Pumpkin three ways

Pumpkin tower at College Run Farms in Surry

So I’ve spent most of the day today (10am to 3pm to be exact) cooking, roasting, toasting, baking and simmering three different preparations for pumpkin. A few weeks ago Jeremy and I went out to a local pumpkin farm (College Run Farm in Surry, VA) and I bought (along with about a half dozen cute tiny pumpkins and some very Martha Stewart-y white and green and speckled orange pumpkins) 3 “pie pumpkins” (or sugar pumpkins). I had never cooked with fresh pumpkin before but figured now was as good of a time as any to try it out.

Pumpkin field, College Run Farms, Surry Va

Seizing on the cooking mood I had been in this weekend I decided to tackle the pumpkin-cooking this morning. I knew I wanted to toast the seeds, I had done that last year with tasty results using the Toasted Pumpkin Seeds recipe from Simply Recipes, but I also wanted a bit of variety and Jeremy found some tasty variations on 101 Cookbooks.

Halved pumpkins

Now came the issue of what to do with all of the actual pumpkin, roasting was definitely the way to go so after halving each of the pumpkins, scooping out and separating the seeds and stringy bits I roasted the halves cut-side down in a 350 degree oven for an hour (checked them at 45 minutes and they weren’t quite tender enough). As the pumpkin halves cooled I flavored and toasted the pumpkin seeds (conveniently the oven was already hot), the results, although a pain to get off of the cookie sheets, were very tasty, especially the sweet and spicy (sugar and cayenne) ones, that’s a combination I will definitely add to the pumpkin-seed-flavoring repertoire.

Toasted pumpkin seeds three ways

Looking around at two of my mainstay recipe sites, 101 Cookbooks and Simply Recipes I found some very tasty sounding ideas for pumpkin bread and pumpkin soup with smoked paprika. You can check out the recipes on your own but the general idea for the bread was 6 cups of roasted pumpkin, lots of spices (fresh grated nutmeg and cinnamon and allspice) and a standard quickbread recipe, and the soup was 1 cup of pumpkin, chicken stock, onion, garlic, apple, cream and smoked paprika with a dash of cayenne.

I was rather pleased with myself that I had exactly 7 cups of pumpkin from the three sugar pumpkins, no extra at all (although I still have one small sugar pumpkin that didn’t get used, that may become another loaf of pumpkin bread later this month).

Pumpkin bread

Using the pumpkin was definitely easier than I thought it would be, the cleaning and seed separating was probably the hardest part. This was also the first time I had ever done a pureed soup, I have to admit, I was a bit intimidated by the whole thing, but again, simple to do and really sounds

Pumpkin soup

more complicated than it is…although the blender did get a bit obnoxious with me a few times, spitting up air bubble soup rockets (yes, I’m creating a new term) at me when I’d open the lid, but I blame the blender, and not the soup for that ;) In the end both recipes came out great. I was a bit dubious that the soup wouldn’t be overpowered by the smoked paprika but once everything was blended together the apple and cream mellowed out the strong smoky flavor and I ended up with some very tasty (and surprising low-calorie, about 200 calories per serving) soup. The bread came out probably the best I have ever done bread-wise, it was moist but also had the lovely crunchy layer on top and very flavorful with all of the spices. So with all of this I now have breakfast and lunch for at least half of the week, excellent :)

btw, all photos documenting the pumpkin-ness are up in a set on my Flickr page.

Early fall weekend in the Blue Ridge

So since the U2 concert was on Thursday we decided to make a long weekend out of this trip to Charlottesville. We stayed the whole time in this cute bed and breakfast nestled in the mountains a quick drive off of I-64 and the Blue Ridge Parkway called the Iris Inn. We get full breakfast every morning and have a nice room with a bunch of windows that let in lots of light and a pretty view of the woods in the morning.

The Friday after the concert we decided to head up into the mountains for a hike after breakfast.
We chatted with some of the other couples at breakfast about where to go and decided to head to Crabtree Falls after a bit of internet searching. The Falls were about an hour away from where we were so we Googled for directions and wanted to stay off the interstates so we took the second recommended route which took us on five miles of dirt road along a mountainside that looked like the map screenshot on the right here, quite an interesting drive.

We arrived at the trailhead around 11:30am and had a great hike up to the top of the mountain. The trail was a series of switchbacks and each time you would finish one you would get a new view of the falls, 5 or 6 times you go back and forth and after about 3 hours we reached the top (with probably an hour of that just taking pictures, which will be up on Flickr soon). We snacked on granola bars at the top and then made it back down in under 45 minutes.

