Place the pumpkins cut side down on a baking sheet lined with foil. Most people who make their own pumpkin puree apparently use a pressure cooker. Since I don't have a pressure cooker, I had to use the oven to roast the pumpkins. Put the pan in a preheated 350° oven and bake for 1 hour. The pumpkins are done when a knife easily penetrates the pumpkin.

These are the pumpkin seeds after I cleaned off all the gunk. We are going to save some to try to plant next year and I'm researching recipes for making flavored pumpkin seeds.

When the pumpkins come out of the oven, let them cool a little bit and then scrape out the insides into a bowl. The picture above is what they looked like after I scraped out all the pulp.

Using either a food processor or a mixer, mix the pumpkin until it is pureed.

We got about 4 cups of pumpkin puree out of one pumpkin. I kept one bag out and froze the other three. From what I've read, pumpkin can't be canned at home, it has to be frozen. I currently have a pumpkin bread baking in the oven and I'll let you know how it goes after James tests it...you know I don't eat pumpkin!

The pumpkin cost $1.99 and we spent about 30 minutes of our time working on it. It is probably less expensive to just buy the cans if you factor in the time cost, but to me it is worth it to have something natural in a food I'm giving James.