According to the USDA, mashed pumpkin is too thick to home-can safely. I don't know how they can it for stores, apparently they have some sort of equipment that is unavailable to us. Of course, you can buy canned pumpkin and save a lot of work.
Or you can grow them yourself and root-cellar them. However, the pumpkins I like are so huge that you can't use them up in a week or so.
I like these particular pumpkins, called Neck Pumpkins, because when I moved to Pennsylvania, I bought one from the grocery, made a few pies, and have never, ever tasted anything like that! It was flat-out the yummiest pumpkin I had ever tasted.
These pumpkins look like a deformed butternut squash as in the image shown. Because of the small seed cavity and the elongated neck, this pumpkin provides gobs and gobs of pumpkin. You can make 3 or 4 pies from each pumpkin. Since I rarely find myself wanting to make that many pies at once, I freeze the leftover pumpkin. It holds in the freezer quite well for several months at a time.
While they are available in all the grocery stores here in fall, the seeds are hard to come by in gardening catalogs. Apparently, they are not well known outside of this area.
My source for the seeds is Seed Savers. For some reason, they call the variety Pennsylvania Dutch Crookneck Squash instead of Neck Pumpkin. I recently noticed that Burpee has started carrying them also (that's where I found the image).
Pierce pumpkin with fork repeatedly, place on cookie sheet, and bake at 350 degrees until soft. Cool until next day.
Transfer the meat of the pumpkin to a large Dutch oven and heat over medium heat until dry and slightly caramelized, stirring occasionally. This will take several hours.
Alternatively, you can cook the pumpkin down in a crock pot on low with the lid left off. This will take longer, but will require less work as you don't have to stir constantly.
Freeze in 2-cup portions. This is enough for either three loaves of pumpkin nut bread or a single pumpkin pie and a single pumpkin custard.
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