This time of year is pumpkin eating time in my house.

It’s the time when I harvest my mini pumpkin vines and the little, knobby, round, orange vegetables lie happily around our kitchen and balcony.

They are really easy to grow and perfect for smaller gardens that don’t have a lot of space. I usually plant a few seeds and keep a couple of the strongest seedlings alive.

I let the vines ramble about my herb and vegetable patches, plus let them climb up the back fence trellises. They probably only get up to about five metres long so are quite manageable.

The pumpkins are quite small -  you can fit them in the palm of your hand. The only problem is they don’t seem to last as long as bigger pumpkins so they have to be eaten within about a month or two of harvesting.

They have deep orange flesh and a delicious nutty taste. They are excellent for:

• baking: cut in half and stuffed with a mixture of feta cheese, ricotta cheese, olives and fresh basil;
• stir frying with other veges;
• thinly sliced on pizza with red onions, feta and fresh rocket from the garden; or simply
• made into pumpkin soup with home grown potatoes and lemon grass for a delicate sweet flavour.

Yum! Any other pumpkin cooking ideas most welcome.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 24th, 2008 at 4:13 pm and is filed under Cooking, Food, Gardening. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.