Pumpkin Seeds

The temperature took a drop into real winter territory this last week so over the weekend we decided to harvest seeds from most of the pumpkins before they turned into frost bitten mush and it was too late.  This process is pretty labor intensive although using a full length machete (yes, Justin has one) speeds things up a bit.  The cutting and scooping is the quick part.  The cleaning...yikes.  Justin does it and he has a system but it still requires a lot of soaking and rinsing and picking out orange slime. But when it was all over we had this many seeds.  I feel like a toddler saying "this many" but it really was this many.  Too many to count.

I was up pretty early on Sunday morning.  It was "fall back" remember.  Parents hate time changes and love to complain endlessly about their kids' ruined schedules.  Mine handle it OK.  They didn't get up at 5:00 a.m. They were, however, pretty delirious by about 7 p.m. and we had to really try to keep them awake to avoid a Monday morning 5 a.m. wake-up.  The person in the house who has been getting up at ungodly hours is me.  According to my fitbit I have been getting less than six hours of sleep each night and I wake up earlier than I need to every morning.  Part of it is pregnancy disturbances and part of it is the time change.  But anyway, I had a long morning with an extra hour for roasting pan after pan of seeds on Sunday.  I sampled so many of them I couldn't even eat any for awhile.  I was over it by yesterday afternoon and ate a pretty large portion after school.  I have mentioned before that they are full of nutrition but also high in calories to the tune of 800 calories per 8 oz. cup so it's no surprise that gorging on them like I did on Sunday morning can be sickening.  A little condiment sized bowl is the perfect portion size for them.  

So, if I am coming to visit you in the next few weeks expect a container.  I knew we hoarded cool whip containers, aka redneck Tupperware, for a reason.  

The kids seem to like them.  They all ask for them.  Ben actually eats them.  Milo usually dumps his on the floor which has to stop because they are too much work to sweep into the garbage.  I'm not sure what Tessa does with hers.  I suspect she might not finish her portion and then Milo dumps it on the floor.