Trying My Hand at Roasting Pumpkin

Summer is definitely my favorite time of the year - for it's warm weather (ok, so it's H-O-T here), longer days, sunshine and trips to the park and the pool...ahhh... I miss it already! But, one thing I love about fall are the wonderful veggies, squashes, potatoes, dark leafy greens, pomegranates, cranberries, apples... the list goes on! I have my tried and true recipes that I pretty much know by heart. Not that there is anything wrong with these tasty stand-by recipes, but sometimes I like to venture into the unknown of the cooking world! 

I recently came across a great website and blog, wholesomebabyfood.com, which is all about feeding your baby with healthy and nutritious foods while also giving you a wealth of information about how to prepare certain foods, when to start feeding certain foods to your baby and fun recipes of how to incorporate foods into many different meals. I have really been trying to add more variety and finger foods into my little mans daily diet and the wholesome baby food website and blog have had some great tips and recipes that I've tried. On their blog, I saw that they had a bunch of tasty looking recipes for pumpkin. I thought that little man should get a chance to try some pumpkin this fall! Well, I have never roasted a pumpkin before! I've roasted squash, sweet potato, potatoes, zucchini, onions...but not pumpkin. Maybe I've just always thought of them as a fall decoration, a canvas for carving into or something used for pumpkin pie. Also, I'm always a little intimidated by how you actually crack into something as hard as a pumpkin without bringing injury to oneself. 

Well, I decided that I was going to roast a pumpkin- little man deserved to start trying some festive fall foods! So, I printed off the instructions, headed to the store and came home with a pumpkin in tow!

Below are the instructions that I followed from wholesome baby food's blog article about roasting a pumpkin. You can read their article here. The pictures are mine. :)

Preheat oven to 400F degrees and find a large baking dish.

My unsuspecting victim

  Cut the top off of the pumpkin – use a sugar or pie pumpkin

Now cut pumpkin in half

Scrape out seeds and “guts” – cut each half into quarters.  Save the seeds & roast them for big kids – nutritious & tasty

Ready to be roasted – add an inch or more of water to baking dish & sprinkle with spices if desired

Cover in foil and roast for 45 minutes to 1 hour or until the shell/skin is soft and puckery looking.  You can also use a fork to test “fork tenderness”.  All done, easy peasy!

They came out beautifully! Perfectly soft and the rind (is that what pumpkin skin is called?) peeled off so easily! I had so idea it was actually this easy! The pumpkin wasn't difficult to cut up either, maybe it helped that it was a small pumpkin. Isn't it funny how small things that we do can make us feel so accomplished? 

So the pumpkin is cubed and stored it in the refridgerator for some recipes that I have planned for little man over the next couple of days. Lucky little boy!

I will be posting my pumpkin recipes this week, with pictures of little man's reaction. He hasn't been too thrilled with "new" foods or textures lately, so we shall see how much ends up in him or on him! Stay tuned!