I moved in with one of my best friends last year. Before that, I was fairly boring. Fairly jealous and fairly boring. I'm always jealous when holiday season comes around and I have nobody to share my holidays with. Well, that has since changed and this is my 2nd Halloween that I've gotten to celebrate. What better way to celebrate than to carve your own pumpkin?
I had a few days to come up with a decent concept. I was thinking back to last year when I gave my pumpkin a jew nose and remembered how unsuccessful it was. So I just waited for carving day to come up with my really excellent concept. And here it is:
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| Don't mess with my pumpkin. He was in Nam. |
It was an ultra easy design and it is super classy. Even with the cigarette.
The cooking portion of today's post is dedicated to my good friend Natalie over at the Devil Wears Parsley food blog. I just want to give her a good comparison of crappy food shots compared to her wonderful and outstanding food shots. And they make me so Hungry!! I almost want to turn into the Hulk because I'm on a hunger rage, when I see those pictures.
Now after Halloween is when the real fun starts. Its time to put the seeds to good use. So here are my steps to making killer pumpkin seeds.
1. clean off your seeds. You'll want to get rid of all the guts and the sprouting seeds. Put your seeds in a collator/strainer and rinse them off pretty good. It's not a big deal if you leave little pieces of guts on the seeds, they burn off in the baking process.
2. Lay out a cookie sheet, put some paper towel down and spread seeds on paper towel and let them dry for about a day, 12 hours at least, IMO.
3. Choose what flavor you would like on your seeds. I chose to make two different kinds since I had just way too many. Half of my seeds were olive oil and salt only and the other half were a mix of olive oil, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce and salt. They were pretty bad ass.
4. Set your oven temperature to about 250 degrees. Some ovens have varying temperatures. so watch out for that. Another time factor is what you put on the seeds. my "plain seeds" took about 3/4 the time that my coated seeds took.
5. Bake for 20 min- or till whenever you think they are done. Usually done is when you can chew the shell and it pretty much disintegrates when you chew it.
6. Eat them and Enjoys! And don't use a pre used plate when you are going to take a good food shot like me!
If you are into the food network or like looking at good food, I strongly urge you all to check out The Devil Wears Parsley. It's well worth your time!!
And now, today, I shall close the show with a goofy Halloween picture with myself in it. Thanks and let me know what you guys think! Comments, as usual are very much appreciated.
Logging you in...
Natalie · 647 weeks ago
Soy/worcestershire/olive oil/salt pumpkin seeds?!?! Those sound like they'd be right up my alley. I always try to roast my seeds during Halloween, but I feel like if I don't do it right away, they will sit, and sit, and sit - probably until next Halloween. :-/ Some things just slip away.
Thanks for the shout-out man! You ROCK!!
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hardkoretom 84p · 647 weeks ago
I waited till the next day to clean mine off, so I know how it is to let em sit and sit.
It was a great combination. I think I might try garlic and parmesan cheese next time. oh, man. I'm hungry now.
Anytime! Let me know if you would like some help with any ideas for lighting. I think I'm getting better at that.
deleted7205728 94p · 647 weeks ago
So what ratio did you use for the coated seeds? I am gonna have to admit I have never baked my own seeds :p
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hardkoretom 84p · 647 weeks ago
1/3 cup of olive oil ( I used this as a sub for butter mostly )
1/8 cup of soy sauce
2 tablespoons of worcestershire sauce
and a liberal amount of salt from a shaker, maybe about 7 shakes.
I put these all in a plastic container and mixed it up with a spoon and dumped half the seeds in the container, put the lid on tight and shaked the container until they all looked like they were covered.
they looked good even before I stuck em in the oven. You'll want the oven temp to be low, around 250, because the seeds will cook too fast and probably burn before they are done on the inside. Kinda like pancakes still having batter in the middle because the pan was too hot. I got nothing but complements from all 6 people who tried them, and none of them died or got poisoned so I think they were a success. :-D
cameronohara 61p · 647 weeks ago
hardkoretom 84p · 647 weeks ago
kamo · 646 weeks ago
There you go, your project for next year is the full set of The Avengers. Actually, I might nick that myself, if only to make use of all the green pumpkins they have here in Japan.
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hardkoretom 84p · 646 weeks ago