Pumpkins!

When I was showing my husband the pumpkin puree I made, he said we as Americans are goofy, and I agree.  The reason we're so goofy is this: For example, in Brazil, where my husband served his lds mission, people grow pumpkins to eat them.
 Not many Americans grow their own pumpkins any more (how would we get the requisite picture of our children in a pumpkin patch?!?).  We prefer to spend too much money on them at the store.  Then we carve them up and throw them away.
Then we go to the store and buy cans of pumpkin so we can make pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, pumpkin pie, pumpkin pancakes, etc.
Yup, we're goofy.

Lacking land for a garden, this year my pumpkins came from my sisters garden.  We carved our pumpkins Halloween morning so they didn't cave in and get all gooshy.  Then I was on Pioneer Woman's website, and I saw her post about roasting her own pumpkins to make pies from scratch.  I was sold.  So I cut my pumpkins up and roasted them in the oven for about 45 minutes...

Then I cut up the roasted pieces and put them in my food processor...

and pureed them.  My pumpkins were a little bit dry, so I added about 1/3 c of water to the puree to get it looking pretty, like this.

This is the part where, if I was cool, I would have put about 1 cup into 1 qt size ziploc freezer bags.  But I didn't have any of those, all my freezer bags are gallon size.  So I put 1 cup into fold over sandwich bags, and put those in a giant freezer bag.

Then I made pumpkin smoothies.  Forgive my terrible photography, my camera is not stellar.

But I highly recommend you make one of these.  It tastes like pumpkin pie in a milkshake.  However, it's low fat, and nutrient dense!

1 c apple juice (I prefer 100% juice, rather than something with high fructose corn syrup)
2 dollops vanilla chobani yogurt (Probably about 1/2-3/4 c)
1 frozen banana
1 c frozen pumpkin puree
1/2 tsp vanilla
dash ginger
dash cinnamon
dash allspice

Place all ingredients in blender, puree til smooth.  I did discover that the huge chunk of pumpkin takes a lot of time, I ended up having to cut mine into smaller pieces.  In the future, I will probably freeze some pumpkin in ice cube trays, ala baby food style, to avoid this problem. 

My boys loved this smoothie.  So did my husband and I.  I also loved that it is packed with vitamin A, vitamin C, protein, and potassium.  Make it, please.  Enjoy!