bake off

When we drove by a pumpkin patch on the way to my parents house last Saturday morning and saw a huge "FREE PUMPKINS" sign, I knew that we'd be back. You see, my entire family love love LOVES pumpkin seeds... and free stuff... and with both Jord and Kiji in town, I knew an evening of separating pumpkin seeds from pumpkin junk was in our immediate future.

A couple hours later, Keje and I hauled eight (yes eight) pumpkins toward the open trunk of Jord's car (mom already had four pumpkins on her porch ready to be commandeered for seeds). I think the original plan was to actually carve these pumpkins, but carving twelve pumpkins when there are only five of you is too overwhelming. So instead of creating jack o' lantern faces and spooky scenes, at 9:30 at night (after we'd emptied the first twelve pumpkins), Kedron and I drove back to the now-dark pumpkin field to collect seven more pumpkins. Yep, if you're keeping track, we're up to nineteen pumpkins now. A mere hour later, the seeds of all aforementioned pumpkins were rinsed and spread out onto cookie sheets to air out over night.

The real fun began Sunday afternoon when we decided to use the 20+ cups of pumpkin seeds in a bake off... not sister vs. sister (we all make pumpkin seeds the same way, learned from mom, of course), but recipe vs. recipe. We scoured recipezaar for three worthy recipes and began mixing and spicing and baking.

The results? The recipe for pumpkin pie pumpkin seeds was the far and away winner. We halved the sugar (not on purpose, we didn't quadruple correctly) and it turned out great- the perfect salty/sweet treat. The spicy garlic seeds also were amazing... And the worchestershire seeds were pretty good (they're probably great, just in comparison to the other two recipes not as fabulous). We also made some the good ol' fashioned way with salt. What fun! I think this should become our day-after-Halloween family tradition!