Real Food: Pumpkin

I enjoy trying make foods myself that I would typically buy in a store. I think fresh food is best for me and locally grown food (which is also typically fresh) is the best for me and the environment. I also know that I can make things with a lot less sugar, salt and preservatives and a lot more flavor.  I compare the taste, cost, and effort involved and decide if it's "worth" it to me at this time. One of my experiments this fall was with pumpkin puree.

I saw the pumpkins at Hy-Vee and couldn't resist. (my counter is a mess, don't look).

After 10 minutes of hacking away I had only managed to get this far. I decided that if I were to do this again a different knife would be in order.

I then scraped out the insides (and separated the seeds so I could roast them....yum!)

I put the two halves in a baking dish with a bit of water in the bottom. It was baked at 350 F for about 60 min, when the skin was soft enough to be punctured with a fork (hence the fork in the picture).

I scooped out the insides and put them in my trusty blender.

For size reference, this is a quart jar.

It was much better than canned pumpkin. I'm not a huge fan of pumpkin pie so I can't vouch for it there, but I made a lot of really tasty smoothies.

Was it worth it? At this point in my life, probably not.
The pumpkin cost me $2, so it was a little more expensive than buying pumpkin. In terms of health, fresh pumpkin probably has a few more vitamins/antioxidants. But canned pumpkin has very little salt and preservatives so there's not much gain there (I get more rewards for my time by cooking my own black beans). But I enjoyed the flavor so much that if I had a garden where I grew my own pumpkins, I would definitely do it.

Any suggestions as to what else I should try making?