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I have been quite busy lately and as a result I have been unable to post as much as I wanted, or to participate and browse at other blogs (and there are so many great blogs out there!).
But it is not all bad news, there is actually a very good reason for my recent lack of posts (and time). I am planning a trip to Brazil, in fact we are living in 4 days!
I normally see may family and friends once a year (yes, I am lucky, I know), but Andrew has actually never been to Brazil. We both travelled a lot together and been to many interesting places, but never made it to my home place. It's very exciting, and somewhat nerve wrecking too...
But before we take off, I really wanted to participate of this month's
Weekend Wokking Event, hosted this time by
Heart and Hearth and the ingredient of the month couldn't be more appropriate: Pumpkin! Yum!

I decided to roast my pumpkin not only because it concentrates the flavours, but I can use the roasted pumpkin in a variety of dishes. For this post I pictured a simple salad made with the pumpkin pieces when they first came out of the oven. I often enjoy some warm element in my salads, slightly wilting the greens.
Roasting the pumpkin is fairly easy, once you pass the peel, seed and cut stages.
I mix the pieces of pumpkin with olive oil (bout 1 tbsp for each pound of pumpkin), one red onion, quartered and some fresh herbs ( sometimes it's sage, others rosemary, oregano) salt and pepper. I roast it at 450 degrees for 30 minutes. After that I keep checking every 5 minutes until it's just right, which for me it's still firm, but with some browned spots around the edges.
For the salad, I made a bed of arugula dressed with some olive oil and lemon juice, some shaved Parmesan and a few nuts.
I mixed the leftover roasted pumpkin with ricotta cheese in a food processor and used it in two pasta dishes:
1) a spaghetti with the creamy ricotta-pumpkin sauce
2) a pumpkin lasagna using the ricotta-pumpkin mixture, bechamel and mozzarella cheese.
I hope I will still see pumpkins at the markets by the time I come back to Seattle because I just love pumpkin. I hope you do too.