You have to start your own seasonal traditions and this is our new fall tradition.  For the past few years we have headed to the beautiful Rodoni Farms Pumpkin Patch on HWY 1 just north of Santa Cruz to grab a pumpkin for an “all pumpkin” dinner.

The cute girls that sell the pumpkins at Rodoni Farms eyeball the size of your pumpkins and calculate the price as you walk up to pay.  Not only do they have a way with judging size, but they know a thing or two about their produce and always advise us to buy the Jarrahdale Pumpkin, light green in color, for making any pumpkin foods.  Last year we bought one that was so huge that it took about four Tupperware containers to store all of the puree.  So this year we chose a smaller pumpkin, which made a huge difference in our prep and clean-up time.  We were able to make the entire dish and a batch of chocolate chip pumpkin cookies with the smaller size pumpkin ($4 pumpkin) and still have leftovers for another dish and second batch of cookies.

Recipe after the jump… Click to continue »