Cooking pumpkin

I slept so well last night - warm, comfortable and really dark in the bedroom, which is how I like it. Got woken up by the phone ringing at 7:30 - it was a wrong number! Snuggled down again and listened to the radio for a bit after doing my morning meditation. It's been one of those days - snowing and dark - when there's not much incentive to do anything. I did sort out my clothes, throwing away a couple of bags full of old, holey and worn things. Then I decided to cook a pumpkin I had been given before Christmas.

This is a pie pumpkin. I found a recipe online for pumpkin cheesecake which I will make tomorrow for a pot luck lunch on Friday. So I took out the seeds for roasting, scraped away all the stringy bits and put the pumpkin to steam. It needed an hour and a half on my stove before it was cooked. Now it's all mashed up and ready making into cheesecake.

As I come from England, I haven't had much to do with pumpkins, or any other squash, before. I found the taste of pumpkin pie to be quite strange at first, but with the excellent cooks I know around here, I have got used to it now, and have been known to have more than one piece. One of my friends makes her pie with molasses and honey. Now that is scrummy. So I'll use some of the cooked pumpkin to make a pie. But I'm keen to try the cheesecake recipe and will make two so I have one for home. More to follow on the success or otherwise!