Pumpkin Paradise!

These are my "accidental"  pumpkins that grew from one that fell off my porch last fall.  There are certain pumpkins that are better for pies and cooking etc; but since I have no idea what kind of pumpkin this was I guess I'll just take my chances!  I've never done this before so it has been enlightening!  It's not hard just time consuming but does allow you to multi-task so that's a plus!  I cut them in half...by far, the hardest part and be careful!  They are tough!  But then, I just layed them on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet and baked them at 325 for an hour and VOILA!  The rest is easy!

I peeled the cooked pumpkin, cut it into chunks and threw it in my food processor and there you have it!  Pureed pumpkin in freezer containers...so far I have about 4 cups worth from the little and medium sized one.  The BIG mama-jama I'm tackling tomorrow.  They do say that the smaller or medium sized ones are best.  But my BIG one isn't that big so I am not wasting it!  I've been baking them in the evening after supper and then letting them cool overnight so I've been doing one pumpkin a day...not to worry....I only have 3.

Here's the seeds after being washed.  They are draining.  Actually, I have never tasted homemade toasted/roasted pumpkin seeds.  We had pumpkins we grew for Halloween but they always stayed outside until they rotted!  LOL!  Plus...as a career woman with 4 children on a farm....I was lucky I bathed regularly much less made pumpkin seeds but I did garden and can everything else...I think I was just too tired from canning and freezing garden produce by the time the pumpkins arrived.  In fact, I thought cleaning the seeds would be a really time consuming, difficult task with all that stringy pumpkin flesh mixed in but it was surprisingly easy to clean them!  Who knew???!!!  I'm on a roll!  Of course it is amazing how much patience I have now that I divorced my husband and the kids all left home.  I'm sure they'd be amazed at what a nice person I am now!  Ha! Ha!

Here they are all roasty and toasty!  And I must say DELICIOUS!!!  They are good for you and better than any snack I can think of!  WOW!  I wish I had grown more pumpkins because they are NOT going to last the season!  I took 1 1/2 cups of seeds and melted  1 Tbs of butter and a pinch of salt and mixed them all in a bowl.  I then tried as best I could to spread them on a parchment paper  covered cookie sheet and baked them at 300 for 45 minutes stirring several times during the roasting/toasting.  I sure hope that last big pumpkin has LOTS of seeds in it!  I am definitely having a pumpkin patch next year!  And I haven't even started with the pumpkin bread, that pumpkin roll with the cream cheese frosting in the middle and of course the pie for Thanksgiving and last but not least....I am going to try pumpkin butter!  I am loving this!  Mary Jane and Martha move over!