sold in the store. Basically the store did all the work in cutting and gutting the pumpkin, and all that’s left for me was the cooking and puréeing.

Little did I know this would be an all afternoon/evening affair.

I cut the pumpkin into smaller pieces so that it would steam faster, since I didn’t want to cook them in the microwave/convection oven. And I set them to steam.

That was all well and good, but then when I went to take the cooked pieces and separate the edible part from the skin, it proved more difficult than I had originally thought and took longer.

Well, I thought, that’s ok – the purée will be fine with my hand mixer… Since I don’t have a blender or a food processor.

Well the spinning part on our mixer is not actually bladed, so it did not cut the pumpkin. What did I do?

I ended up leaving it all in a pot over the lowest temperature (so as to not burn it), occasionally adding water, and stirring frequently with my wisk. In the end, it worked, but took a good 5 hours.

My sister: It’s like you went in a time machine and have no modern cooking tools. Are you cooking over fire also?? lol jk