Nutritional Healing With Pumpkin

Pumpkin Custard, Hold the Dairy by llsimon53 

I wrote earlier about my love of Autumn and how it's necessary to change our activity level, diet, and lifestyle in order to stay healthy through the seasonal transition.  When it comes to diet, I think most everyone in the US would agree that pumpkin is THE food of Autumn.

Pumpkin is also a valuable remedy in Traditional Chinese Medicine dietetics.  According to the Tao of Nutrition by Maoshing Ni, Ph.D., C.A., pumpkin has a cool and sweet nature.  Therefore, it can help with many "heat" or inflammatory conditions such as dysentery, diabetes, eczema, and stomachaches.

Our family is fond of roasting sugar pie pumpkins and using the pureé for loads of recipes we've collected over the years.  While canned pumpkin is affordable and very convenient, we try to avoid canned foods due to BPA in the lining.

Here is a super easy way to roast & pureé a pumpkin.  Use the pureé in you favorite pie, custard or pancake recipe.  Or better yet, add it to yogurt, oatmeal, or simply season it with cinnamon & honey and eat it as is!

Roasted Pumpkin
1) Heat oven to 400°F.
2) Cut out a hole at the top of the pumpkin and just like you're going to carve it, go ahead and scoop out the insides, placing the seeds into a bowl of water if choosing to save them for roasting separately.
3) Place pumpkin on baking sheet and cook for 40 minutes.
4) Fit top back on pumpkin and bake for another 20 minutes or until tender.
5) Remove top again and cool until easy to handle.
6) Scoop out the pumpkin and either mash, run it through a food mill, or pureé in a blender/food processor.

Enjoy!