One of my favourite family traditions in autumn is pumpkin picking. It’s a young tradition for us as we started only last year. We had found out about this place called Kurpitsakauppa.com. Every year they welcome visitors to their small pumpkin patch for a single weekend and allow them to pick pumpkins. In addition, they serve delicious pumpkin creamy soup, sausages and marshmallows to roast on an open fire, and freshly baked cinnamon buns.

I am not aware of other farms allowing pumpkin picking in the capital area, but I suspect we’ll see more in the future. The above mentioned place gets more popular year after year, to the point that this year pumpkins were all picked before the end of the first day!
We were blessed with a sunny and chilly day. The kids enjoyed running in the patch to find their favourite pumpkins, green or orange, big or small.

One aspect I love of this place is all the languages you hear spoken. Clearly it’s a place appreciated by multicultural families. Autumn visits to pumpkin patches are an American tradition, probably not yet popular among native Finns.

Pumpkins are usually ripe at the end of September here in Finland, so unfortunately they do not last until Halloween – last year we tried, but they didn’t make it. So this year we set out to freeze several single portions to enjoy pumpkin throughout the cold season. We love to use it in risotto (find my recipe here), pumpkin creamy soup, and this year we plan to try home-made pumpkin ravioli! While we still have to find a use for the soft pulp (suggestions?), we love to keep the seeds and eat them as a snack. This year I learned you can toast them in the microwave.

This is how you can prepare them:

• Pick the pumpkin seeds away from the pulp and wash them;
• place them on a cloth and dry most of the water away;
• when they are damp and not wet anymore, place them in a bowl and add salt to your taste, then mix. The salt will stick to the seeds if they are damp;
• spread some seeds on a plate and place it in the microwave. I have used the maximum temperature and cooked them for about 4 minutes. Some batches took longer and I tested if they were ready by tasting.

Enjoy your salted pumpkin seeds as a fingerfood snack! See you next year at the pumpkin patch.