Autumnal Bounty

Tonight I cooked pumpkin stew. I didn't have a recipe. I just winged it, and it turend out pretty good. Here is what I did.

1. Removed the casings from three spicy Italian sausages, mashed them into bits, and browned them
2. Diced a yellow onion and sauteed until golden brown
3. reyhdrated a couple of handfulls of dried wild mushrooms in a quart of chicken stock
4. cleaned and diced one small pumpkin
5. chopped three celery sticks
6. minced 4 garlic cloves
7. diced 8 plum plum tomatoes (this was probably the last of the tomatoes until next summer. It rained today.)
8. Put all of the above ingredients in a 6 quart pan over medium heat.
stirred in 1 16-oz can of corn, 2 cups of raisins, pepper, dried oregano, dried sage, and a couple of handfulls of baby carrots, and salt. Sitrred occasionally.
9. cleaned three medium pumpkins
10. chopped two cups of Italian parsley and added it to the pot
11. cooked the stew about 5 more minutes, divided it up between the three wating pumpkins
12. put one bay leaf in each pumpkin
13. put lids on pumpkins, making sure they were each a little bit off to the side
14. put pumpkins in 300 degree oven for 30 minutes.
15. increased heat to 400 for 10 more minutes, until the outsides of the pumpkins started to brown
16. removed from oven and served immediately
17. After the stew had all been consumed the flesh of the pumpkins made a nice desert when sprinkeld with grade B maple syrup. (oddly, grade B tastes better than grade A.)

Hmmm. Now I'm in the mood for eggnog.