It’s almost Halloween! I love this holiday so much that I’ve actually visited two pumpkin patches so far, and bought more pumpkins than I honestly know what to do with. Maybe it’s because this is the first fall in several years that I haven’t spent in New York City, but I am obsessed with everything fall right now. Because guys, I’m in Virginia right now, and it is pretty.
Anyway, I recently massacred a pumpkin in a very Dexter-like fashion, so I’ve been (literally, at times) up to my elbows in the Halloween mascot. When Elizabeth and I were committing said pumpkin murder, one of the things we did was save the seeds, so we would have something to snack on during the next 80 hours we were spending pureeing the monster pumpkin I bought.
So while the food processor was working overtime, we made some addictive, delicious roasted pumpkin seeds, and it couldn’t have been easier.
The fun thing about pumpkin seeds is that they can basically be any flavor you want them to be. I had had roasted pumpkin seeds once before, when a roommate made them in college, and she just put salt and pepper on them. They were fine, but they didn’t exactly knock my socks off. This time, I wanted to go crazy.
We got a gallon-sized Ziploc bag, put the rinsed and dried pumpkin seeds inside, and just started throwing things in. We started with some olive oil, then added, salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Then we just started going through all of the spices in my kitchen and adding them. I think we ended up with cumin, some chili powder, and some white pepper.
We shook it all up in the bag so the seeds were nice and coated, then put it all in a single layer on a cookie sheet. We baked at 375 and checked on them periodically. More salt and pepper was added during the baking process because you really need a lot of flavor for it to show up on the pumpkin seeds. After about a half an hour, they were crisp and roasted to perfection. They were also gone by about 8:00 that night.
Clacked by Kona Gallagher 
on Oct 30, 2009 @ 12:00 EST5EDT
