For me, salads were always something for hot summer days. You know the cold, crispy green stuff with some vegetables, maybe chicken which flatters your bikini figure and cools you down in tropical weather. But I realized salads don’t always have to be cold and meant for summer light meal. And roasted pumpkin salad is exactly the case. Pumpkin has merely this something about autumn. And the roasted pumpkin gives the otherwise raw salad a unique taste that is hard to describe, so I recommend trying.
So do you have your Halloween costumes ready? I have been to the USA during this festival only once when I was a kid. I won’t lie I loved it 🙂 Who wouldn’t, at the end of the evening my plastic pumpkin was full of candies and chocolates. I guess I can speak about luck, that there was none low carb at that time. I would never let my kids eat so many sweets as I could years ago. And I mean, I don’t blame my parents, not a little bit.
They just didn’t have the information we have nowadays. But I don’t like questions from people about why am I destroying childhood of my kids. Like really? Is a good childhood classified on the number of sweets I give to my children? I don’t think so. And there are so many options to make healthy desserts. Even out of a pumpkin. Maybe this time when you’re hollowing out the pumpkin for decoration, you can choose one eatable and give it a try.
For the roasted pumpkin salad, you can use any pumpkin. Actually, there is not a big offer of pumpkins here in Thailand. I use to shop one, which looks like Hokkaido pumpkin, but I have to peel it. (Hokkaido is the only pumpkin you don’t have to peel, the shell softens during the cooking ).
Why you should eat Pumpkin
Pumpkin also has many benefits for our health. It consists out of antioxidants which strengthens our immunity and gives us energy, or beta-carotene, which supports our heart. It also contains many other vitamins, such as A, C or fiber. Pumpkin composes out of 90% water, so it helps while thirsty, and it helps to clean our kidney. If your goal is to reduce weight or you want to be low carb for the health benefit reasons, the pumpkin will be your good servant.
If your pumpkin wasn’t hollowed out before bought, so it still includes the pumpkin seeds, don’t throw them away! You can make a great snack out of them. Clean the seeds from fiber and spread them over a tray. Put a few good lugs olive oil over the seeds and sprinkle them with salt and other spices you like. Mix it well, so all the seeds are coated equally. Bake at 180°C/350°F around 10 minutes. You can store the seeds in an airtight container if you don’t serve them immediately.
