Halloween at my house when I was growing up was a really fun time of year. Each of us would have a pumpkin: one for my mum, one for me, and one for my younger brother. We’d all sit down one afternoon or evening and carve up our pumpkins.

Carving pumpkins is so much fun!

And after you carve your pumpkin(s), you can roast up the seeds, one of the few snacks this time of year that isn’t sugar or corn syrup based!

Not only are pumpkin seeds a tasty, crunchy snack, they’re a fun thing to get kids involved with making, because you get to be finger deep in pumpkin guts, separating the seeds. It’s a ghoulishly squishy task that lends itself perfectly to Halloween. It can get pretty messy though, so make sure to lay out some newspaper, which I certainly did. If you’ve already carved your pumpkin and heave gotten rid of the seeds, you’ve got another opportunity around Christmas, if you’re a pumpkin pie baker.

Pumpkin Seeds

(recipe adapted from a clipping from the Winnipeg Free Press, sometime in the mid 1990′s, author unknown.)
Ingredients

1 pumpkin

1 1/2 Tbsp melted butter

seasonings for sprinkling (I used lemon pepper and garlic salt, you can use whatever you fancy)

Directions
  • Remove top from pumpkin by cutting a large circle around the top and pulling up on the handle.

  • Scoop out the insides of the pumpkin, setting what you remove into a large bowl. My favorite tool for this is a large soup spoon.

  • With the pumpkin, you can make a Jack-o-lantern, or a pie.
  • Separate the seeds from the pumpkin guts. This can be a difficult process to complete well. If you get the seeds mostly separate from the pumpkin, you can float them in a couple of inches of water to complete the separation. The seeds are more buoyant than the pumpkin guts, so they will float at the top of the water. This also serves to rinse any pumpkin residue off of the seeds.

  • Toss the pumpkin seeds with the melted butter, and spread them out in a thin layer on a cookie sheet.

  • Sprinkle the surface evenly with your seasonings.

  • Roast in a 300° F oven until golden brown (~40 minutes), stirring every ten minutes and spreading them back out into a single layer.

If you do end up carving your pumpkin into a Jack-o-lantern, here’s a nice little hint: rub a little bit of cinnamon and nutmeg into the underside of the Jack-o-lantern’s lid. The candle will warm it and your Jack-o-lantern will smell just like pumpkin pie. Yum!

I hope everyone has a great Halloween! Did you dress up?