only half as crazy

Several years ago I bought a pumpkin for fall decoration. Bobby wasn't so certain why I was doing it since we seldom have trick-or-treaters, rarely have people over, and we don't have children, but agreed, jokingly asking if I was going to make a pumpkin pie.

As I started to carve, I thought, "Why not? Why should food go to waste?" And so I trimmed out the pumpkin's insides before I carved up his face. Then I pulled out cookbooks and started cooking. And I cooked. And baked. And went to the grocery store for more pie shells and eggs, and I baked and cooked some more. And I STILL had pumpkin leftover. We ended up with 13 pumpkin pies in the freezer, and I'm not even that crazy over pumpkin pie. My secret to getting it down was cool whip...LOTS and LOTS of cool whip. I think cool whip can make almost anything taste better.

We bought a pumpkin again this year, though I didn't carve it. But I did scoop out about 3/4 of its insides last night and cook them. This morning I began the pie process, and used up all our eggs (but I still have 2 shells left!). The last 3 (of 6) pies are cooking. The remainder of the pumpkin is in the chicken pen where they are scratching at its flesh and devouring seeds as if they were me eating peanut M&Ms. Now I just have to clean up the kitchen, and hope the chickens lay more eggs between now and Monday. I'm happy with the compromise. We can have our decorations and eat them, too!