What a great way to incorporate pumpkin in your life! photo courtesy Steve Henderson Fine Art.

With Thanksgiving kicking off the holiday season this week, it’s a given that this week’s recipe will involve pumpkin.

Lucky you — I originally was going to give you just one recipe — that for Pumpkin Pancakes — but as that only uses part of a 15 ounce can of pumpkin and you’d be standing at the kitchen counters, disconsolately wondering what to do with the rest of this stuff, I’m adding a bonus recipe for Pumpkin Ice Cream.

By the way, keep an eye out in the stores during December for cans of pumpkin. For some reason, people associate pumpkin pie exclusively with Thanksgiving, and after that holiday, the poor product languishes on the shelves, dreaming about next year. I walked into a grocery store once and found cans and cans of pumpkin, which lasts pretty much forever, for 50 cents each, so I snatched up the whole two boxes.

In addition to pie, pancakes, and ice cream, pumpkin makes super soup (really!), muffins, and yeast breads. Highly nutritious, it adds a moist, soft texture to baked products, and it’s fairly mild in flavor, so even fussy people may not know when you’ve slipped it in.

Pumpkin Pancakes — serves 4

Ingredients:

3 Tablespoons coconut oil (you can use olive oil or butter instead;

Make fine art a part of your life — Steve Henderson offers an assortment of licensed, affordable art prints that fit every budget.

the coconut oil, which tends to be hard at room temperature despite its name, adds a nummy-num flavor)

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup pumpkin, from the can, or mashed from the actual pumpkin

1 egg

2 teaspoons vanilla (I love this stuff — it makes everything it touches dreamy)

1 1/2 cup preferably whole grain flour (I used two ancient grains, 1/2 cup of Kamut flour and 1 cup of spelt)

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup milk

1 Tablespoon lemon juice

Cream the sugar and coconut oil together; add the egg and vanilla until the whole mixture is well blended.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add half the flour mixture to the oil/sugar/egg mixture, then half the milk, then the other half of the flour mixture, then the rest of the milk. Stir until well mixed but don’t be violent about it. You should have a batter with a consistence slightly thicker than whipping cream. Add more flour or more liquid to adjust.

Bake on a griddle or heated frying pan at medium high heat and just flip once.

These taste great with homemade syrup as well as (I hesitate to mention this because it’s sounds nutritionally naughty) Nutella. But then again, what doesn’t taste good with Nutella?

Santa time is coming up! Original oil paintings, signed limited edition prints, and posters by Steve Henderson.

Pumpkin Ice Cream

This is your bonus recipe, to use up the rest of the 15 ounce can of pumpkin, so I don’t have a picture, but the product pretty much looks like ice cream.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups whole milk

1 cup pureed pumpkin

1 cup sugar

1 Tablespoon vanilla

1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream

1/2 cup dark chocolate, chopped

Mix the pumpkin and sugar together until well blended. Whisk in the whole milk and vanilla until the sugar is fully incorporated and dissolved. Gently stir in the whipped cream and process the whole thing in your ice cream maker. Add the chocolate in the last five minutes of processing.

Freeze for 2 hours before serving, or eat it right away, if you don’t mind a softer serve.

For more complete instructions on making ice cream, see my recipe, Fast, Easy Chocolate Chip Ice Cream. You can enjoy all my recipes in my Recipe section.

Have a lovely Thanksgiving with your family and friends. Don’t stress out about Black Friday, and remember the upcoming holiday season is a time of joy, peace, and thankfulness. Check out Steve Henderson’s YouTube Santa videos and share them with your family and friends.

Speaking of stressing out, we generally do this about money, and the first gift you purchase for Christmas may be for yourself — my book, Live Happily on Less (paperback, now on a super sale at Amazon; Kindle/digital outrageously inexpensive at $5.99).  Read it before you get heavily into shopping, and debt.

Consider buying fine art for yourself or others this season — Steve Henderson, my Norwegian Artist, creates original paintings for reasonable, reachable prices, and because he believes that fine art belongs in the homes of everyone, not just billionaires and politicians, he provides a line of licensed art prints well within the reach of many budgets.

If you’re a Christian, or curious about Christianity, I invite you to join me at my column, Commonsense Christianity, at BeliefNet.