Pumpkin Patch Dinner

Gianna won’t let Halloween die. Well, not the actual holiday (she stopped walking around in her pirate costume in November), but she keeps talking about the Jack-o-Lantern she helped carve. So given her love of pumpkins, I decided to make some edible ones for dinner. 

I got the idea from a recipe that encouraged creative use of leftovers. The recipe was for spinach rice balls and it required mixing leftover rice with an egg and cheese and adding frozen spinach, shaping into small balls and baking. I knew spinach was not going to fly, so I decided to replace it with a butternut squash. As with the sneaky sauce, the orange hue was going to be a winner!

While Gianna napped, I got to work. Quick and easy, I dumped everything into a bowl and 30 minutes later I had 25 mini-pumpkins that I was going to have Gianna put into a pumpkin patch aka bed of lettuce and shredded carrots.

She awoke up for the task, quickly got out her apron and began helping me wash the lettuce. After the salad was done, we placed it in a deep bowl and ‘planted’ three mini pumpkins in the patch. When it was time for dinner, I pulled out our masterpiece and said, “Dinner is served!”

Gianna’s response: “Mommy, we can’t eat them now, we have to watch them grow.”

We both had frozen pizza for dinner. –Nicole Denis