Pumpkin

Pumpkin or nan gua is easy to find in China. But what the Chinese call pumpkin we would probably call squash. There is no different name for pumpkin or squash, it is all nan gua. The big one in this picture is not really carvable. We did find a small regular orange pumpkin. A lady was selling them for decorations Most of the ones she was selling, had Chinese characters on them. Unfortunately this one grew too many gross black moldy spots before we could carve it for a jack-o-lantern.

We did however cut up the big "pumpkin" and made a bunch of pumpkin puree.

We baked the pieces in the oven for about an hour (until soft) then we took the peel off and ran it through the blender. This pumpkin yielded at least 6 cups of puree. I have already made 3 batches of pumpkin muffins and one batch of pumpkin cookies. I will need to get another one before Thanksgiving. We love pumpkin!

Since we could not carve pumpkin this Halloween, what did we do?

We carved orange candles! I brought these from the States this year. We "carved" them with tooth picks and then colored the carved spots with black marker (Jon did not color his).


These won't rot or get moldy!

Update: I saw two orange pumpkins at the market today. Where were those 2 weeks ago?!