You Picked ALL of Them?!

A good proportion of my food storage activities begin with conversations like this one:

Liam and Seamus: "Look Mom.  We picked the pumpkins for you."
Me: "You picked all of them?"
Liam and Seamus: "They were ready."
Me: "Uh huh."
Liam and Seamus: "Can we make jack-o-lanterns?"
Me: "It is the middle of September."
Liam and Seamus: "So...can we?"
Me: "How about we make pumpkin soup instead?"
Liam and Seamus: "YEAH!"

And so, there you have it.  Today was spent making four pumpkins worth of pumpkin carrot soup.

What toddler doesn't like scooping out the goop?

Roasted pumpkin seeds are a crowd-pleaser in this household.

Too bad all these fancy colourful carrots got pureed into soup.

They may be pretty but the plain orange ones are actually sweeter.

We ended up with 8 one litre jars of soup.

After I finished making the soup, I googled how long to pressure can it for and realized that pumpkin soup should not be canned at all.  Apparently it is too thick to guarantee that the heat gets rights to the middle of the jar and it is not acidic enough even if you add lemon juice to rule out botulism.  Ugh.  So, now I have 8 jars of soup in the freezer that we were reserving for the 1/2 hog that we are picking up from a neighbour three doors down tomorrow.  It is going to be one crammed freezer!