Pumpkin Fun

There is a man who lives just up the road from us (actually, he's on the next road over, but directly behind the lady across the street--her daddy used to own the whole mountain and someone should chronicle the stories that she can tell), and last year he stopped by and gave us some pumpkins. He said that he worked in two 80-acre pumpkin fields, and went around delivering extra pumpkins to everyone. The kids named him The Pumpkin Man. 

This year he came back. The kids recognized him as soon as he climbed out of his car, and they ran to him yelling with excitement. I was pleasently surprised that after only meeting us once last year he remembered all of them. 

This time The Pumpkin Man gave us all of the pumpkins that he had with him, and he said he'd see what he had as far as pie pumpkins for me to cook with before he left. The kids spent the next two hours playing "Pumpkin Delivery." 

I tried to bribe Thingus Maximus to do his school by telling him they could carve one pumpkin each if he did reading and math. But later he asked me if he could carve a pumpkin if he did school. I'm still not sure who bribed whom. 

Ellie woke up to the rest of them carving, and since I wasn't going to let her handle a knife she went off to play by herself. She had a very philisophical discussion with the Adventure Kitty (who was on maternity leave; she resumed her normal duties a day after the kittens were born).

A few years ago I found the most wonderful pumpkin scone recipe, (here is my original post with the recipe link) and I haven't been able to use it because now I can't have the wheat. But I need to look at it again, and see if I can transfer it to a gluten free recipe. I have a paleo biscuit recipe that should work well (the biscuits tend to be a little dry because it takes coconut flour, but the pumpkin might fix that).

The day after we carved the pumpkins Maximus and I did the mutual bribe thing again so he could roast the seeds. Three pumpkins gives a lot of seeds, and there ended up being too many for him to finish the job. So I ended up "helping" him,  and we eventually got all of the seeds in the oven. They took a few hours at a low temperature, but they came out in time for a bedtime snack. 

Unfortunately, the boys both got sick the next day. Nick and I are not sure if it was the seeds or if something was going around. They both spent a full day in misery, threw up in the night, and then felt better. We do suspect it was probably a viruse, cause the next week the girls and I were fighting fevers and headaches. 

But now we are all better, and I am looking for a simple carriage pattern to carve into one of the pumpkins. Nick got us the new Cinderella movie, and it just seems natural that we carve at least one into a carriage. There will be more on that if we ever get around to it. In the mean time I'm thinking that both The Pumpkin Man and the lady across the street (she needs a better story-name) need to appear in one of the Adventures of Maximus and Minimus!