It wasn’t a Plumply, Dumply Pumpkin, but the largest pumpkin we got from our CSA farm this season reminded me more of Bert’s head from Sesame Street. When Owen (the four-year-old) decided he wanted to carve it today, we really didn’t know quite what we were getting into, but it couldn’t have had a happier ending.
Owen is by definition a squash-hater. This kid eats just about everything, but I’m sure if you did a Google search for my kid, you’d come up with something like “dresses weird, has the cutest dimples you’ve even seen and hates all things squash with a vengeance.” One thing he’ll definitely eat, though, are roasted squash seeds. So while Keith and Owen carved, I pre-heated my oven to 375 degrees, washed and dried the pumpkin seeds, tossed them in olive oil and sea salt and roasted them for 12-15 minutes (about 14 was perfect for our oven).
It didn’t stop there. We planned chili for dinner, and instead of making plain old cornbread, we thought we’d make some pumpkin cornbread, since we adore the pumpcorn muffins from our Uprisings cookbook. It was also breakfast the next day.
It was about then that Owen decided he’d really like some ice cream. I’m almost sure at this point that Owen doesn’t really understand that pumpkin is a kind of squash, because he begged for pumpkin ice cream. My recipe for pumpkin ice cream was worth an entire post in itself, so be sure to go read it!
So, we used the shell of the pumpkin to make a festive decoration, the seeds a tasty snack, and the carved out flesh (cut into chunks, put in a covered bowl with a tablespoon of water and microwave for ten minutes) for pumpkin ice cream and pumpkin cornbread. I’m pretty impressed with us, and not one part of that pumpkin went to waste.
Clacked by Debbie McDuffee
on Oct 29, 2009 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
