Three giant pumpkins and not a golden carriage in sight

Earlier in the spring, we emptied one of our compost bays and used the contents to fill the new veg bed that we had just erected. A couple of weeks later, two little shoots came up from the compost, looking like something from the squash/pumpkin family. 

Stuart transplanted them into the newly created raised terraces and we waited to see what they would turn into.

Well, they grew, they spread across the entirety of the terrace (and then some), and then they produced some fruit. Which grew, and grew, and grew. 

Eventually, we were left with three monster pumpkins (actually with four, but the fourth was a smaller monster than the other three).

Now, we all know the story of Cinderella, her fairy godmother and the pumpkin that was turned into a golden carriage. To remind ourselves, the Ladybird Easy-Reading book (hat tip to our friend Marie for sending us this excerpt) recounts: "First, I want you to go into the garden and bring me the biggest pumpkin you can find," said the fairy godmother... She picked the biggest pumpkin she could find and took it to her fairy godmother."

She picked the biggest pumpkin she could find and took it to her fairy godmother.

I'm sorry to say (sorry Ladybird books) that there are two main things wrong with this imagery. 

1. Cinderella is running.

The giant pumpkins that grew in our garden were so enormous and so heavy that even between two of us we couldn't carry a single one back to the house, let alone run while carrying one. (We reckoned they averaged about 40kg each.)

2. Cinderella is smiling.

We had to resort to cutting our giant pumpkins into halves in situ in the veg garden, and then struggling back up the hill carrying just a half piece each. There was certainly no smiling going on even when carrying just a half piece (each of which weighed in at around 20kg). Grimacing, yes. Smiling, no.

Even the half pieces were a struggle to carry.

After much huffing and puffing and straining and struggling, we managed to get all three monsters back up to the house (in pieces) and just about managed to find enough space to lay them out across all available kitchen surfaces.

We then set about prepping them for the freezer. Under normal circumstances, with a normal sized pumpkin (or squash), we would store it whole in our utility room until we wanted to use it - in the past we've kept squashes for over a year like that, still perfectly usable and tasty a year later. However, thanks to the having-to-cut-them-in-half-in-order-to-carry-them issue, we were faced with needing to preserve them in some way, and cutting them up and bagging them up for the freezer was the only real option. 

Three hours later, we had managed to scoop out and dice just two of the enormous beasts, and we had bagged up over 50kg of pumpkin flesh and filled every last millimetre of freezer space. Poor Reggie was going to have to wait some time before we managed to order him another bulk delivery of his raw food and we joked that he might have to settle for eating pumpkin for the next 3 months. As if to prove a point, while we sat and prepped, Reggie sat at the end of the kitchen table and drooled on the floor, and begged for pumpkin scraps. So it appears he does actually like pumpkin, which we duly noted for future information!

With no more freezer space available, we decided to offer the last of the monster pumpkins to our friend Amanda, and were relived that she accepted it - although she was somewhat taken aback when she saw the size of it!

It will come as little surprise that we ate pumpkin soup for three days in a row the following week, and then made more pumpkin soup to feed to our friends when they came to help us with our olive harvest (slowly, slowly, Reggie is regaining a bit of space in the freezer for his food!). Unfortunately after being frozen the pumpkin flesh isn't up to using in whole pieces, but it is excellent for soups and purees.

Our recipe for spicy pumpkin soup is as follows:

1.5kg pumpkin, cubed

1 large onion, chopped

1 large potato, cubed

1 stock cube

2 apples

A teaspoon of fenugreek

A pinch of chilli powder (or more, depending on how spicy you like it)

Salt & pepper

Soften onion in a large pan, then add all the other ingredients and cook it down. Once it has all cooked down, use a hand blender to blend it into a thick, nourishing soup.