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How to make toasted pumpkin seeds in 18 complicated and disgusting steps
Monday, October 13, 2008 
1. Close the preschool but not the interwebs, which means the kid spends an inordinate amount of time "researching" gender roles in PBS and PBS-with-commercials-on-cable while Mommy tries to drown out the sound of Wow Wow Wubzy enough to write about important stuff like boobs and periods and meditation. Who the hell can write about meditation while some creepy squarish cartoon yells out "WOW! WOW!" every four minutes, followed by squeals of delight from a four-year old?
2. No one. Which is why the next step is to cram the BlackBerry earpiece into my head to drown it all out. Oh, and also listen in on a very important conference call. Very important. Something about something I am supposed to be writing although I can only think of the theme song of now, Bob the Builder.
3. After cursing Bob, thank Bob for the new movie he's got up on the old On Demand that splices moral-ridden claymation construction with live-action building scenes. This movie gets me through the remainder of my call, the Peapod delivery, another cup of much-needed coffee and is well worth the $4.99 viewing fee.
4. Shut laptop. Turn off BlackBerry. Go idle on all IM programs.
5. Pause Bob the Builder. Refill the coffee. Stop self from humming Bob theme while adding as much chemical-infused creamer to coffee as possible.
6. Get the boy out of pajamas and into real clothes. Lie and say the Power Rangers shirt that is three sizes too big and is...well, Power Rangers...is still in the laundry.
7. Spread out a vinyl tablecloth, neatly lay out pumpkin carving kit tools like it is the set of Top Chef rather than our balcony.
8. Try to convince child to choose one of the stencils in the Easy category. Give in like a Catholic girl on prom night when he chooses the only design in the Difficult category.
9. Make a big show of the pumpkin gut reveal. Totally gross the boy out who is currently obsessed with all things related to bodily functions and bathrooms and who also spent an hour this morning pretending to belch and then laughing evilly while saying, "Heh heh heh, I belched!" Try to lure him into helping scoop out the guts, then to just touch the guts. Resort to calling it "pumpkin snot" just to ellicit a reaction and possibly some participation in the whole carving process. Fail miserably (not at the joke, just at the touching part).
10. Scoop like it is my first day at Baskin-Robbins and I still think I earn a commission on waffle cone sales. Alone. While the small child sees if he can scale the brick wall or slide between the balcony railings.
11. Carve like a muthah until the little saw thingy breaks and the paper stencil is in shreds that has blown off the balcony and on to the yard, sidewalk and street. Meanwhile, the kid is hording the pumpkin carving tools that he will surely lose and will require a pre-bedtime hunt that includes yelling, tears and negotiation of some other kitchen gadget to replace the plastic puncher doohickey.
12. Spend twenty minutes sorting through the guts and
pulling out seeds while trying to once again convince the boy that it
is REALLY FUN! Secretly enjoy the strange and slightly nasty
squishiness and decide to steer clear of irritation in how long it
takes to liberate two ounces of pumpkin seeds by pretending it is part
of an exotic, spendy autumnal spa hand treatment.
13. Rinse seeds. Make a joke about having pumpkin stew for dinner that
doesn't even get a courtesy laugh from the one who thinks the word
"hiney" is hilfreakingarious.
14. Strain, scoop, dig, brush, scrape and sort through wet, slimey,
sticky, drowned pumpkin seeds in an effort to get any remaining orange
stringy shit off. Recognize in a Zen-like, self-helpy way that when the
instructions say to get all the pulp off, my OCD tendencies will kick
in until I have gotten every minute strand of nastiness off of every
pearly white seed. Both rue and revel in my pumpkin seed A-studentness.
Roll my eyes at the unimpressed child holding a Bob the Builder Lego
truck, four pumpkin carving tools and a golf club.
15. Spread out on paper towels on a cookie sheet to dry. Wonder why it
takes all night to dry. Feeling famished after all that tedious gourd
labor, crave toasted pumpkin seeds and wish that general snobbery
didn't prevent me from going with the microwave recipe in the first
place.
16. Let dry. Eat tamales for lunch and wonder if it would be bad to
make the pumpkin seeds during school so that the child would not even
realize they were there and then gone in the time he was napping and
doing something brilliant with pipe cleaners, dried leaves and one of
those pumpkin carving tools. Chuckle quietly over the selfish and yet
enticing schemery that pumpkin seeds inspire.
17. Check the pumpkin seed dryness eight hours later only to realize
they are all stuck to the paper towels. And need to be removed, rinsed
and scraped of any fibrous paper towel bits. Then dried and layed out
overnight again. Apparently, this time not inside a pumpkin or on a
paper towel.
18. Remind boy, remind self that it will so be worth all the trouble
when those little babies are toasted up, salty, warm and crunchy. It
will be worth it. IT WILL BE WORTH IT.
Reader Comments (2)
It WILL be worth it. Wish me luck because this is exactly our plans for tomorrow after picking out pumpkins at the farm.
Although, after reading this I'm totally buying some seeds at the store on the way home. LOL