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So far this month, we've bought around 8 pumpkins. Half of those are already out in the compost bin. And not because I messed up a carving design. They all actually were purposefully mutilated into chunks that were of no use as a front door decoration. So, why get them just to toss them aside? Because we were just after those precious, precious seeds. And those seeds have been the hardest things to come by this year.
A couple of weeks ago, Kevin and I picked up a couple of pumpkins from our nearby Safeway, seeing as they were on sale. They were labeled "medium-sized" pumpkins, but seemed large enough for me. We figured they'd be good for a seed crop that'd last a week or so. Unfortunately, they both were almost bare. And after I salted and roasted the seeds, they only lasted a couple of days (we're kinda addicts). I did, however, cook most of the pumpkin and made some decent pumpkin bread. So, the effort wasn't entirely wasted.
Last week, I decided to try again. On this attempt, I hit up our local Tacoma Boys store for a couple of the largest pumpkins I could find, acting on a hunch that the larger the pumpkin, the more seeds to be had. So, fourteen dollars later, I had myself 80 pounds of pumpkin sitting on my kitchen table. Upon carving these pumpkins though, I realized something wasn't quite right. Maybe it was because I was gagging uncontrollably after I cut into the first one. Or that cutting into the second one nearly had me crawling out of the room. Turns out, both of these pumpkins were moldy and rotten, despite not having any of the tell-tale signs on the outside. Seeing as I am incredibly allergic to mold, being in the same room with these things wasn't in my best interest. Neither was saving the seeds from these. We wound up with a pathetically small number of seeds after Kevin spent hours outside on the back porch trying to see if any of them would still be worth roasting.
So, I decided to give up on the whole "harvest the seeds" plan, and picked up four small sugar pumpkins to carve up and set out on the front porch this past weekend. Turns out, those suckers are FILLED with seeds. We had nearly 3 times the amount we had from our first batch. I couldn't believe it. So, yeseterday evening, I happily roasted enough seeds to last us quite awhile. In fact, I'm munching on some right now. And from all this, I learned that honest intentions are NOT the best policy when hunting down foodstuffs. But reverse psychology? Works like a charm.