8 Days of Pumpkin

I did it! My pumpkin dog treat project was more budget than lazy, and it took eight days to do it, but I turned our three Halloween pumpkins into dried pumpkin dog treats and pumpkin powder to mix into Lacey's food.

Three Pumpkins Before

Three Pumpkins After

It is hard to believe that three big pumpkins dehydrated to four mason jars. Although it is nice to not to have a ton of jars to store since I don't have a lot of storage space in my kitchen.

This project took so long because I had to do it bit by bit. I spent a Saturday baking the pumpkins and let them cool overnight. I went to town for four hours chopping the baked pumpkins the following day and loaded my dehydrator with the first batch of pumpkin to dehydrate overnight. The following day and every day after, I unloaded dehydrated pumpkin from the dehydrator in the morning and loaded it with fresh pumpkin later in the day to dehydrate overnight. Rinse. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Lacey sat by my side every day while I worked. I know it is because she loves me and had nothing to do with Lacey hoping pumpkin will fall onto the kitchen floor.

 Actually, it has EVERYTHING to do with hoping pumpkin falls onto the floor!

I'm keeping two jars of dried pumpkin flakes to use as pumpkin dog treats. The rest of the dried pumpkin I ran through the blender. That way I can mix the powder into Lacey's kibble as a training aid. 

If I want to bake Lacey treats with pumpkin puree, I can rehydrate the dehydrated pumpkin by adding two cups of water to a half a cup of dried pumpkin to make 2 cups of pumpkin puree.

While all of this work was for Lacey, Husband and I got to enjoy a bit of fresh pumpkin too. I used the seeds to make baked pumpkin seed snacks.

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