It's Pumpkin Season!

During October and November every year, I feel like I am entitled to eat everything pumpkin flavored. I buy 1-2 cans of pumpkin puree every week I go grocery shopping. This ensures I have enough to get through the fall season and enough to last as long as possible the rest of the year. Yes, I know you can get it throughout the year, but I seem to think the only feasible time to buy it is during the fall.

Back in my high school and college days, I would get pumpkin spice lattes as many times as I could while they were on the menu at coffee shops. It was inevitable every Thanksgiving break my sister and I would make at least one trip (if not more) to get one. As a dietetics student at that time I knew these were not a healthy choice but I would turn my head the other way and ignore it. Now I limit myself and get one a season. This allows for me to get that fix without over doing it. That leaves the rest of the pumpkin season to be filled up with healthy pumpkin recipes.

This year I have been working on sampling different pumpkin recipes and experimenting with my own versions. My favorite I found was a recipe for pumpkin spice trail mix. While looking it over I decided to make it more of a granola and adjust some ingredients to make it less sweet and bring out the pumpkin more! I loved mixing up the nuts and having the pumpkin seeds to get a different part of the pumpkin. My next goal is to work on Christmas variations to bring in those flavors. (Yay gingerbread!)

I also have started making my own nut butters. I started with a pumpkin spice almond butter. Again, I saw a recipe and switched up some ingredients. I lowered the amount of sweetener and added in other flavors to enhance the butter. This is another recipe I am hoping to experiment more with over the next few weeks to make different varieties, so be on the lookout for my next blog post.

Here is the recipe for my pumpkin spice granola. Hope you enjoy!

1/4 cup sugar (could decrease this by half)

1 teaspoon cinnamon

2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice

3 cups unsalted nuts (I used almonds, walnuts, and pecans)

1 cup pumpkin seeds

1 cup oatmeal

1/2 cup pumpkin puree

1-2 tablespoons water

Mix spices and sugar. Mix together nuts, seeds, and oatmeal. Mix wet ingredients and pour over nut mixture. Toss in spice mix. Spread on baking sheets and cook for 30 minutes at 250, turning halfway through time.

Throw some in a bag for a quick snack or put it over Greek yogurt to refuel after a workout.