Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

I love Halloween! An excuse to get creative and have stockpiles of candy in the home? Sign me up! This year, I decided to try new things.

Instead of my usual PG costume choice (most recently Little Red Riding Hood, Audrey Hepburn, & Wilma Flintstone), I wanted to play with costume makeup and go scarier. I decided to be Jigsaw from those ridiculously twisted Saw movies. Creepy, right?? I had a very glamorous image in mind of mixing scary with sexy, complete with a dramatic smoky eye. My makeup guru, Sarah, did a spooky look for her blog HERE that I was using as partial inspiration. But that went down the drain when I grabbed a cheap tube of white face paint. I have never done Halloween makeup before and I learned an important lesson: you get what you pay for. My white face was stiff, cracked, uncomfortable, and not at all pretty. Real eyeshadows wouldn't blend with it, so I had to stick to costume makeup for the entire look. I wiped it all off and reapplied three times before I ran out of time and gave up. So no, you don't get a picture of that costume. But it was fun and different!

My second new Halloween decision was to carve something unique and different into my pumpkin instead of sticking with the usual stencils of bats and jack-o-lantern faces. So a quick google search later, combined with my Breaking Bad withdrawals, produced THIS. Easy enough! I'm super excited about my new Heisenberg pumpkin!

The third new thing is much simpler: roasting pumpkin seeds. I've never done it. I know, ridiculous. So I went to trusty Pinterest and found this pin for OneLittleProject.com. She made it sound so easy, and she was right!  So here goes:

First, get your hands dirty. Separate the seeds from the goop by any means necessary: rake, squeeze, shake...your call. It's time consuming but oddly relaxing. I'll be very impressed if you get ALL the seeds. Ain't nobody got time for that.

Next, rinse the seeds well in a colander. They will still feel slimy but they will be clean. Remove the leftover clumps of pumpkin that you missed earlier.

In a bowl, add 2 tablespoons of oil, and salt to taste. Mix it up to coat the seeds evenly.

Spread the seeds onto a baking pan. You want to try to get them in a single layer as much as possible, or they might clump together during baking. Bake at 325 degrees for 40-45 minutes. Be sure to stir it up once during baking, and try to settle them into a single layer again afterward.

My 1940s oven (I may not be exaggerating) loves to overcook everything, so mine came out a little well done. Still tasty though!

 

Have a safe & fun Halloween!

-A

Mom's Chocolate Mint

Today would have been my mom's 49th birthday. It has been a rough month, with a combination of fieldwork and class, getting sick, and dealing  with personal emotional stressors. A few weeks ago marked the 9th anniversary of her death, and Owen and I took a day trip to Coronado Island in her honor. It is my favorite place in the world, and I am ashamed to admit that it might have been over a year since I had last visited, even though I live only 12 minutes away. Mom always took us there on vacations growing up, before the gorgeous and famous Hotel del Coronado became outrageously expensive. I always feel so connected to her when I go there. I was pleasantly surprised to find this beautiful sand castle in front of the Del that day:

A little background on this: This amazing creation was built by The Sand Castle Man, who is, clearly, very talented. When we did our engagement photos over a year before this, we were in the same spot and actually came across one of his castles. 

Photo credit; Ahlin Photography

Photo credit; Ahlin Photography

It made for a perfect prop to our photos, and I was thrilled to find it again on this special day! He even happened to write the perfect inscription on it.

Anyway, my mother was very into gardening. She grew up on our family farms in Kansas and Arkansas and it stuck with her all her life. I was never that into it, growing up. Spending my weekends in Home Depot and various nurseries was BORING as a child. My brother was way into it, though, so I will definitely be utilizing him as a gardening resource in the future.

The one thing I was into in the garden as a kid was the Chocolate Mint plant that my mom let me pick out. If mint chocolate chip ice cream grew on trees, this would be what it smells like! Amazing. So when I found a chocolate mint plant at Home Depot that week (ironically enough), I knew it would make the perfect tribute to my mother. 

I also knew better than to get my hopes up that it would survive, but that's another story... I have zero success at keeping plants alive and, yet, I dream of having a perfect container garden on my tiny patio full of my favorite herbs and veggies. So I decided to start with chocolate mint.

It came in this great "planter" that you can literally plant as a whole piece without cutting the plant free of any packaging! 

I followed the directions and soaked the entire pot in water for a bit while I prepared my pots.

I found these adorable pots at Home Depot. Once I get some chalk markers, I will write on the provided chalkboard labels and it will be super cute! The best part is that the planters actually have holes drilled into the base, which I've found is frustratingly uncommon in cute planters.

 I decided to fill the other planter with regular mint, since it has been a hot commodity lately with our friends' obsessions with mojitos. I had this sad but adorable little plant from a previous grocery stop. Seriously sad. But also adorable. Note the equally awesome shark sponge holder.

I picked up a "living herb" plant from Sprouts to add to it.

 I'm not claiming to know what I'm doing, but from what I've picked up from my various gardening relatives, I went with this method: I picked up some soil and plant food from Lowes. I only knew to avoid synthetic materials like Miracle Grow, based on things I heard along the way. Sorry, no research to add here. 

 Place some soil in the pot until the plant will sit within a few centimeters of the top of the pot if it sits on top of the soil. Then, I teased the roots. Basically this means you should gently tickle the roots of the plant after you remove it from the original planter, but be sure not to rip anything apart.

Place the plant into the pot on top of the soil and fill in the sides with more soil. Mix in some plant food and gently press the soil down. I chose a slow release plant food because, why make it harder on myself?

 Water and enjoy! I'm very curious how the chocolate mint will taste in a mojito, so I'll keep you posted!

-A