So after carving a pumpkin, you'll have lots of seeds left over. That's my favorite part :-) I love to eat toasted, seasoned pumpkin seeds.

The pumpkin in question was fairly large, so I knew the seeds might be tough and fibrous. After doing a little research, we decided to take the advice of Elise from Simply Recipes, and boil the seeds first to soften them a bit. We rinsed and soaked the seeds in water for about 10 min this is after hand-picking all of that slimy, stringy stuff out.)


Then we boiled the pumpkin seeds in salt water for 10 minutes (that's 10 minutes of rolling boil.)


We spread the pumpkin seeds out in a baking dish and coated them with olive oil, using some salt and garlic powder for flavoring (season yours however you like, but I do recommend at least some salt....although you could always add that later). Then we just tossed them around a little bit with a spatula to make sure that they were coated with the oil.


Then we just put them in the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 20-30 minutes (until brown.) Just remember to move them around the baking dish occasionally to get them to brown more evenly (you can just use that same spatula again, for that.)


Once they're browned, they're done--and ready for snacking. We really did find that the boiling helped with the seeds being fibrous--a relative also suggested that next time we soak them overnight in salt water to help with that, too.

I've been kinda lax about posting lately. S. stepped on a nail and was down for the count all last week. So what have we been up to? Nothing too exciting. Garden has wound down, and we mowed and tilled most of it in preparation for solarizing or maybe even wheat gluten for the stiltgrass issue--which we probably need to try to do some more research on.

This weekend we started working on re-doing the downstairs bathroom. (If you're interested, pics below)

When we pulled the old fixture out of the wall, we found that there was a rip in the drywall where the wires came through...and the lighting fixture we bought had to mount to the electrical box in the wall (which there wasn't one of). So S. put one in (you can see the original tear to the bottom right. We tried a square box first, but the fixture base was too small and it showed....sooo we used a round "ceiling" box).


Then we put the light fixture up:


And S. couldn't resist. We wanted to see what the paint looked like, so he started on one wall (the room is far too small for both of us to paint it at once.) The color in this picture is, unfortunately, not quite representative of the actual color. (But it's called 'spring walk' if that helps....)

So today when we got home, our duck, Neptune, was missing. Agh. It was nasty and wet and 44 degrees all day. Kind of hard to believe that there was a predator out in that weather, but of course that's possible. Then again, he had a weird cough for about a week. So it's also possible that caught up with him. I'm not sure we'll ever know.

I do hope the remaining two stay warm enough on their own tonight. We put fresh bedding in their house to help keep them warmer. Looks like we'll definitely be considering getting some more ducks next spring...and I do wish our ducks would stop disappearing. Or at least I wish I knew why.