Saturday, November 01, 2008

My Halloween Treat

Halloween was another busy and fun day this year.

I usually go all out with the decorations; my shopping strategy of picking up everything on clearance the day after celebrations actually worked --- I remembered where I had packed it! This year I only managed to get a spider balloon up, some of the faux webbing, and the usual stickers on the door. The man did the honours this year with the pumpkin carving.

It was successful this year. Given the strange weather of the past few days, it seemed like a dream that it warmed up to give us one of the most lovely evenings in recent memory. The kids got dressed up, and we went over to our friends for a casual dinner before they headed out en masse for trick-or-treating. I headed home to pass out the treats.

In between doorbell rings, I managed to clean up the halloween prep mess in the kitchen. The critical thing for me was to ensure that every seed salvageable from that pumpkin would be saved.

You see, I'm the proud daughter of a professional seed and nut eater. Any image I have of my Dad watching television includes a bag of snacks of the nut variety sitting right there with him.

Childhood Halloween memories for me include the cleaning and roasting of freshly salted pumpkin seeds. While we would be out trick-or-treating with my Dad, my mother would be at home roasting the pumpkin seeds. I looked forward to those salty snacks almost as much as I did the sweet loot at the end of every Halloween night.

So while my kids were out with their friends and their Dad, I prepared the seeds.

And after they returned home, surveyed their treasures, had a couple of treats before getting into bed, I set to work on making my treat.

Spread out on an oiled pan, and salted liberally, popped into the oven at 325 degrees to bake for about 25 minutes. And voila. But by this time the man had decided to hit the sack as well.

Too bad.

Now it's just me, my crunchy pumpkin seeds and the TV. Won't my Daddy be so proud of me?

7 comments:

Gina said...

I'm eating pumpkin seeds right now too. How do you salt yours?

Rima said...

Ha! Both my parents are professional seed and nut eaters, so I totally know what you're talking about!

Glad you had a good Halloween and strong work on remembering where you put the clearance items :)

Badness Jones said...

MMM! I'm the only one in our house that likes the pumpkin seeds, and last year I found a recipe for making them sweet and spiced....so yummy! And MINE! ALL MINE!!!

Glad you had a good Hallowe'en!

dkuroiwa said...

Ooh!! I did pumpkin seeds tonight too!! I wasn't really sure how to do them so I just put them on a pan with some olive oil...and I thought I had put them on to bake, but had broiled them instead...they turned out okay!! A bit crunchier than I expected, but...crunch is good!! I salted them with some homemade "crazy salt"....yum yum yummy!!!
And I bought a bunch of stuff on "clearance" the other day for next year!!! Yeah for being frugal!!

Anonymous said...

I love pumpkin seeds - seriously the only reason to get a pumpkin.

I was so annoyed when Stewart went looking for pumpkin seed recipes online th eother night and wanted to make spiced chilli pumpkin seeds.

I was all like WTF??? WHY would you mess with good old oil and salt?

Thankfully he left them alone. But now my 2 year old wants to eat them all the time - doesn't he get that Mommy is cranky and having a baby and just wants her cookie sheet of pumpkin seeds?????? HA!

April said...

Mmmm...pumpkin seeds! And control of the remote? Sounds perfect.

Cherry said...

My mom burned the pumpkin seeds so many times that I only have vague memories of good salty ones that weren't bitter and burned. sigh.

My friend makes some tasty sugared and spiced ones. Not quite so nostalgic as salt and oil, but that salty sweet thing turned out pretty good. And thankfully, not burned.

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