Taking Down a Pumpkin

Last night, one of my roomies and I attacked a pumpkin that had apparently been sitting on her counter for almost a month. Well, she did most of the attacking, knife-wise.

First things first: clean the pumpkin seeds and season them for baking. Sadly, this giant pumpkin didn't yield many seeds, but we still made two small batches: one sweet, one savory.
The savory batch was seasoned with a little oil, cracked black pepper, granulated garlic, and some kind of Creole seasoning that I found in the cupboard. The Creole seasoning had garlic in it, but you know, you can never have too much garlic.


Our sweet batch was just cinnamon and brown sugar (and a little vegetable oil). This gave the seeds a candied texture, which was delightful.


Next, the hollowed out pumpkin was cut into chunks and thrown into the oven to bake for about an hour. I admit: I've never done this before. I've always bought canned pumpkin when I needed pureed pumpkin, but this is such an easy process. Granted, it's not as easy as opening a can, but it feels better to do it the slower way than the easier way.




Peeling off the pumpkin skin was pretty easy (especially the burned parts). Now I have a giant Ziploc baggie of peeled, baked pumpkin chunks. We're not entirely sure what to do with it yet, but we're leaning toward either soup or a baked pasta dish. Any suggestions? What do you like to do with baked pumpkin?