Really more of an addiction –– a pumpkin addiction. I have been eating pumpkin almost nonstop for basically an entire month, so much so that I’ve actually had concerns about if it’s possible to eat too much pumpkin? I actually googled this the other day, I’m that pathetic. Pumpkin does make everything better though so how can you blame me?
All of these pumpkin meals have meant a lot of experimentation on my part, and that’s resulted in everything from pumpkin oatmeal casserole for breakfast to a simple creamy pumpkin soup. In the interest of my sanity and my time, I’m only going to share the pumpkin recipes I have liked the most so far.
Pumpkin Alfredo
This was by far my favorite recipe of everything I made. I haven’t perfected it though, so I don’t have firm measurements on what I used, so I’m just going to guesstimate right here.
I used one package of gluten free pasta noodles, the brown rice kind. In retrospect I would have used the quinoa pasta noodles instead, I find them to be a bit less sticky. I also served this sauce over some lightly sautéed greens, I used spinach but kale or collard greens would work here as well. I just used spinach because it was what I had in my fridge. For the sauce I took about 3 tbsp of olive oil and combined with 2 tbsp of flour, stirred it up until it thickened a bit and then added 3-4 large cloves of minced garlic (I like a lot of garlic). At this point you will need to stir continuously because the mixture can burn very easily. Once it thickens and turns a golden color you can slowly add milk to the mixture. I used cup of almond milk and a half a cup of soy milk, both unsweetened. Stir until everything is evenly mixed, and then bring it to a boil. Lower the heat to a simmer and stir continuously until the mixture thickens. Now I added probably half a can of pumpkin puree and a tablespoon of dijon mustard, mixing in everything evenly. Here is where it comes down to personal preference. I like a bit of a thicker Alfredo sauce, but I still thinned this out with several tablespoons of cold water. If you like a thinner sauce you may be better off adding less pumpkin. Like I said, not perfected.
Meaty Pumpkin Coconut Chili
- Two packages of some kind of veggie ground –– I think I used smart ground here
- Two cans of kidney beans, I used one white and one red
- two cans of petite diced tomatoes
- 1 yellow onion, diced
- 1 red pepper, diced
- 1 can of water to thin the mixture
- half a can of pumpkin puree
- 1 can of full fat coconut milk (the mini cans, like 4oz)
- For spices I did a dash of pumpkin pie spice, a gracious plenty of chili powder, some hot sauce, a dash of cayenne, a dash of paprika and of course a pinch of brown sugar
- several cloves of minced garlic
The great thing about chili is that it is pretty straight forward and hard to screw up. All I did was sautéed the garlic in a bit of olive oil, then I added the chopped onion and cooked it until it was translucent, then I added the veggie crumbles. My veggie crumbles were pretty frozen so I had to break them apart and cook them for about 10 minutes before adding the peppers and the tomatoes and kidney beans Let this simmer for a few minutes and than I basically added everything else. You can add more or less pumpkin puree depending on how strong of a pumpkin flavor you want, but it’s worth noting that the more pumpkin puree you add the thicker the chili will become, so it may need thinned some.
Then of course was some pumpkin soup served over quinoa. I’m just going to tease with this recipe for now, because it was my least favorite pumpkin experimentation of the ones I have posted. Once I have a more perfected version the recipe will be all over this blog. I will at least say that my second time around with this soup I used a combination of pumpkin, sweet potato, carrots, cashews and coconut milk as my base.
thesunkistexplorer 