Recipes

How to Cook Pumpkin Seeds

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Roasted pumpkin seeds (Photo: Wiki Commons).

Roasting Pumpkin Seeds

It's fall again, and time for pumpkins. When you're carving up that fleshy orange fruit consider not wasting the left over seeds and rind. Reducing food waste can be good for you, your wallet, and the environment. First, a few things you should know about pumpkins. The pumpkins that you buy for carving are NOT for cooking. These big pumpkins are specifically grown as ornamentation. If you're planning on making pumpkin pie then buy the smaller, less mealy, and sweater baking pumpkins in your grocers produce section. The big pumpkins that you carve are for just that, carving. However, the carving pumpkin's big seeds still make for a healthy fall treat. This leads to today's post, how to roast pumpkin seeds.

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The Cranberry: Natural History and Home Made Cranberry Sauce Recipe

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Cranberries (Photo: Wiki Commons).

What's the story of cranberries?

Cranberries are a common side for holiday dishes in North America, especially around Thanksgiving and Christmas. The red berries are tart and appropriately colored for the season with a bright red color. For many the only thing they may think of when they prepare cranberries is that sucking sound that the solid mass of cranberry makes as it slides out of the can. But, If you're like me, you might like to make home made cranberry sauce, or know a bit more about where those berries came from. I firmly believe in knowing about what you eat, how it grows, and how it is produced. So, in this light, much like the Turkey Snood post, we'll start this one with a short natural history of the cranberry and follow up with a  homemade cranberry sauce recipe that has been in our family for a long time. At the end of the post I'll also provide you with some neat resources for teaching about cranberries in the classroom or on an interpretive hike.

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The Natural History of Sunflowers and A Sunflower Seed Cookie Recipe

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Sunflower (Photo: Karen McDonald)

Enjoy The Delights of Sunflowers

Today's guest post is from Anne Littlewolf, our very own helpful author (when I give her enough lead time), with a touch of tag teaming from yours truly!

With wealth untold in my pocket, I'd gotten permission from Mom to go play with the rest of the kids.  We had bikes, we had energy, we had imagination, and with the vast sum of 25 whole cents in my pocket, the world was mine!   Dashing across the street to the little Mom & Pop grocery store, I roamed up and down the aisles, trying to choose between a Chunky candy bar, a candy necklace or at least a handful of Pixie Stix, but when it all came down to a final choice, a ten-cent bag of sunflower seeds (roasted and salted in the shell!) won out.  I'd learned the fine art of cracking them, extracting the seed and spitting out the shell in one swift move, never once losing a single pedal stroke on my bike.  Oh, the things that give you status when you're ten!!

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Sunflower seed and kernel (Photo: Wiki Commons).

It was, as we later learned, a wonderful snack choice.  Sunflowers are amazing plants, they're the type of flower that always makes you smile whether they're in the yard, on an apron, on wallpaper or even on a notepad, and they produce some of the best munchies ever.  The little seeds that come in the familiar black and white striped shell offer all sorts of benefits, beyond just yummy-ness!  Sunflower seeds are used in most countries as a source of cooking oil, while in America we tend to shove them into the snack food category or probably at least as commonly, bird food. I would suggest considering them for human food, and as a great addition for native pollinators and butterflies. The asters that don't make large heads are also an important part of ecosystems, and food for insects, and other native creatures. Let's learn more.

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