Apple Butter, Pumpkin Puree & Pumpkin Seeds

After Sunday's Orchard trip we had a 1/2 Bushel of apples.  That means we have more than enough to make some Apple Butter!!!  If you have a crock pot it's the easiest thing in the world to make.  Well, maybe not THE EASIEST but it it is easy.

All I did was use my apple slicer/corer to cut up an assortment of the apples and filled my crockpot. 

Then I added the lid and put it on high for about 4 hours - stirring twice and adding cinnamon about halfway through.

After 4 hours the apples were pretty broken down and it was EASY to smooth them out with the immersion blender.  Then I just turned the heat off and let it cool with the lid off.

At that point it was just as thick as I like it.  If you like yours thicker then just leave it on low with the lid off.

See, it pretty much sticks to the spoon!  Just right. :)

Starting off with a full crockpot of apples I got 3 Bell Jars worth of "butter".  Two went in the freezer.

The other went in the fridge and I'm doing my best to keep my hands off it. :)

We also got a pie pumpkin at the orchard so I set about cooking that up too!

 It's pretty much as straight forward as the apple butter.

Cut in half...

Scoop out (and save) seeds...

Place face down in a dish with about a 1/4" of water & bake at 350 for about 45 minutes....

Until it's easy to pierce with a fork...

Remove from oven & dish and let cool so you don't burn yourself. :)

Once cool, scoop out the flesh and put in a blender... 

And then blend it until it's as smooth as you like it. 

Jar it and freeze what you'd like. :)

The seeds were cleaned up...

I poured the seeds into a pan of salted water and threw away the pulp that was removed.

The water was brought to a boil and the seeds simmered for about 10 minutes.  Then I drained them and spread them on a cookie sheet, sprayed them with some Olive Oil and a light salting and baked them at 350 for 10 minutes, gave them a stir and baked them for another 10 - until they were nice and crispy, but not burnt.

Yum...

As for the actual meals yesterday, I had a lot of salad - out of pure laziness.  :)

Into a bowl I dumped some spinach, tomato, red pepper, carrots, avocado chickpeas, broccoli, nutritional yeast, ground flax seed and balsamic vinaigrette.

For dinner I had almost the exact same salad along with corn on the cob and some sweet potato chips.

 And for dessert a slice of the pumpkin roll we bought at the Orchard. :)