Terre Pruitt's Blog

In the realm of health, wellness, fitness, and the like, or whatever inspires me.

  • I teach yoga, Nia, and stretch online!

    ALL CLASSES ARE ON ZOOM AT 10:00 AM PDT

    Tuesday Gentle Yoga 

    Wednesday Nia

    Thursday Stretch

    Please see my website for details!

    I am also available for private Nia / yoga / Personal Training all virtual, of course!

  • Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

  • My Bloggey Past

  • ******

    Chose a month above to visit archives, or click below to visit a page.

Posts Tagged ‘sugar pie pumpkin’

Kabocha Squash Nutrition Info

Posted by terrepruitt on December 3, 2018

Perhaps you saw my post where I wanted to make pumpkin soup, but I didn’t see any pumpkins in the store except for Japanese Pumpkins or Kabocha Squash. Well, I had never heard of them so I wanted to see what they had to offer, nutritionally. Here is what I found:

Kabocha Squash

Nutrition Facts per 2018 Nutritionix, I couldn’t find it on the USDA website.

Serving Size: 1 cup (245g grams)

Calories 49Dance Exercise, Nia, Nia in the City of San Jose, Nia classes in the South Bay, Nia Teacher, Nia Class, San Jose Nia, Nia San Jose, Nia workout, Nia, Gentle Yoga, Group Ex classes, YMCA, Zumba, Nia Technique, SJ City Fit, SJCityFit, City of San Jose Exercise Classes

Total Fat 0.2g grams

Saturated Fat 0.1g grams

Calories from Fat 1.5

Cholesterol 0mg milligrams

Sodium 2.5mg milligrams

Potassium 564mg milligrams

Total Carbohydrates 12g grams

Dietary Fiber 2.7g grams
Sugars 5.1g grams
Protein 1.8g grams

Vitamin A 19%*
Vitamin C 4%*

* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.

I think it is good and can be used in the place of a sugar pie pumpkin when making soup or just roasting it to eat. I think it would make a good replacement for a pie because people say it is sweeter than a pumpkin, but I don’t know because I do not make/bake pumpkin pies nor do I eat them so I don’t know if it would be a good substitute.

I just had a butternut squash tonight and I don’t know that I would agree with the information I am seeing on the internet about kabocha squash being sweeter. I would have to taste them both side by side to decide. If you were to ask me right now I would say the butternut squash is sweeter. But I did not eat a lot of Japanese pumpkin when I had it. I just barely took a taste because I wanted to see if it would work in the soup. I didn’t cook it exactly like I do/did butternut squash. But still it was not that different. I would say I do not agree with the internet information. It could be the skin. Perhaps the skin on the kabocha squash makes it less sweet. I don’t know, but butternut squash is so sweet.

Do you like butternut squash? Do you thing you might try a Japanese Squash?

Posted in Food, Vegetables | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Kabocha Squash

Posted by terrepruitt on November 26, 2018

Dance Exercise, Nia, Nia in the City of San Jose, Nia classes in the South Bay, Nia Teacher, Nia Class, San Jose Nia, Nia San Jose, Nia workout, Nia, Gentle Yoga, Group Ex classes, YMCA, Zumba, Nia Technique, SJ City Fit, SJCityFit, City of San Jose Exercise ClassesLast week I decided to make pumpkin soup for Thanksgiving. Ever since our dads died we don’t really do Thanksgiving. My husband’s siblings are off with their kids and I don’t have any siblings. So we do our breakfast in Capitola – although we might have to actually eat breakfast somewhere else before going to Capitola as this year nothing was really open for full breakfast – and then we just eat whatever for dinner. Last year I didn’t even think to plan anything for dinner and I think we ended up going to Chavez market to get burritos. This year I decided to make pumpkin soup. The problem with that is pumpkins are gone from the stores by Thanksgiving. I sort of expected that, but I was HOPING there would be some, but there was not. I am very thankful for cellular service and Google – while standing in the store I decided to try something else. I was thinking any type of winter squash would work, it would just be squash soup. There was this not-so-attractive-green-pumpkiny looking thing and I looked it up and it is actually called a Japanese pumpkin. So cool. I decided to try the Kabocha squash.

Dance Exercise, Nia, Nia in the City of San Jose, Nia classes in the South Bay, Nia Teacher, Nia Class, San Jose Nia, Nia San Jose, Nia workout, Nia, Gentle Yoga, Group Ex classes, YMCA, Zumba, Nia Technique, SJ City Fit, SJCityFit, City of San Jose Exercise ClassesAs I said the Kabocha squash is also called a Japanese pumpkin. Wiki also said that it is even sweeter than butternut squash. I thought this was great as it would help cut down on the bitterness (although the Roasted Pumpkin Soup 2.0 recipe took care of that). The store also didn’t have any heavy cream so I got half and half. I thought that would be good too, since the kabocha squash is said to be sweeter. The half and half would be less sweet than the heavy cream so I was confident it would all work out fine.

Well . . . let me tell you, that Kabocha squash is SUPER difficult to cut. The skin is very thin, but it is super tough. It was a challenge. Not impossible, but way more time consuming than I had planned. I had planned to hop in the kitchen cut up the Japanese pumpkin and throw it in the oven then have time to do other things, but no, it was tough.

