Pumpkin Time I don't carve pumpkins anymore since my kids are older. So I decided to do something else for our homework assignment this month. I thought I would share what our class does every year with the pumpkins we grow at school. We plant our seeds in June, just before school is over for the summer. No one bothers with them at all over the summer. When Cathy and I get back in August to set up the room, we check on them and usually we have the start of something big! This year we were really blessed with a real pumpkin patch! These pumpkins are what we had this year! The real tall one is so different! It never got a crooked neck on it. It looks like a giant bowling pin. We even had one growing in a holly bush this year! This is something I look forward to each and every year since I have been there. The first year when I was told we would be doing this, all I could think of was~~ you are going to be doing this with 15 kids?!!! But it turned out so fun that I really enjoy it. The kids are still learning math (we count the seeds), reading (learning how to read a recipe), and just learning some cooking techniques. This is cutting the pumpkins in order to cook them. Taking the seeds out is a fun slimey time! Would you believe some people don't like to do this? After cutting and cleaning the seeds out, we are ready to cook it down. This is probably the hardest part of the whole process. Cathy doesn't believe it letting us use a food processor. We crank the food processor by hand! But they get to see the old fashioned way of making sauce. Here we are mixing all the ingredients. The table you see is the one I work at. The kids love making it a mess! And they do such a good job! After all the hard work, here is the finished bread. We have four loaves for them to share with their homerooms. We also fry the seeds to eat too. I had never had pumpkin seeds before this job and now I can't wait to have them every year! Don't you wish you could come to our class! Here is the recipe for Pumpkin Bread. You must double it to get 4 loaves of bread. 3 cups sugar 1 cup oil 1 lb. can pumpkin or 2 cups pumpkin sauce 4 eggs 2 tsp. salt 3 1/2 cups flour 2 tsp. baking soda 1 tsp. baking powder 1 tsp. cinnamon 1 tsp. nutmeg 2/3 cup water Grease and flour 2 loaf pans. Mix flour, baking soda, salt, baking powder and spices, set aside. Mix sugar, oil, pumpkin and eggs, beat. Add flour mixture to pumpkin mixture (a little at a time) alternating with water, mix. Pour into pans. Bake 350º for 70 minutes. Let cool 30 minutes and then take out of pan and enjoy. And the witch is from Sadie ~ who is no longer online ~