What a great time of year to enjoy pumpkins! We grew a bunch this year, one of them weighing in at about 50 pounds… the others pretty normal jack-o-lantern sized ones. I noticed that you could pick them up pretty inexpensively at stores too… especially after Halloween.

So many things you can do with a pumpkin! We carved jack-o-lanterns from some. If I’d been on the ball, I could have cut those up on November 1st and baked them to use for eating. (That almost sounds cannibalistic! :) ) BUT we left ours out for decoration for the next week instead.

We have several pumpkins left on the front step that are serving as decoration until I’m ready to bake them to use as well. Today I baked one of those decorations and it produced 10 cups of pumpkin puree. We made Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins from 2 cups of that and froze 2 containers to use later for pie. (between them they’ll make at LEAST 6 pies and a couple of batches of muffins again lol)

The shell of the pumpkin that was left after scooping out the pulp, has been discarded in the garden ready to be tilled under to compost there. The seeds were saved for roasting in the oven to snack on later. I’ll include the recipe for those here.

What a wonderfully useful thing these pumpkins became this year!

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

2 cups pumpkin seeds, rinsed

2 T. butter

2 tsp. worcestershire sauce

2 tsp. salt

Put seeds in a 2 quart saucepan and cover with water & add salt. Bring to a boil, turn heat down & simmer for 10 minutes. Drain. Mix butter, Worcestershire, and seeds in pan, coating seeds well. Spread on a greased cookie sheet and bake in 350 degree oven until seeds begin to brown. Stir occasionally. This may take 30-40 minutes… just keep checking.

Enjoy!