Awesome Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Here they are. After the carving carnage, the best part of jack-o-lanterns is munching on those roasted seeds. We had a couple friends ask for the recipe, so now you all get it. Turns out these things are high in protein, and zinc (whatever that does). You can check out the nutrition in detail here.

So, they make a great snack, and are super simple to cook up. We couldn’t find the recipe, so my lovely wife just made one up on the spot. It worked, thanks to one big secret. There is one negative side effect to snacking on roasted pumpkin seeds: greasy keyboard.

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds, ala Jaimie

Step 1: Carve the hell out of a few pumpkins. Make them fun and scary. When you’re digging the “guts” (or “brains,” depending upon your perspective) out of that soon-to-be-jack-o-lantern, pile them up in a clean bowl for sorting. Then, sort out the seeds and place them in another clean bowl. Be sure to compost the remaining stringy stuff. I fed some to my worms, but I’ll save the picture for a non-food post.

Step 2: Here’s Jaimie’s BIG SECRET: don’t wash the seeds. You need them to be wet, and washing just wastes that groovy pumpkin flavor goodness. We clean them up a little, but a bit of orange stringy stuff here and there just adds character, and they have that perfect stickiness when unwashed. We used the seeds from three kid-sized pumpkins, which ended up about four cups worth. Jaim added around 3 Tablespoons of EVOO (that’s extra virgin olive oil), some Mrs. Dash and some dried garlic granules. Don’t ask how much, ‘cuz she don’t know. As Grandma B always says with her bread recipe, “add just enough.”

Step 3: Fold it all together real good, to coat the seeds with EVOO and seasonings. Now spread the seeds out on a baking sheet. They don’t need to be single layer, but close.

Step 4: Sprinkle the seeds with some brown sugar. I would advocate for local-raised honey here instead, but we’ve run out and my little sis hasn’t brought us another tub full yet. (Hint, hint.). Now toss the pan in the oven at 350 for about an hour, maybe a little less. Again, I don’t now exactly how long they were in there–just until they are done. I do know that I’ve never seen my wife bake anything at any other temp but 350. Maybe she should have done some sort of thing for the 350 Day of Climate Action? (Btw, Hope got famous on Saturday at the Falls Park 350 Action.)

Step 5: Enjoy. We store them under a lid in the orange container you see in the picture above, and keep it on the counter. I doubt this batch will see Friday.

Nudging the Clouds: Blog Action Day 09

Today is Blog Action Day. For one day each year, the folks at change.org invite bloggers everywhere to unite around action on an important topic in the world. Today, there’s nothing more important and scary than climate change. There are crazy big changes coming that will effect the life of everyone on this planet, and much of it was done by us. We didn’t mean to screw things up, we didn’t even realize we were doing it. But now we know, and now we can change.

So, how do we change our behaviors–the way we go about everything–in one big swoop? We can’t. Humans have designed and built a society and life infrastructure that doesn’t work without messing up countless ecosystems, from our own bodies to our backyard to the other side of planet Earth. Reconstructing those social and built norms is like trying to push a cloud with our hands. It would be easier to just say screw it.

That would be normal. After all, despite overwhelming evidence that all those Big Macs and desk jobs and video games and chemical cocktails in our food are killing us, we keep up behaviors that doctors tell us will give us cancer or a heart attack or some other disease. Over and over again. It seems there are only two things that can change that kind of normal behavior:

Falling Apples

Mom and Dad have 2 gazillion apples hanging on two trees in their yard. There were even more, but Dad and the girls rescued the trees from broken branches by catching a whole bunch in sheets on the ground a couple weekends ago. They were so loaded down, a couple of good shakes took care of the problem. Everybody knows that’s not how you harvest apples. But sometimes it is. Just ask Newton.

There is dispute in the family about which tree makes tastier apples, but I’m sure I’m right about the reddish ones. If you want some, it’s a pick-your-own free for all. Dad might even let you use his ladder.

—

Tonight I finally got around to making some applesauce with the last bag full the kids came home with. We used the fancy shmancy apple peeler Santa brought for Jaimie last year. It slices. It cores. It peels. And it makes the kitchen floor very very sticky. But, it works awesome and it’s fun.

