Halloween is coming!

So it's time for pumpkin carving! We did ours the other night, as my work is having a pumpkin carving contest (and so far, there are 3 pumpkins entered. The deadline was extended to Friday in hopes of getting more participation but I'm not holding my breath here). Anyway, I figured I might as well save the seeds and roast them for a yummy snack. But what to put on them? Then I remembered a recipe I got from a friend a while back for rosemary almonds. I searched my email high and low in vain and eventually ended up just googling and finding something that sounded about right. I adapted this recipe from Cooking Light magazine to use pumpkin seeds instead of almonds.

Rosemary Roasted Almonds

Ingredients

1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh rosemary

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

1 teaspoon chile powder

3/4 teaspoon kosher salt

Dash of ground red pepper

1 (10-ounce) bag whole almonds (about 2 cups)

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 325°.


 
2. Combine all ingredients in a medium bowl; toss to coat. Arrange nut mixture in a single layer on a baking sheet lined with foil. Bake at 325° for 20 minutes or until lightly toasted. Cool to room temperature.


 
We ate them warm pretty much out of the oven and man they are addictive! A few things I would do differently next time- first is to make sure your seeds are dry. Mine were pretty wet so I think they spent part of the time in the oven drying out before roasting. My seeds also took a lot longer to be the right level of done than in the recipe and I think that was part of the reason. Plus the seasonings didn't adhere as well as I would have liked. Second is to use a bit more olive oil. I didn't measure mine, but they ended up slightly on the scorched side (I thought so anyway, the boys had no complaints). When my friend gave me her recipe, I think it had me roasting the almonds and then adding the oil and seasonings, but I prefer it this way – the nuts ended up really oily (and all over your fingers) and the seasonings were a little intense. The boys loved these seeds so much one of them mentioned buying another pumpkin just for the seeds! Too bad he over-exaggerates about everything.

I cast on last night for a pair of sock. Shocker, I know, I've completed exactly 4.5 socks in my life, and out of that I only have one matching pair. Though if I do ever finish that other .5 socks I will have two pair. I think I figured out my sock problem though. Knee socks. For some reason I want to knit knee socks until I actually do. And considering it takes at least twice as long to knit knee socks I could have knit two pairs of shorter socks in that time. So this time I'm tackling a shorter sock. It's cold in my office so I need some warm hand knit socks stat! So I have some self striping sock yarn (another thing I used to hate) in Indulgence in a pink and green colorway (it's the second from the bottom on the right) and cast on last night for Anastasia Socks. I love them so far! Thought I started them at knit night last night, got through the short row toe and into the pattern when I got home and realized the pattern was only charted on the even rows. Ugh. I was wondering how it was going to work out though, the pattern states that two repeats of the chart is enough for the foot and it wasn't looking like it was going to work for me. So as I was groaning and ripping back, my brother says "You know you can buy socks at the store?" No sooner did the words come out of his mouth did he flinch and say "Don't hit me!" At least he knows, even if he isn't funny!

So I'll leave you with a crappy cell phone pic of my work in process. Enjoy!