Ingredients:
2 cups pumpkin seeds
2 Tbsp butter
Preheat the oven to 250F.
Start by, of course, scooping out a pumpkin. You can use the pumpkin to make a cool jack-o-lantern or other decoration! Get a colander and rinse all the innards out, washing away the meat of the pumpkin. The water should leave only the pumpkin seeds behind.
When you've got the seeds clean, shake them dry then lay them out on a layer of paper towels.
Once the seeds are dry, saute the seeds and butter together for about four minutes. This gets the coating done and a nice brown to the seeds.
Now take a cookie sheet and lay the seeds out on it. Bake them for about 1/2 hour.
Let the seeds cool before you eat them!
CARBS:
if you eat 32 seeds, that's about 1g of carbs. So that's a nice, low carb treat! Not only that, but they have a lot of protein in them, so that is wonderful nutrition for a low carb treat. Plus they are free, assuming you bought the pumpkin for other reasons!
OTHER OPTIONS:
If you like a salty version of pumpkin seeds, mix together 1/2 cup of kosher salt and 1 quart of water. Put the seeds into this for a few hours after you rinse them and let them soak up the salt, before drying them.
If you want a more flavorful option, use a seasoned salt for soaking!
Note that if you don't want to use butter for some reason, you can instead do the saute step with your favorite oil plus a bit of salt. This can be a good step to add in a variety of seasoned salts. With all the seasoned salts on the market, you could probably create a different flavor every day for a month without repeating recipes along the way.
THE PUMPKIN:
Pumpkins are native to America, and were enjoyed by Indians before the colonists came along. When you enjoy pumpkin seeds, you're enjoying a treat whose history goes back many hundreds of years!
Lisa Shea's Library of Low Carb Books
