Hillevi:
In the midst of the Christmas rush, pumpkins caught my attention. Pumpkins can normally be easily stored indoors at room temperature, but sometimes a pumpkin gets a stain and rots where it is. If it is left lying around, it can leave a wet spot on the bookshelf – not fun. (That's why we put strips of old plastic mats under the pumpkins as protection). Check your pumpkins regularly and if you notice stains, slaughter the pumpkins immediately. Cut out the bad ones and take care of the rest. I usually run the pumpkin flesh through the French fries shredder and spread it over drying racks. They are dried without scalding on the ceiling in the boiler room. Dried pumpkin is perfect for winter soups and stews, not least in winter thermos soups for excursions.
The seeds of regular pumpkins are edible. First boil them for 10 minutes in lightly salted water and then roast (pop) them at 200 degrees in the oven with a little oil and herb salt. Of course, the seeds without the shell are tastier. They come from special naked-seeded pumpkins. From 7 large pumpkins I got about 1 kg of seeds. That's not too bad, although the seeds are of course a very small part of the total harvest and the pumpkin flesh from this variety is not at all as good as from the edible pumpkins.
It is easy to harvest the seeds from the fruit. This is done when the fruit has changed from green to yellow. The naked seeds are much looser than the seeds in the pumpkins. You just have to dig them out with your hand and then they need to be rinsed and dried. I spread them out on baking sheets and dried at about 40 degrees with the oven door ajar. These seeds do not need to be cooked. They can be eaten raw, both as they are and roasted with or without salt. They turned out very tasty!
Tips for avoiding rotten pumpkins on the bookshelf: Pumpkins should remain on the plant until they are fully ripe. At the end of August, you can cut away leaves that shade the fruits so that they can bask in the sun while they ripen. Feel free to leave the fruits hanging until the day after the first frost night. A frost night will not damage the fruit, but the plant will die. After that, the pumpkins should be dried. Preferably in a wheelbarrow that is driven out into the sun during the day if autumn offers sunny weather. Otherwise, indoors. Some say they should be dried at 30 degrees, but we rarely have that at our place at the end of September… The riper the pumpkin, the harder the skin and the better the shelf life.