I love squash. Acorn, butternut, spaghetti , kabocha …all types of squash are cool by me. Roasted squash not only provides a tender-sweet taste and puts me in the winter holiday spirit, but it is also freaking healthy.
The beauty that is prepackaged peeled and cubed butternut squash
The problem is that ‘Winter Squash’, squash types with a hard inedible outer skin, are a pain to prepare. Dealing with the armor-like exterior and the messy seeds inside just get annoying real fast. So a gift-from-God is the pre-diced stuff. I always pick up a huge container of diced butternut squash from Sam’s when it is in season. Normally you pay a crazy premium for having the convenience of perfectly peeled and diced vegetables, but Sam’s somehow makes it so affordable that even a stingy ass like me is satisfied.
What really frustrates me, involves one ‘armor-clad’ squash in particular…pumpkin. YES, Pumpkin is a type of squash. I have happily feasted on the canned stuff for years. But one day I decided to try to use a ‘fresh,’ whole pumpkin to make a pie. After hours (ok, maybe that is a slight exaggeration) of laboriously peeling and seeding the damn thing, I finally got chunks of fresh pumpkin in the oven to roast. Once roasted, the chunks were then pureed and made into a pie….AND after all that work…it tasted the exact same as a pie I could have made with the stuff I get from a can. I was pissed.
Canned pumpkin: great for pies…but does package cubed pumpkin even exist?!?
I am sure that using a fresh pumpkin from scratch has its benefits if you want to control the textural element. For example, if you wanted chunks of roasted pumpkin to be added to a sandwich (which I once had in New Zealand and was floored by how good it was). But as for taste: the amount of time and energy used to prep a whole pumpkin for roasting simply does not justify the end result, when you could have easily just opened up a can.
Anyway…why can’t there be pre-diced pumpkin be readily available? After writing this freaking post, I am sort of craving a roasted pumpkin sandwich, and this caned stuff is just not going to work.
Great question. Why isn’t pumpkin as available in other forms like squash and sweet potato?
Maybe “Libby’s” is far more powerful than we all think and has some sort of gang of hardened thugs threatening anybody from entering their monopoly on the pumpkin market.
One year I made a pumpkin and apple crumble. I had to start from whole pumpkin and boil it soft so I could cut if off the rind. I discovered that I LOVE pumpkin. Only it’s such a pain I’ve never cooked pumpkin that way again.
Yep…I think we ALL end up relying on Libby’s after our first (and only) attempt at starting with a whole pumpkin.
This had to stay in chunks. I’ve never seen Libby’s with pumpkin pieces. If they have that, I need to find it.
Oh… no Libby’s only makes the purée… But hopefully the strong influce that FedUpFood.com has over the world of food, will get Libby’s to start selling pumpkin chunks!
Hmmmm, maybe mobilize a writing campaign. Even though most of those never work.