Last Minute Pumpkin seeds

If you were like us, we left pumpkin carving till the last minute and we might have had to wait until next year and I probably would have been okay with that except I LOVE PUMPKIN SEEDS.  I just hate carving pumpkins.  They are messy and it’s a really weird tradition and my pumpkin skills are not great so it’s not high on my list of things I like to do for Halloween.  I couldn’t carve an Elsa into a pumpkin if my life depended on it and I don’t know how people (my parents) carved pumpkins with us kids back in the old days with real knives without losing fingers and hands.  Even the pre-packaged-just-for-pumpkins safety knife sets can be brutally terrifying with young kids.  The hubby and I definitely feared for our limbs while monitoring the almost-independent carving process.  (But at least the guys could actually do more of the carving this year.  I like that I can finally let the kids take credit for the triangle-eyed-not-too-fancy pumpkins on our porch.)

Thankfully my husband was also brilliant enough to snap a picture in a rare moment when I wasn’t frantically screaming in terror and it was easy enough to crop most of the laundry and utter disorder of my living room out of this picture.  Aren’t these the memories I want when I look through my albums when the kids get too big to do this anymore?

So here’s the best part.  I think we finally figured out how to make REALLY GOOD PUMPKIN SEEDS.

The boys cleaned the pumpkin goop out into bowls and I sorted out the seeds.  Then I rinsed them and put them on parchment paper on cookie sheets.  The terror had stopped at this point as most of the cutting was over and I could actually concentrate on the seeds and set a timer when I put them in the oven.

I tossed them in oil and salt (use your eyeballs to figure out how much you want to use, but maybe about a tablespoon of oil and enough salt to dust the seeds a little less than the salt on restaurant french fries) and baked them at 300 degrees for 30 minutes.

Then I took them out, moved them around a bit, added some smoked paprika and toasted them for 30 minutes more.

And the seeds turned out.  They were salty and smoky and yes they might have looked better in an orange or black bowl, but the blue bowl is one of the bowls I’ve been making in my pottery class.  I’m trying to embrace my creative side and make things this year, but my pottery skills are probably on par with my pumpkin carving skills and the bottom of the bowl is super ugly so I wanted to show it off when it had something in it.

So thank you to my brave mom and dad because I totally made this little blue bowl on a pottery wheel all by myself because I survived cutting pumpkins in the 80’s in the pre-safety knife days with all my limbs intact and I can’t believe how fearless you were for letting me do it.

And I hope you all have a Happy Halloween!  I can’t wait to see all the costumes and Halloween fun.  (Costumes and candy are definitely my favorite parts of this holiday!)  Happy Haunting!

Terumi

Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys.  She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live.  She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)