Dance Exercise, Nia, Nia in the City of San Jose, Nia classes in the South Bay, Nia Teacher, Nia Class, San Jose Nia, Nia San Jose, Nia workout, Nia, Gentle Yoga, Group Ex classes, YMCA, Zumba, Nia Technique, SJ City Fit, SJCityFit, City of San Jose Exercise Classes

 

 

I roasted it with Milanese Gremolata olive oil, salt, and marjoram and it came out lovely. It is a very good squash.

Using it for the pumpkin soup was fantastic. It worked out great.  I used the skin and all in the soup. I just roast it and then put the chunks in the blender. Now I know that I can get two sugar pie pumpkins and a Japanese pumpkin over the Fall Season.  So that means one or two stuffed pumpkin dinners and/or making pumpkin soup one or two times.

We ate pumpkin soup for four days and we were actually sad last night to finish it. It was very good. Oh . . . . I did add a cup or two of broth each night when I heated it up. It got VERY, VERY thick. So I mixed in a cup or two (depending on how much I was heating up) to help thin it out.

Now you know you can make pumpkin soup with a sugar pie pumpkin or a Japanese pumpkin.  Or perhaps you already knew that.  Did you know about the Kabocha squash?

Posted in Food, Vegetables | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Roasted Pumpkin Soup 2.0

Posted by terrepruitt on November 12, 2018

As you may know, if you read my blog, we get an organic box of produce delivered. The service we use allows us to actually pick what comes in the box. It somewhat defeats my whole idea of getting a box delivered, but it is also nice. When I get the e-mail, sometimes I forget to log in and pick what I want in the allotted time so I end up getting what they send. I would not have gotten a sugar pie pumpkin two deliveries in a row, but, my fault, I didn’t stop it. I felt as if we had just had stuffed pumpkin so I didn’t want to do that again so I decided to make pumpkin soup. I looked up my post of Roast Pumpkin Soup and I read what I wrote, so I didn’t want to follow that recipe exactly. And since I was going to just make a few minor tweaks I didn’t think I would be posting about it. Well, my husband and I loved it so much I wanted to make sure I made note of it. I will not be using the other pumpkin soup recipe again. Although, this one is VERY similar, I liked the tweaks I made so this one is much better. It didn’t have any of the bitter that I spoke about with the last recipe.

But, as usual, I didn’t plan on posting about it, so I didn’t think to take a picture the night I made it. We had enough to eat on it for three days. So the pictures are of the leftovers.

_________________________________________________

Roasted Pumpkin Soup 2.0

1 sugar pie pumpkin
Milanese Gremolata olive oil
garlic salt
2 large shallots
32 ounces chicken broth (Better Than Bouillon)
8 ounces of dry sherry (and then some, for splashing)
1 teaspoons salt (and then some, for sprinkling)
1/2 heaping teaspoon cardamom
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 heaping teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon marjoram (and then some, for sprinkling)
sprinkle of pepper
sprinkle of nutmeg
1 pint of heavy cream**

Preheat the oven to 450° F. Wash the pumpkin, then cut so that you can remove all the seeds. Then cut it into pieces. Rub the pumpkin pieces with olive oil and sprinkle both sides of each piece with garlic salt. Then place the pumpkin – skin side up – on a parchment paper lined baking pan. Bake it for 20 minutes. Take the pumpkin out of the oven – here is where you can salt it again if you would like. Turn each piece over and sprinkle with marjoram. Then bake it for about 30 minutes more. This is where you have to decide if it is done or if it needs more time in the oven. Use a fork, poking each piece to see it if is cooked to your liking. I like it to have the roasted flavor so I bake it until there are some browned spots.

While the pumpkin is roasting. Chop the shallots. Heat up some olive oil in your stock pot or soup pan. Then cook the shallots. Once the shallots are cooked, add the broth. Stir the broth and shallots. Then add the sherry. Stir the broth and sherry. While stirring add the salt and all of the spices. Bring it to a low boil.

When the pumpkin is done roasting put it in your super blender (or perhaps you have an immersion blender*) with a splash of sherry and blend it until you have a pumpkin puree. (I used the “soup” setting on my blender.)

When you have the pumpkin puree add it to the liquid in the soup pot. Stir the mixture until the puree and the liquid are incorporated. Then add the cream. Stir until the cream is incorporated into the soup. Bring it a low boil. Then serve.

*with the immersion blender add the pumpkin to the liquid then blend until smooth

**I actually used 1/2 a pint

_______________________________________________________

This was really good.

I am including the Milanese Gremolata olive oil as an ingredient because we just bought this magical elixir from Napa and I love it and I am using it in everything. I do think that it really helped elevate the flavor of the soup. But, regular olive oil will work, too.

The first two night we had this with some Pugliese bread from the store. It was very good dipped into the soup. The third night I made beer bread adding, a teaspoon of garlic salt, a teaspoon of garlic, and two teaspoons of marjoram. It paired REALLY well with the soup.

My husband is already pestering me to make this again! I better do it at least one more time before the sugar pie pumpkins are all gone!

Well, now I have two pumpkin soup recipes you can make.  Which one will you make?

Posted in "Recipes", Food | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »