pumpkins. seeds. cooking, and a rant.

Happy Halloween everyone! I hope everyone had a fantastic weekend. Our weekend was filled with pumpkin carving, cooking, football, and candy :)

I went to the store the other day to buy the ingredients for this delicious bread bowl dip I was making for tonight and saw this pumpkin carving kit. I've always wanted to be one of those people with the complex pumpkins so obviously I bought the kit. Mr. E and I got to town on our pumpkins Saturday night and I was very impressed with the outcome. Of course they don't look like the ones that I'm sure a professional did, but they looked pretty good for our first time.

 [mr. e digging out the insides.]

  [serious concentration tracing the pattern]

  [i was intent on doing this correctly.]

  [my finished product.]

  [his finished product]

After carving and a long break, I ventured into the kitchen to make some roasted pumpkin seeds. I  found a new recipe so I decided on taking half of our seeds and cooking them the way I normally do (salt & oil) and the other half with the new recipe (butter, season salt, and Worcestershire sauce). The first batch of normal seeds turned out perfect. The second set smelled delicious and we were so excited to try them but I left them in for literally one minute too long and they came out crispy...very crispy. I tried one of the ones that were less done but you know once you burn something the taste gets all over everything. So unfortunately I don't know how they turned out. I want to make them again but the whole carving a pumpkin just for seeds is a little time consuming. Do they sell pumpkin seeds already out of the pumpkin? Maybe I'll look for that. I didn't take pictures of the burnt seeds because I was a little upset. But here are the good ones :)

 Today Mr. E and I spent the day watching football and being lazy. In hopes of making  it up to him for handing out candy all day I made this amazing cheese and bacon bread bowl dip. If you want the recipe just let me know. I was quite impressed with myself because it came out tasting just like my mom's does. This is one of those things I request any time we have a family gathering. I'll probably regret putting this up here because now I risk being told to make it myself, but it turned out so well I can't help but brag. It was pretty simple too. Twenty minutes to make it and then popping it in the oven for an hour and half. So easy. 

 [prep. all the cheese mixed. bacon & green onions]

[ready to be put into the bread]

  [final product]

After all of this we only got ten kids at our door. No you did not read that wrong, we only got ten kids at our door. One of the parents even said their kids were afraid to come up because they weren't sure if we were handing out candy. Mr. E's reply was a simple "but our light is on". I always thought that was the universal come get candy sign apparently times have changed. I remember when I was a kid you had to go out early not because our parents were afraid of what would happen to use after dark, but to get there before the hundreds of other kids took all the candy. Clearly that's not the worry anymore. Now kids are out before it gets dark because we have become terrified of what can happen. I know I don't have children, but I don't think I or any of my friends turned out horribly wrong and I didn't have my parents with me 24 hours a day. I was allowed to walk to my friends house by myself. I was allowed to play outside and I didn't have to check in every twenty minutes so that my mother knew I hadn't been kidnapped. No, when I was young it was the opposite. If I came in every twenty minutes my mom would think I was hiding something. She knew I was smart enough to know that people don't give strangers candy except for on Halloween and if I don't know someone not to talk to them. I also had two sisters who if I had talked to them I knew for sure would tell  my mom and I wouldn't risk that. As kids we knew to scream if something happened. That's what my mom had ears for, the telling silence or the gut wrenching scream. She didn't need me to tell her I was alright because she knew I would tell her if I wasn't. 

I just wrote out this long rant, and then I accidentally hit the backspace button, and because blogger has been glitching lately instead of deleting a letter it went back. Clearly the auto save wasn't auto saving fast enough and I'm too tired to re write. Maybe another day :)

peace & love