Jaim whipped up some apple crisp too, as you can see in the last pic. Now, what to do with those neatly cut peelings…It’s a good excuse to give you a worm update. I’ve been skimping a bit on the feeding the past week, sending most kitchen scraps to the compost bin outside instead of wormtown. It’s time to harvest the worm poop, so I’m using a trick from Uncle Carl: let them totally clean up the top layer, then only feed them on one small end of the bin for a week so they all congregate in one spot. That way, when I’m sifting through that rich compost by hand, the worms will be easy to pick out. I just tossed this watermelon in yesterday, and they’re hammering it.

Speaking of apples, last weekend we headed on a road trip for Jon’s bachelor party. Along the way, we stopped by cousin David’s place to check out his newly-built apple cannon. It launches pretty much anything roughly baseball-sized with alarming power. Even baseballs. Trust me.

If you shop at Hy-Vee in Brookings, you might want to throw a bike helmet on in the parking lot. Just saying.

Zucchini and Purple Spuds

The girls picked up some purple potatoes at the Falls Park Farmers Market yesterday morning. I paired them with some fresh garden zucchini, and sauteed them with onions, garlic and some chives in a skillet for dinner tonight. Went well with some sweet corn from Denny’s garden and some Bartmann sirloin tips. Every ingredient except the butter is local.

Also took a nice hike today, and picked some wildflowers along the way for my deserving and lovely wife.

Tasting Dorset and a Hike

Part 2 of the Up North Bartmann Family Gathering report.

The first full day everyone was together we hit a festival just a couple miles down the road called Taste of Dorset. We could sample great food from about ten different places, drink $1 beers, partake in minnow races, and try frozen monkey tails. One of those small town things on a highway, with no roadblocks… Good times.

That evening, we hit the Heartland Trail for a family hike at sundown. The highlight: bats.

More to come.

Ten Days

In the last week or so…

Jenna wore a funny hat.

Mesa and Hope raced their classmates.

The twins hung out in Montrose.

I cooked ribs with the sun.

And made barrels to catch rain (more on this later).

We planted a few trees and flowers.

We failed a baby robin rescue.

And had a bird funeral.

Learned how a buck doesn’t break his noggin.

And, ate a flag.

See more pics from our last ten days on Flickr.

Store Wars

OK, I know not every bartblog fan will appreciate the message of this video. No matter what you think about chemicals and such on your food, this video is just plain fun. Check it out if you have 5 minutes and want to laugh. It’s worth it.

I’m not even going to say I want to push this message (I love organic practices, and believe LOCAL is just as important. There are some sketchy details out there that get overlooked by slapping a “USDA Organic” seal on things…more in another post I guess…).

I love the farm I grew up on (and the guys running it), and think the ag system needs bunches of change if it will sustain humans for generations to come. I also get how hard it is to make that jump. Anytime I’m knocking chemical farming, I’m never pointing a finger at anyone, I’m pointing it at everyone. We’re ALL part fo the problem…

Corn Syrup Sucks

[grape jamfrom the Bartmann fridge]

A public service announcement from bartblog: your body is becoming corn syrup. A couple of my colleagues at the Rural Learning Center are on a high fructose corn syrup crusade. Mike-the-Flax-Blogger challenged Lindsey-Over-the-Wall (I can’t really call her that anymore–we’re ‘co-working’ without walls now!) to not eat corn syrup. She’s a few days into her challenge, and if she’s slipped up it’s been by accident. Lindsey’s a vegetarian, so reading the ingredients label is nothing new to her. I think it will be much more difficult for her to skip corn syrup than meat. It’s not that HFCS is necessarily so terrible alone, it’s that it’s in everything and we take it in all the time in huge quantities. Anyway, Mike’s blog shares an interesting video on corn syrup’s world domination here on ‘The Wunders of Flax.’

More bad news about corn syrup: Mayo Clinic, How to Avoid, Drowning in HFCS, Link to Diabetes on FOX, WebMD, Wash Post, Double Danger, King Corn.

And (to be fair) some arguments about HFCS goodness from the Corn Refiners Association here.