Pepitas

So you've scooped out a load of seeds and goo from your sugar pumpkins that you've readied to make pumpkin butter. Seems like an awful waste of all those succulent little seeds to just throw them away. What to do, what to do.

Elise of Simply Recipes has the right idea: Give 'em a quick boil in salted water, drain, and toss with olive oil and salt and bake them up for a crunchy, nutritious treat. Heck, why not push the autumnal envelope and throw in a bit of spice to pump up the flavor profile. Like, say, a teaspoon of chile pepper, 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon and a quick scrape of nutmeg.

Unfortunately, the humidity of the day -- not to mention the intensified humidity of our kitchen while we were boiling up 70 cans of preserves and butters -- stole the crunch from my pepitas within the hour. But for one, brief, shining moment they achieved snack nirvana.

Related: Cookiecrumb zings up her pepitas with a dash of cumin for some five-spice flava. Kalyn in her pumpkin roundup on BlogHer notes my post as the bridge between Elise and Cookiecrumb, yet overlooks my pumpkin butter. Sniff! Ariel followed the natural progression from pumpkin butter to pepitas just like I did.