Who began the halloween tradition of roasted pumpkin seeds?
From the recipe archive, for Halloween pumpkin carving. Fall has arrived and with it, the pumpkin season. There are always plenty of pumpkins to carve up around Halloween time and a great way to make use of the pumpkin seeds is eat them, salted and toasted. Our preference is with the shells on – if they are toasted properly they are wonderfully crunchy and easy to eat. It helps if you are going to eat them with the shells on that you use seeds from sugar pumpkins, somewhat smaller than the mega-sized carving pumpkins (not really pumpkins but large squash). The trick? Boil the seeds in salted water first, and then toast them in the oven. http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/toasted_pumpkin_seeds/ As a kid, I don’t remember roasting pumpkin seeds after our jack-o-lantern carving. Perhaps Mom and Dad were too overwhelmed with the cleanup to think about it — or maybe one of them secretly hated pumpkin seeds.
