Pintesting In The Kitchen - Candied Pumpkin Seeds

Yet another pre-written post that I've let sit way too long and never finished! Here yah go everyone.

Sunday evening my husband decided we should carve pumpkins. At the time he suggested it I was tied up in Skyrim desperately fighting off the forsworn and repeatedly having my butt handed to me. By the time I reached the living room he had already carved the first pumpkin and she had already drawn on a couple of them.

I really hate to be too terribly wasteful and I remember as a child being given some toasted pumpkin seeds at a friends house when I spent the night. The taste was somewhat unremarkable. I don't remember being particularly enamored, but I am of the general impression that everyone usually just needs certain foods prepared the best way for their own personal taste.

There were plenty of pumpkin seeds left after the carving.

This lead me to a completely unplanned kitchen pintest which I'll split into two posts - the first come via this pin and the information I followed from it's source here.

After sifting through the pumpkin guts and separating the seeds from the squishy orange innards. I gave the seeds a good rinse in my colander, making sure to pull out any fragments of pumpkin I could.

The squishy innards I gave to my little lamb to go make a mess of in the living room.

I made the mix as instructed and spread out the now coated seeds on a cookie sheet to bake.

The need for me to get further information outside of the original pin is unusual but this one was one them because I had no pumpkin pie spice. The recipe for pumpkin pie spice I used can be found here.

I baked them for 45 minutes but thought they were still a bit to soft so I put them in for another 10 and had my husband remove them from the oven.

When it came time to remove them from the foil my seeds had pretty much candied themselves to the sheet.

I ended up folding the stiff aluminum foil, letting the seeds drop into a container. Then for good measure I gave the container a bit of a shake.

How were they? My husband and daughter liked them so I'll call it a win.

Little Lambs Personal Pumpkin Patch

The other day we re-visited the lovely Circle S Farm here in central Ohio. Even though our daughter was young the first time we took her, she was still able to find enjoyment in the activities there were. We try never to underestimate what she may or may not be able to absorb.

Obviously this year she was able to "absorb" and enjoy even more than she was last year. We like to end our day with a hay ride into the Circle S pumpkin patch. Because one of my brother-in-laws had already grown quite a lot of pumpkins, our little lamb also found herself having quite a few pumpkins. I had planned to let her pick a pumpkin anyway but my husband decided against it.

All went very well into the pumkin patch until we got back onto the hay ride and she noticed she was the only one without a pumpkin. We assured the concerned parents that she had pumpkins at home and that we had taken her into the patch for the joy of running around in it.

She stayed pretty upset with us. Even in the car she was sure to express her displeasure and feelings of being slighted. And then she passed out for a nap.

When we got home, we snuck her into her crib and I set to work in the living room setting up her own personal pumpkin patch to remind her that she did indeed, have pumpkins.

I set her Disney fairys tent at the end of the hallway with the intention of her having to use it to get into the living room.

Where she would come upon her own, personal, blanketed, pumpkin patch.

Perhaps she was too groggy when we coaxed her into the pumpkin patch but the idea never seemed to land with her. The idea was worth a go and I may try something similar in the future, but I thought I'd throw it out there for those of you who have children who may give you the reaction I expected.

Pintesting In The Kitchen - Pumpkin Butterscotch Cookies

The other night around . . .1AM I (for whatever reason) mentioned cookies. I didn't particularly want them right then. After perusing Pintrest for things I thought might be cute for my little lamb I mentioned baking cookies with her one day. My husband immediately perked up and said he wanted cookies and would I go bake some right now? NO! But I told him if I could find the time the next day I would make some. And if not the next day I promised I would make them that week. I managed to find the time.

Our weekend plans included helping one of my brother-in-laws with his (now yearly) haunted trail. With fall activities upon us it seemed like the perfect tome for pumpkin butterscotch cookies.

Today's pin comes to us via this pin, which was not as easy to follow as the usually are. First I had to click the original pin which took me here. Then you need to search "pumpkin butterscotch cookies." Then choose a link.

With all that finally behind me I assembled the majority of the necessary ingredients, turned on some Sesame Street to help me distract my little lamb. And got down to work. You may notice I have cinnamon sugar instead of cinnamon. We are out of cinnamon, I didn't feel like running to the store, or asking the neighbor.

Of course afterward I found our cinnamon sticks that I forgot we had. We hide them on top of the fridge right now because our little lamb started digging through the spice drawer one day and developed a taste for them.

Everything looked pretty wonderful once it was all mixed together.

I used our ice cream scoop to portion the cookies. And I even cooked one tray at a time for sixteen minutes exactly. Being decidedly anal about this I used the stop watch on my smart phone to time the cook time.

The delicious scent of pumpkin and butterscotch filled the house. When I took the first batch out of the oven I was surprised at how light and fluffy the cookies were.

When my husband came home his immediate reaction to the cookies was, "Whoa those are some huge cookies."

The taste was a lot less sweet than my husband anticipated but that didn't stop him from eating quite a few cookies before the night was over. I thought the very, very subtle sweetness made them perfect to take on a play date when you don't want the children in attendance too pumped full of sugar.

 The cookies managed to survive the weekend. I learned that these cookies are quite moist so I recommend that if you intent to store these in a closed container you do so with some rice or a paper towel to absorb the excess moisture.