10 Things To Do With Canned Pumpkin

I don't know about you, but I only seem to purchase canned pumpkin at Thanksgiving. And for some odd reason, I always purchase way too much of it. Perhaps it's the result of some innate human tendency to stock up on food before the snow flies (much like a squirrel with his nuts...), but each November I always return home from the grocery store with a turkey, some cranberries, and a year's supply of canned pumpkin... Then, naturally of course, I prepare my one Thanksgiving Day pumpkin pie and the leave the remaining cans of pumpkin on a shelf in the basement to collect dust. So in effort to find different uses for all that excess canned pumpkin, I give you:

10 Things To Do With Canned Pumpkin

• Make more pumpkin pie, a lot more...
• Try substituting pumpkin for the oil, applesauce, or shredded zucchini in your favorite baking recipes.
• Give the excess pumpkin to charity.
• Let the kids use the pumpkin as finger paint.
• Use the cans as hockey pucks this winter.
• Throw the cans down a flight of stairs – everything is entertaining falling down a flight of stairs...
• Give yourself a pumpkin facial – not sure if this is actually beneficial, but it sure is the consistency of that mud they smear on you at the spa...
• Use the excess pumpkin as inspiration for an Andy Warhol-esque painting of canned squash.
• Set the cans up like pins and go backyard bowling.
• And if all else fails, store the cans on a shelf in the basement in anticipation of next year's big event(s)*, be it apocalypse, massive solar flare, plague, alien landing, or rise of the Planet of the Apes.
  
  
  *(as indicated by the Mayan calendar)