Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Hump Day

The big girl's at school, the boy's at preschool, and the baby naps... It's a beautiful thing.

You know you're getting old when...
There's a teenager at Magic Kingdom with "FCUK" written across her shirt. Your six year old trys to "sound it out." You nearly flip out. Instead of grabbing the kid by the back of the neck and asking her to tell your six year old what it means, you tell your kid "nothing." I'm thirty-two going on sixty. Young whippersnappers.

Hard Core Halloween
Managed to get one picture of two of the kids. The toddler wouldn't cooperate and put her "Dora" wig back on. I didn't make her, instead, I took a picture of the two older ones all strung out on sugar right before bed. Mother of the Year is MINE! Fortunatly, I have pictures from three weeks ago when we bought the costumes and they tried them on. And - Last night we carved pumpkins. Not two or three days before - last night. I finished at 5:30. I was trying to set them up on the porch at 5:50 and the trick-or-treaters were starting to arrive. The kids were struggling to get their costumes on. I didn't have the treats ready. In true old-fart fashion - I gave away mini-bags of popcorn. Don't these kids get enough candy? I learned that if you decided to go all "Martha" and stack the little pumpkins like a snowman, make sure the candles are small. Otherwise they'll eventually catch on fire. Even though they looked pretty cool and smoky and all, pumpkins stink when they burn. I did salvage the innards of the six pumpkins we carved. Stored the guts in a gallon ziploc bag overnight (in the fridge) and am roasting all four cups now.

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds
Pumpkin seeds
Butter
Salt
Oven to 350. Clean seeds from the stringy stuff, wash well. Coat seeds with melted butter. Salt. Place on cookie-sheet and cook. Stir every 10 or 15 minutes. Or 20. Salt with every stir. Should take about 50 - 60 minutes for nicely roasted seeds. Try to let them cool before eating. Warning - high in fiber.

Labels
I'm making up labels as I go. Right now, I don't feel like going through all the old stuff and labeling it. I'll save that for a day when I have nothing else to do. Yea. Nothing to do...

Happy Hump Day!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

You actually made roasted pumpkin seeds?

You really are mother of the year.

Mitzi Green said...

my husband roasted the seeds he collected from his pumpkin--does that count?

here's another halloween factoid--if your husband spends 2 hours carving blue (as in clues) out of the front of a pumpkin, squirrels will gnaw off the connective tissue of blue's ear the very next day and his effort will be for naught...whereas the very charlie brown pumpkin you carve with triangles and a toothy grin will last (all but the teeth) a good 2 weeks.

and fwiw, i think burning pumpkins smell good.

meno said...

Mmmm, i love roasted pumpkin seeds. Mine are the same, except i use olive oil instead of butter.

Builder Mama said...

I'm sorry, but the mere fact that I signed up Monkey Man for a tonsillectomy on Halloween makes me a shoo-in for Mother of the Year.

But I'll share with you. As long as I get to wear the tiara sometimes.

Anonymous said...

I love making pumpkin seeds. But I win mother of the year because I didn't even buy a pumpkin this year. My kids didn't seem to notice, so I came in under the radar this time.

Four years ago, my husband was deployed and coming back on November 1st - so he missed halloween by like eight hours or something. Anyway, nobody would cooperate for pictures. I took them anyway, and the scowling ladybug and grumpy spiderman light up that section of my photo album. After they got the candy they were in a much better mood for photographs - but by that time they were both in just their underwear. I took pictures again to ensure I could make fun of their before and after pics for years to come!

Anonymous said...

the word fuck, and a recipe in one entry>

You are Mother of the year

Gretchen said...

Jenny, yes, I did, and they are great!

Mitzi - of course it counts. Funny about charlie brown vs blue.

Meno - I'll have to try olive oil sometime.

Builder - We'll have joint custody of it!

Anon - the shirt actually said "fcuk" - and she was with her parents. So when I told my girl it meant "nothing" I was telling the truth!