Favorite Pumpkin and Squash Recipes

Rainy fall weather can be cozy for everyone. It’s also a great time to take advantage of the fall harvest and spend a cozy Sunday in the kitchen, cooking up a storm with football games in the background. Since the fall harvest usually brings pumpkin and squash, we’d like to share with you.

The key to tasty pumpkin dishes is the type of pumpkin you use. There’s a difference in the type of pumpkin you carve and the type of pumpkin you cook. If you’re picking a pumpkin for cooking, be sure to choose a pumpkin that’s smaller – around 4-8 pounds. A smaller pumpkin tends to have more sugar content and would be sweeter.

Pumpkin Pie
This recipe is from Taste of Home. We tried it ourselves and the results were delicious!

Here’s what you need:

1 Medium pumpkin, pastry pie crust, 2 eggs, ¾ C. packed brown sugar, 1 tsp cinnamon, ½ tsp salt, ½ tsp cloves, 1 C 2% milk.
We found that when we first tried this, the hardest part was making sure the pumpkin pie cooked thoroughly without burning the crust. A simple fix to this was lining the crust with foil. Another modification that you might consider is to use evaporated milk instead of 2%. We thought that the 2% milk worked just fine.

You can find the entire recipe at Taste of Home http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/fresh-pumpkin-pie

Acorn Squash Chili
Get out the crock pot for this one. What’s great about this dish is that you can be really creative with it – you can make vegetarian or meat versions of this chili, adjust the spices and really make it your own. It’s perfect for a Sunday afternoon while you’re watching football.

Here’s what you need for the vegetarian version:

1 Acorn squash, cut and cubed; 1 diced onion, 1 28 oz can crushed tomatoes; 1 15 oz. can kidney beans; 1 15 oz. can black beans, 2 tsp cumin, 2 tsp chili powder, 1 tsp black pepper, 1 cup of corn (fresh, frozen or canned).

So here’s the hard part – throw everything into the crock pot and let simmer for 3 hours. Personally, we like to let it go on low for 6-8 hours and adjust the spices along the way. Sometimes, we’ll add more cumin and chili powder. The great thing about this recipe is that you really can make it your own and be as creative as you want.

Let us know how creative you decide to be with these recipes and feel free to share your own favorites!

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