my first attempt at roasted pumpkin seeds.

When we bought our pumpkin last week, what I was looking forward to most was roasting the seeds. I love eating pumpkin seeds, so I thought it'd be fun to try and roast them myself for a change! I love to bake and getting Makai to help, so I figured roasting a few pumpkin seeds would be a breeze. (Dumb.)

So we finally hollowed Mr. Pumpkin out and washed out the seeds. I found a couple of fun recipes (like here and here), but I was in the mood for something a little more on the salty-sweet side and thought I'd try something like this this time. (Although I probably should have done this one). I didn't quite have 4 cups of pumpkin seeds from my little pumpkin, so I just adjusted the recipe to taste.

Makai thought all the mixing and melting of things sounded like fun, so at least I got him to do something. Spatula and mixing duty seemed to be the right up his alley for the night. I love it when I convince him to be hands on and help. Cooking is a skill he'll need to know.

Once we got the seeds in the oven and set our timer, I thought it would be the perfect time to decorate our pumpkin! Makai very quickly extinguished my dreams and decided that wasn't as exciting as I thought it would be. And since my son has recently turned into a crazy tantrum filled demon-child (I don't know why they bother calling it the "terrible 2s" when it's really the 3s you've got to look out for), I decided it wasn't worth a fight to make him cut up the gourd of the month. Oh, well.

After the alloted time, my pumpkin seeds smelled lovely and had a beautiful caramel color from the the sugar. Unfortunately for me, I burned these babies and it all ended up tasting like burnt popcorn.

It was a sad night.

I tried my best to just eat them... but really, no one likes the taste of burnt popcorn.

Next time, I won't take these for granted and I'll do a little more research before I try something new. Perhaps I'll watch this in preparation.

All in all, I can't complain. Mr. Pumpkin has served us well and given us many activity options, although they didn't all come to fruition. Maybe once Halloween passes I'll buy a couple pumpkins on clearance and try again.