Roasting and Freezing Pumpkins

When Autumn comes around, I love cooking with Pumpkin.  Of course my favorite is pumpkin pie, but I have added  many other sweet and savory pumpkin recipes to my repertoire.  Again I found that canned pumpkin has BPA lining in the cans so what is a girl to do?  Well can my own!  Now don't worry if you think you will not be able to can foods, because you do not need a canning pot for this recipe.  You will freeze the pumpkin puree.



 Here are the instructions:

1. Cut the pumpkin (Organic Sugar Pumpkin preferably) in half. Be careful when cutting.
2.  Take all the seeds out (Click here for the post on using pumpkin seeds)
3.  Drizzle olive oil on edges of pumpkin flesh and rub over the pumpkin flesh.
4.  Place on baking sheet (line with foil if you want to make clean up easy), pumpkin flesh side down.
5.  Roast in 400 degree F oven for about 40-55 minutes.  Basically until fork tender.
6.  Allow to cool, then remove pumpkin flesh.
7.  Puree pumpkin flesh in a food processor.
8.  Place puree in freezable containers.  Ball has plastic (BPA free) containers as well as freezable glass.

That's it, you have pumpkin puree to use anytime.

My dogs even love the pumpkin puree on their dog food.  I also use the puree in baking dog treats from the Three Dog Bakery cookbook.  Sometimes I buy carving pumpkins to roast and puree for my dogs, instead of the Sugar pumpkins.

Essentially the Sugar pumpkins are smaller and sweeter, best for baking pies.  I love the Sugar pumpkins for soups, other desserts and savory dishes too.



Left: Ball BPA-free plastic freezer jar
Right: Canning jar with plastic lid



It's Fall and that means Pumpkins!

Fall, here in California, means apples and pumpkins to me.  I love the delicious smells when baking and cooking with both ingredients.  Today though I want to talk about pumpkins, I'll save the apples for another day.

Most people think of pumpkin pie at their holiday table or carving Jack-O-Lanterns.  But there are so many more recipes you can cook with pumpkins.  I could spend hours going through all my recipes that involve pumpkins.  There are also so many decorative ideas that pumpkins can be used for, besides a carved pumpkin.

What does that mean, you ask?  Hand-blown glass pumpkins.  These are not your typical decorative pumpkins.  Don't get me wrong, I have the lighted grapevine pumpkins, as well as others both ceramic, fabric and other material types on display in my home.  But these hand-blown glass pumpkins are the most unique ones I have seen yet.

I made a day of it with my Mother and went to the art center event in the Bay area to see these hand-blown glass pumpkins.  I love most things made of hand-blown glass.  From my own travels, I have a Norwegian hand-blown dog, Venetian glass pendants and earrings and now Bay Area pumpkins!  If you don't have anything made of hand-blown glass, I would highly recommend finding a piece.  The price is worth it when you have a piece of art that is unique and will hold many memories of the trip or day.

Here's is a tiny preview of the pumpkins I saw.

Large or small in every color of the rainbow.  There were too many to choose from, but I finally found one that called to me.  I can say it is happily on display for the season.

Now I do have one more project that involves pumpkins.  And that involves carving pumpkins, not real pumpkins, but the craft pumpkins you can buy at a local craft store.  I found that carving pumpkins each year as a kid is great fun, but now it's kind of a waste of a good pumpkin.  There are two patterns in particular that inspired me, a German Shepherd dog and stars.  Last season I found a magazine that featured patterns of various dog breeds that you can use to carve pumpkins.  The German Shepherd is quite intricate and I expect it will take me a while to carve just one pumpkin.  The second was a picture of stars in different sizes carved around an entire pumpkin.  Eureka!  I knew that I wanted to carve a few craft pumpkins with these designs to light up on display in my house for the holiday.  This season I think I will be able to get to the project, since I bought the craft pumpkins on clearance last year.  (just another way to save money).  So stay tuned for that project!