Cooking Baking Night 10/29/12

Tonight was Cookie Baking Night. In attendance this evening: Emily, Ethan, and Carissa. Tonight was filled with activity (our busiest Cookie Baking Night yet), and I captured a few of those activities in pictures.

A week ago, Dad-Larry gave me a baking pumpkin that one of his coworkers had given him. I thought baking it with the Cookie Baking Gang would be a fun activity. At the beginning of our time together, I asked the kids if they knew where pumpkin pie came from or how it was made. They had no idea. Emily guessed that it might come from the "guts" of the pumpkin. I thought I would at least get a few guesses that involved "it comes from a can", but nothing. I explained that it comes from a pumpkin. They marveled at this concept.  So, here's what we did with our lovely baking pumpkin.

                                  First, we cut it in half.

Then we scraped out the seeds and stringy membranes, the "guts" as the children called it (much like carving a pumpkin). This process took quite awhile. 

Then we cut up the pumpkin and placed it in two 9 x 13 pans with about a cup of water each. We covered it with aluminum foil and placed it in the oven at 350 degrees for about an hour.

Not pictured here, but we also cleaned the pumpkin seeds and baked them. To the seeds we added: 3 Tbls melted butter, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp sugar, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp allspice, and 1/4 tsp nutmeg. We baked them in a 300 degree oven for about 25 minutes. They were quite tasty.

Ahhh, the fruit (literally) of our labors: a bowl full of pumpkin that we will use next time to make pumpkin bars and pumpkin pie. 

The kids also helped me prepare my Halloween treats for Wednesday evening. In my evangelism efforts this year, I decided to use our church business card that has a good gospel message on the back of it (I also have optical illusion tracts and "Why Christianity?" DVDs for the older trick-or-treaters). The kids taped the business cards to the back of the candy I had purchased (I like to go big). As we prepared the candy, we talked about the importance of sharing the gospel with other people (even trick-or-treaters), and we talked about why we do that (so others can know about Jesus). It was a good conversation around Halloween candy.

As usual, a fun time was had by all.