Saturday, October 3, 2009

Pumpkin!


Abigail spent the last week dropping hints that she'd like to carve a pumpkin. It finally occurred to me that she had never done this. Poor girl! Somehow our youngest misses out on things. We quit carving pumpkins years ago when it seemed like they rotted too quickly on the front porch and went with pretty little gourds instead.

Tonight was her night. She didn't realize that the insides would be as stringy and messy as they are, nor that the pumpkin would be so difficult to cut, and enlisted her daddy and brother to help her. It was my job to roast the seeds.

We lit the pumpkin, dimmed the lights, and watched The Music Man. "Now this is cozy," she said.


Roasted Pumpkin Seeds


One pumpkin

Salt

Olive oil


1 Cut open the pumpkin and use a spoon to scoop out the insides. Separate the seeds from the stringy core. Rinse the seeds.

2 Preheat oven to 400°F. In a saucepan, add the seeds to water, about 2 cups of water to every half cup of seeds. Add a tablespoon of salt for every two cups of water. Bring to a boil. Let simmer for 10 minutes. Drain.

3 Spread about a tablespoon of olive oil over the bottom of a roasting pan or cookie sheet. Spread the seeds out over the pan, in a thin layer. Bake on the top rack until the seeds begin to brown, 10-20 minutes. When browned to your liking, remove from the oven and let the seeds cool before eating.



7 comments:

Tracy said...

This is something that we just don't do over here. Firstly, I don't think I've ever seen those kinds of pumpkins...and secondly, you guys do it around the time of Halloween ~ which for us, is the middle of Spring. It just doesn't seem to fit LOL.

Glad she got to fulfill a dream.

Tracy said...

We don't celebrate Halloween in our family, Tracy. You'll notice our pumpkin has leaves and acorns carved into it for fall. I saw some beautiful white pumpkins yesterday. They'd be cute with carved flowers in them, but I doubt you'll find a pumpkin in the spring!

Anonymous said...

Thank you for sharing how to roast the pumpkin seeds. I've tried it before but didn't realize that I should boil them first. I'll try that method-maybe it will improve the taste. :-)
I do like the acorns and leaves-I let our older children carve pumpkins but haven't ever done it with our younger daughters (like you said-the youngest usually miss out on some things). I don't usually get pumpkins until after Halloween though-for one, they're cheaper, but also because we are like you and don't celebrate Halloween and didn't want to send a conflicting message to our kids or our neighbors-I suppose if you live in an area with limited availability that it might be hard to wait though. In our area, we have pumpkins available all the way until Thanksgiving. :-)

Deanna Rabe - Creekside Cottage Blog said...

Tracy,

We don't celebrate Halloween either. We usually don't carve the pumpkins but last year I wanted to do our address, so I let the little girls do them. They had so much fun! They weren't sure about the pumpkins seeds but I knew they would love them. They did.

We will do a few this when we get back from our trip. I am so impressed with the one your family did! It is lovely!

I love to see the glow through the openings!

Kristy said...

So glad to see there are other families that do not celebrate Halloween. Sometimes, I feel we are one of the only ones around here. Our church celebrates the Reformation during that time, so we are usually in church on Halloween night. It has completely taken the emphasis off of Halloween and onto the Lord.

Your pumpkin is adorable. And with the pumpkin seeds, and Music Man, one of our favorites, I can hear my daughter saying just about the same comment as Abigail. She used to always say she was "clean and cozy" in her pj's after bathtime. :) Hope we can get to the pumpkin farm soon and try our hand in decorating a fall pumpkin.

Tracy said...

Yes I did notice your leaves and acorns and much prefer those to scary faces!

We don't do Halloween. Never have ~ it's not part of Aussie culture, besides anything to do with faith. It's only something that is getting picked up more in the last few years.

~~Deby said...

Beautiful...love pumpkin seeds...
and we don't do Halloween either...
nope...nada...
Deby