Seedy creations...

:o)

Recently, we...

Carved a fun pumpkin

Me being the thrifty (and perhaps slightly disorganised) one, I bought this beauty a few days after Halloween for a much reduced price. I have also learned a valuable lesson, which goes something like - "Don't try to find a pumpkin for sale on the night of Halloween, especially when it falls on a Sunday when all of the shops are closed anyway". Oops.

In true permaculture fashion, I decided to make as many uses as I could from the pumpkin. We made spiced, baked seeds:

 Here's how I did it:

I cut off the top of the pumpkin and retained it as the lid for the finished carved pumpkin. I scooped out the seeds and stringy, sticky bits of flesh. The seeds were given a good rinse in cold water, before they dried out as I'd imagine the flesh would be tricky to get off them otherwise. I then popped them on a baking tray into a warm oven (say 100 degrees) just to dry them off (maybe 10 minutes).

When they were dry, I removed them from the oven and turned up the heat of the oven to around 200 degrees. I then stirred a dollop of butter into the seeds, along with a sprinkling of ground ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon and salt (to taste). I then popped the tray back into the oven and baked them until they had turned crisp and brown. A very tasty snack indeed.

Now, I still wanted to carve the pumpkin for Leela and I to enjoy in the evening, but I also wanted to make use of the flesh. To satisfy both needs, I decided to use a spoon to scoop out the flesh before carving the pumpkin. I then made cream of pumpkin soup using this recipe. Be careful not to overdo the cream as I did!


The next 'seedy' thing I did was to make birdseed cakes, after seeing how to do it on The Magic Onions blog. I absolutely love The Magic Onions and it is a huge source of inspiration for me.

Mixing the seeds with the gelatine... Little wool twisties at the ready...

I used a cupcake tray (if that's the technical term?) to mould the seed cakes... and some bigger ones for a few cakes

I let them set for a few hours in the fridge and then...

...Voila! Within seconds of being put outside, they were being nibbled at by the local bluetits!

I would say one thing, which is that I didn't like using the gelatine very much, being vegetarian. Yes, it made it a very easy project, but I think that next time I'm going to look for an alternative. If anyone has any suggestions, please do leave a comment!