PUMPKIN BARS

Leftover pumpkin, any good recipes?

Adeline grew up in a large family of three boys and two girls. Her mother, Mary Lou, lived at a time when little of your food came from a store with the exception of staples like flour, sugar, coffee and tea. She was a good cook and baker despite her un-modern kitchen which had a pitcher pump and a cookstove. She and Lew, my grandfather, had a big garden that provided vegetables summer and winter. One day she cooked down a pumpkin and mashed it for pie, leaving it to cool in her pantry. Upon returning from an errand, she discovered that all of the pumpkin was gone, the bowl licked clean. After quizzing the usual suspects her youngest son, probably five or six at the time, finally confessed that he was the culprit. "How did you eat all of that pumpkin?", she asked him. His answer? "With nuteg and sugar!"

Here's another way to use pumpkin in something other than PIE, the nickname, incidently, given to the young pumpkin eater which he carried all of his life.


2 c. sugar
4 eggs
1c. soft butter
2 c. pumpkin
2 c. flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. each:
cinnamon
ginger
nutmeg
cloves
alllspice
salt

Cream sugar and butter then mix in the eggs and pumpkin. Sift together (or whisk together in a bowl) the dry ingredients and add these to the creamed mixture. Mix well and pour onto a greased and floured cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes. When cool, frost with the following ingredients which are beaten together:

3 oz. rm. temp. cream cheese
1/2 cup. soft butter
1 tsp. vanilla
2 c. powdered sugar

Refrigerate and cut into bars for serving. Extras freeze well.