http://incredibleseeds.ca/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1_33&products_id=328 Here winter luxury is sold as a heirloom variety, which grows oblong too! I think, that all the nicely globe winter luxury are crossed with other pumpkins and artificial varieties. You could be proud to grow the original one.

In Thanksgivings past, I had used the mini-pumpkins as holders for votive candles. After dinner, I put them in the fridge and the next day chopped them and cooked the flesh with polenta and chopped green chile. I sprinkled Parmesan cheese over the top. They were just okay. Now, I would add them to the compost pile as I grow my own eating pumpkins that I prefer the flavor of. If I were going to stuff them, I would probably do something similar to this recipe for roasted corn pudding stuffed into acorn squash. I have done the the variation with coconut milk for the custard as well. The recipe is from the 101 cookbooks site and I have yet to find a recipe that does not turn out well.

Trader Joe’s carries Pumpkin Butter in the fall. People rave about it. I bought some last year and didn’t care for it. To me it tasted more like pumpkin pie spice and not enough like pumpkin. I love apple butter and it was nothing like it. The consistency was too thin, also, more like a sauce: it would slide right off whatever you put it on. I was on a local gardening forum and someone was talking about making her own pumpkin butter from the pumpkins she grew. It looked so much better and thicker than the Trader Joe’s version that it got me thinking in that vein of how to use my pie pumpkins. (I buy a couple to use on my porch for Halloween, then eat them after. The first year I did this, it was so thin it was good only for soup.) She’s the one that cooked it down in the slow cooker to make it thicker after roasting. Using it in quickbread is far more likely than in any other form. I had a pumpkin cinnamon scone a few weeks ago that was really tasty.

Um, well No, but refinishing is the plan. Right now when the desk part is down it has my grandmothers childhood bible placed over the spot. ;0) I'm not sure how it would work with the sealer if there was one, but I got a stain off my slate entry with hydrogen peroxide and a nylon scrubbie. It seemed to have been waxed at some point and I did have to apply a little wax, buff to make it look like the rest of the floor. Whatever you do, you may have to approach the entire buffet top and not just the marks.