Thursday, October 18, 2007

Lochie's Adventures in Pumpkin Carving!

We had a great day today - Lochie had his chance to carve his pumpkin! This is the first year he's been big enough to actually do most of the work himself! I helped him with cutting the top but he scooped all the pumpkin goop out himself, and after I shaved it down inside on the "face" side to make cutting easier for him, he drew his own design and carved it himself! And I think considering the puny kids knife we gave him he did a pretty good job of it! And I actually accidentally invented a new use for the pumpkin seeds! I rinsed and removed as much of the pumpkin from the seeds as I could then soaked them in water for about 20 mins. I read on the internet about honey-roasting pumpkin seeds so I used a cast-iron skillet and toasted the seeds in some butter until they "popped" a bit and got toasty looking - then I thought I could skip the whole roasting part and honey-roast them in the skillet (duh!) so added golden syrup from Australia (like a cross between molasses and corn syrup I think for you yanks!), white sugar and cinnamon and before I knew it, it took on a toffee consistency and was hardening faster in my nice cast-iron skillet than I would have liked! So I threw the whole mix down on a baking sheet and put in the oven on low (250f) for about a half an hour and voila! Pumpkin Seed Brittle!! The boys LOVED it and it had kind of a nutty flavour like peanut brittle but a little more chewy. Lochie thought it was the best and we plan on doing the same thing with the seeds in the other pumpkin. Lochie wants me to carve a "Yoda" pumpkin - I did a pretty fancy Spongebob on a watermelon last year - I practiced on the melon and it was so time-consuming I didn't have the energy to recreate it on the pumpkin so Lochie had a Jack-o-melon last year! Will give Yoda a shot for him I guess - but if it becomes too much effort I'm just gonna punch a bunch of holes in it and we'll call it the galaxy!!!

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