Pumpkin Season - Part II

I was hoping to get to one of the Katrina benefit dinners at any of the hipster restaurants far away from work and the suburban boredom that is Livermore... Alas, I am still at work. I realized today that I was supposed to give a presentation in Berkeley on Friday, and since they are going to be using some fancy projection system, my slides are due tomorrow. So far, I have 2 slides done, and one is my title slide. Sniff. Procrastination has gotten the better of me again, and I am having to stay at work instead of out and about enjoying my fading youth.

Oh well.

Since this is breast cancer awareness month, I'll deviate from regular programming for a second and share a little bit of what I do as a cancer biologist. My presentation on Friday is about angiogenesis. Angiogenesis is the process by which new blood vessels grow, and because blood supplies all of your cells with oxygen and other much needed goodies to grow, tumors are particularly fond of new blood vessels. They actually NEED it to grow beyond a certain size/state... You see, tumors are just like us and they can't grow a whole lot if they don't get their nutrients. Taking advantage of this fact that angiogenesis and tumor growth are hand-in-hand are the very promising anti-angiogenesis cancer treatments... And somewhere in this web is little Doc Alice, trying to find her place in the field of cancer biology and human health...

Anyway, back to pumpkins before I speed off back to angiogenesis for real.


This pumpkin-shiitake couscous was an accompaniment for my most recent Paper Chef entry. Since I went shopping after being inspired by Chris on Saturday, I picked up a pumpkin at the Walnut Creek farmer's market. I saw a very pretty orange pumpkin for only $3 - it was huge for $3! Well, it turned out to be a not-so-tasty pumpkin in the end. I think it was a decorative pumpkin...

But before I found that out, I sliced the pumpkin into two, cleaned its guts, and roasted it in my oven. My oven has no temperature control, but the pumpkin came out soft and scoopable in an hour and whatever temperature it felt like being. While the pumpkin was roasting, I made a very condensed dried shiitake broth, seasoned with soy sauce, which I've been enamored with since trying it during the last IMBB. I took the mushrooms out and sliced them while I cooked the couscous in the broth. I dumped the mushrooms and the scraped pumpkin-meat back into the pot once the couscous was done, and voila! Pumpkin-mushroom couscous! So vegan, yet so satisfying. The couscous really absorbed the shiitake depth of flavor while the pumpkin meat gave it strength and substance. This was rich without being cumbersome, light without being bland.

My only complaint is that the pumpkin really didn't have that strong sweet pumpkin taste.... But then again, maybe it's because the Japanese kabocha (what we call pumpkin) is really not a pumpkin but a whole different gord...