Pumpkin: Incorporate it into your diet this fall
Explore some easy ideas for cooking pumpkins.
It’s pumpkin time! Pumpkins are a favorite this time of the year, whether you are going to make a jack-o-lantern or a pumpkin pie. Pumpkins can be used in other types of recipes, too. Pumpkin is a good source of Vitamin A; a one-cup serving of pumpkin offers 500 mg of potassium as well as other valuable nutrients.
Here are a couple of pumpkin recipes to add to your recipe files:
Toasted
Pumpkin Seeds
Carve
pumpkin and remove seeds. Clean the seeds, separating from the pulpy fibers
form the pumpkin, rinse with cold water and dry on a paper towel. Place the dry
seeds on a shallow baking pan. Dot the seeds with a small amount of margarine
or olive oil. Sprinkle with salt or other seasoning. Bake in oven at 350
degrees Fahrenheit for 20 to 30 minutes, until browned. Stir occasionally. Cool
before eating.
Stuffed Baked
Pumpkin
Use
one small pumpkin with its top cut off. Clean out the seeds and stringy fibers
and rinse well. Brown 2 pounds of ground beef and drain well. Add ½ cup onion
chopped, ½ cup celery chopped and ½ chopped green peppers to drained ground
beef in pan and cook until vegetables are softened. Add a small amount of soy
sauce, one small can of mushrooms, two tablespoons of brown sugar, one can of
reduced fat cream of chicken soup and two cups of cooked rice. Mix and put into
the pumpkin. Place filled pumpkin on a baking pan and cook in oven at 375
degrees Fahrenheit until the temperature in the center is 165 F (about 1 hour).
For other low cost pumpkins recipes, visit the Recipe Finder Cookbook on the United States Department of Agriculture’s website.