Healthy Recipe with Pumpkin:
Pumpkin, Feta, and Caramelized Onion Salad
Pumpkin Recipes
Ingredients:
½ Butternut squash in 2cm cubes
Arugula leaves
½ block of feta cheese (such as Danish feta), crumbled
One packet of pine nuts, toasted
Two medium red onions, finely chopped
Two tablespoons brown sugar
1-2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
Two tablespoons cooking oil
Olive oil and balsamic to dress
Procedure:
Caramelized Onions: Heat the oil in a skillet over low heat.
Add the onions and a good pinch of salt and cook very slowly for 15-20 minutes, occasionally turning to prevent sticking. Do not set the heat higher because the onions will burn.
When the onions are soft and have some color, add the sugar and balsamic and continue cooking the onions for another 5 minutes, turning, until they are sticky and caramelized.
Place the squash on a cookie sheet, drizzle with oil, and season with salt. Bake at 350º F for 25 minutes or until brown.
Spread the arugula leaves in a large bowl or long plate, sprinkle with the squash, feta, caramelized onions, and add the pine nuts. Drizzle with olive oil and balsamic and stir a little.
This recipe makes six servings.
Pumpkin Fun Facts
News in short: pumpkins are not vegetables; they are fruits. Cultivated in America for more than 5,000 years, they were an unknown commodity in Europe before the arrival of Christopher Columbus.
Summary
There is a possibility that if someone mentions a pumpkin, the first thing they think of is a pie. Or maybe Halloween skulls. But pumpkins are also excellent and comforting in soup, salads, stews … the list goes on, especially if you are creative.
Pumpkin is related to cucumbers and melons, and they grow in large and small varieties. Its health benefits are formidable due to its combination of vitamins, minerals, and other ingredients that make this plant such a unique food.
Pumpkins are not only good for the heart, but they also contain compounds like lycopene and carotenoids known to decrease cancer cells, inhibit diabetes, hypertension, aging marks, and prevent macular degeneration.
Pumpkin seeds make a great snack, but they’re still better in the nutritional department, similar to the rest of the fruit, providing you with a healthy alternative to the sweet snack.
Pumpkin seeds against depression
The seeds or pumpkin seeds are an excellent natural antidepressant since they contain L-tryptophan that helps regulate serotonin levels, which, when decompensated, produce depression.
In addition, the optimal production of serotonin, thanks to the tryptophan of these seeds, also contributes to the production of melatonin, known as the sleep hormone, and for this reason, it also helps us reduce anxiety be calmer and sleep better. For these reasons, if you have depression or are prone to it, if you have problems sleeping at night or have a lot of anxiety, it is recommended that you add raw pumpkin seeds to your diet daily since it is one of the healthier tryptophan foods.
Regulate Insulin with Raw Pumpkin Seeds
Controlling the insulin level in the blood is vital for people with diabetes since it can regulate blood glucose at an optimal level. Some scientific studies state that pumpkin seeds’ consumption helps raise insulin, especially in people with type 2 diabetes. Thus, a well-regulated consumption of these seeds will help provide good health for the pancreas of people with this condition.
Pumpkin seeds: properties, benefits, and contraindications – Benefits of pumpkin seeds
How to prepare pumpkin seeds
We recommend following these tips to prepare pumpkin seeds:
To take pipes or pumpkin seeds, you can choose to eat them raw, whether you keep the ones you remove from the pumpkin when you cook it or prepare it for Halloween, or because of the ones you buy in herbalists and supermarkets. It is the most recommended way to take pumpkin seeds to take full advantage of their beneficial properties for our health.
Another way to eat these seeds is to roast them or buy roasted pumpkin seeds, as they also retain many of their properties and greatly enrich dishes. In addition, they can be eaten alone or used as an accompaniment to some dishes.
Also, if you don’t like finding whole pipes on your plates, you can choose to buy them powdered or crush them before sprinkling them on your food.
Another possibility is to take you An infusion of raw pumpkin seeds.
Some ideas of dishes in which you can use pumpkin seeds are:
Salads
Accompaniment in stews.
I sprinkled in soups and creams.
Sweet desserts.
Jellies.
Infusions.
Regarding the doses of pumpkin seeds, here we give you an orientation, but keep in mind that it is appropriate to discuss it with the doctor to adjust the dose to each case:
Make a decoction of pumpkin seeds for urine infections (take 3 cups a day)
40 g per day of pumpkin seeds without shell to deworm internally. For children, the dose should help behalf.
On the other hand, if you ask yourself, “how many pumpkin seeds should I eat daily? We recommend you bear in mind that it is not advisable to exceed 10 g per day to take them regularly.
So that you always have these ecological pipes on hand, we advise you to grow your own. Follow this guide to find out when and how to plant pumpkins.
Side effects and contraindications of pumpkin seeds
Side effects of pumpkin seeds only appear if they are taken in excess and for a long continuous time. Among these side effects, we find:
Flatulence.
Belly pain (intestinal and stomach).
Weight gain
Regarding the contraindications of pumpkin seeds, the only strict one is in people with an allergy to any component of the pumpkin or the group or family of plants to which it belongs. For the rest, it must be taken into account that it is not a contraindication, but of great importance when adjusting the amount to the minimum, according to the doctor’s indication, as would happen in the case of weight gain or people who must be very careful with their insulin levels, such as diabetics or those resistant to it.
In the video below, you can see more about pumpkin seeds.