Start carving that pumpkin (or gutting that squash)

by Lorraine Bartlett / Lorna Barrett / L.L. Bartlett

Last week (or was it the week before?) the food reporter at our local newspaper wrote a story about pumpkin seeds and how WONDERFUL they are if you roast them.  Somewhere in the article she mentioned that if you weren't going to carve a pumpkin to feel free to roast any squash seeds.

Can you say "big light bulb going off above my head?"

Ha!  Saturday I went to the local farmers market and bought a big bag of different squashes.  Mr. L voted for acorn squash, so I scraped out the messy stuff and he finished the job by fine-tuning the squash and doctoring them with butter and brown sugar, and then  he baked it.

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I cleaned the seeds, for they were icky and slimy, dried them off a bit, stuck them on a small tray, drizzled them with olive oil and sea salt (McCormack sells it in a jar with a grinder for dirt cheap) and stuck them in the toaster oven at 350F.

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About 35 or so minutes later, they were done.

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We were rather shocked that instead of tasting like pumpkin seeds (which they weren't) they tasted more like movie popcorn.  What's with that?  Anyway, we LOVED them.  I can't wait to gut another squash.

Do you roast squash seeds, and if so -- how do you cook them and what flavors do you add?[image error]