Once we got back to the Inn and got cleaned up we headed into downtown Charlottesville to the Belmont district to go to this great restaurant we’d found last time we were here called Mas Tapas. The food there is amazing and a lot of it is locally sourced. The place opened at 5:30 and after our hike we were starving so we were there just after they opened and managed to get one of the last open tables before the waiting list started (by the time we left there were at least a dozen people outside waiting for tables, it’s really that good). We managed to snag our order sheet back from our server so here is are the six dishes we had with our bottle of Castell del Remei Gotim Bru 2006 (very tasty and a very good price):

• Pan al horno (our cold-fermented, hand-crafted bread, baked with natural starters in our wood-fired brick oven daily)
• Datil con tocino (dates wrapped in applewood smoked bacon, roasted till crispy)
• Queso con alcachofas (roasted artichoke hearts, garlic, sweet onion, olive oil and goat cheese spread with bread)
• Salchicha a la parilla (the eponymous Spanish country sausage – air-cured, dry-aged with smoked pimenton, olive oil and pork)
• Lomo en capa (Angus beef tenderloin with espresso-smoked pimenton crust, pan-seared rare only with pico de gallo)
• Mejillones con sofrito (Farm-raised Pacific Penn Cove mussels cooked in a smoky sofrito sauce with our brick oven bread)

And it was all amazing tasting. And we had a warm strawberry-rhubarb pastry thing for dessert, and if you know me and my obsession with (especially Trader Joe’s) strawberry-rhubarb pie that was definitely a treat. The restaurant has been voted best in Charlottesville this year for best appetizer (the bacon-wrapped dates), best service, best “small plates” and best service, and it definitely deserves all of those accolades.

Today we met up with my parents and did a bit of winery touring around the Madison area where Jeremy went to high school. We met my parents at Prince Michel winery right off of Route 29 and enjoyed a rather extensive tasting there, 3 pages of wines! And the great part was they only charge you $1 and that’s only if you do the “reserve” page of wines. We ended up buying 3 bottles of their Cab Sav and then we headed to the famous Pig ‘n Steak for a late lunch (and to get some food in our bellies to absorb all that wine ;) ).

After starting off with a sampler appetizer platter of fried pickles, fried olives and fried broccoli (with cheese inside of course) we enjoyed bbq and burgers and mountains of fries before heading out to the final destination of the afternoon, Sweely Estate Winery. The tasting room was beautiful and the whole building was newly built with a huge reception hall on one side all in stone and big timbers, a nice mix of modern aesthetic with traditional materials. We were so stuffed from lunch we sat out on the back patio for a half hour or so letting our food settle before heading in for the $4 tasting of 9 wines. The wines there were pretty good, we all preferred the whites over the reds I think, but that may have been due more to the fact we were so full of food and wine that by the time we got to the reds there was just no more room in our stomachs. We parted ways with my parents after finishing the tasting and took a nice scenic route (not as scenic as good ol’ 814, all paved) back to the Inn. We stopped at the grocery store in Waynesboro on the way back and grabbed some cheese and crackers as a snack but we never ended up having any. We sat up on the “observation deck”, a little 3rd floor balcony off on one side of the Inn and watched the sun set over the mountains and then walked down to a lower deck with a swing and sat and read our books for a while in the cool evening before heading in for the night. A very nice, quiet and peaceful way to end a most excellent weekend before heading back to the ‘burg.

Muse and U2 concert in Charlottesville

So Jeremy managed to acquire tickets to the U2 concert in Charlottesville and last night we went to the concert at the football stadium at UVA, what a great show! The city definitely has getting people into the parking lots down to a science and we arrived just as the lots opened at 5pm (the concert was scheduled to start at 7pm). We were guided to the parking deck next to the basketball stadium and then walked the mile or so to the concert venue with a stop at Foods of All Nations for some tasty sandwiches for dinner.

Our tickets put us at one corner of the endzone and in the center of the field is this giant 4 legged octopus looking thing that is the stage with all the lights and a giant cylindrical video display in the center. We were behind one of the “legs” so our view of the band when they were playing in the center was a bit obstructed, and they were facing away from us, but they were great seats as the ticket office had not sold the 12 rows of seats in front of us (since they were “obstructed views”) so we didn’t have to worry about people standing in front of us and had plenty of room to stretch out. (pics below, more on Flickr)

Muse started off the concert by playing “Knights of Cydonia”, which I only knew from playing it on Guitar Hero but it was great to hear live (and yes, I was playing the Guitar Hero fingerings during the song ;) ), they played 6 more songs or so and then after a full out lighting switch and a bit of stage rearranging U2 came on to much cheering and flashing lights. They played most of their classics (Beautiful Day, Elevation, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Walk On, Where the Streets Have No Name (and Bono played an acoustic version of Amazing Grace to prelude it which was great)) as well as some songs of their new album. They put on a great show, the stage was amazing and a great time was had by all :)

Getting out of the parking garage and back on 64 took longer than it needed to, they were funneling everyone away from the “quick route” to 64 so it was very very backed up and it took us about 30 minutes to get out of downtown but we got back to the bed and breakfast around 1:15 and promptly went to bed, definitely a fun way to spend an evening :)