A Bountiful Harvest . . . Although I Didn't Grow It Myself

You can see how big these pumpkins are when a 3 and 5 year old are sitting on them.

Each year, our girls want to stop and buy pumpkins at Bates Nut Farm which is not far from our house, but during the month of October, the road going to and from Bates has an insane amount of traffic.  They have fields of very large pumpkins called "Big Macs" and several years ago, we bought one for $10 which was a steal considering the pumpkin was about 75 lbs.  Over the past few years, however, the price has gone up to $1.00 a pound.  My hubby, however, was biding his time and decided to stop by the day after Halloween to see if there was a deal on these monster pumpkins.  As it turns out, the Big Macs were free for the taking if you could manage to wrangle it into your vehicle (minus the wheelbarrows that are out during October).  I ended up being the happy recipient of three Big Mac pumpkins, which is a lot of free food. 

One of the 3 Big Macs my hubby brought home.

I have heard many people over the years say that you can't eat the big pumpkins, but I can tell you from experience that is definitely not true.  The Big Macs are not super sweet, but they are in the squash family and have a lovely taste once they are baked and pureed.  The meat from this pumpkin can be used in everything from pumpkin soup to pumpkin muffins and pie.  Yum!

Part of the pumpkin after cutting up and baking much of it.

The beautiful pumpkin puree.