Toasted Pumpkin seeds

Toasted Pumpkin Seeds are a Favorite Fall treat in our house

This is the method I use every year to toast our pumpkin seeds that come from the carnage of carving our Jack o lanterns. If you have ever carved 5 pumpkins at one time you would completely understand the carnage comment. We seriously had a mound of pumpkin innards over a foot tall. These seeds rarely make it into November. (even with hiding them.) I make different flavors but they all start out the same.

Toasted Pumpkin Seeds

Ingredients

• Clean pumpkin seeds (no pumpkin innards just seeds)
• Vegetable Oil or Olive Oil (any cooking oil works)
• Choice of seasoning (my family prefers cinnamon and sugar)

Directions

1. Pre-heat oven to 400°
2. Toss seeds in oil to even coat. (It prevents them from drying out too much and will help the flavor coating stick better.)
3. Cook for 10 minutes and remove from oven. Checking to make sure they are not browning. You only want them to start turning golden brown.
4. In a bowl place your seasoning. Toss your seeds in the bowl to evenly coat in seasoning.
5. Place seeds back into the oven for 5-8 more minutes. Watching closely so they do not over brown.

Seasoning

Cinnamon and sugar ~ 1 cup sugar and 1TB cinnamon

Spicy~ Toss seeds in your favorite hot sauce

Salty ~ Crack sea salt on the seeds before baking the second time. Sea salt tastes better to me than table salt on seeds, but you can use table salt.

I still have another batch of seeds to make. Any suggestions on a flavor to try?

Everyone have a safe and Happy Halloween.

Basket-case

I've been a bad blogger lately, I have been so busy with life that I didn't have the mental capacity at the end of the day to come up with coherent thoughts.  I've been waking up in time to walk my oldest girls to school for their early morning instrument ensemble and then having trouble falling asleep at night.  With being a stay at home mom I still feel like there is never enough hours in a day.  (even with insomnia)  I keep trying to remind myself that Halloween is just the warm-up act for the insanity that is the Holiday season.  I can't lose my grip on my sanity just yet.  There are still a few more months to go before we are safely through the season.

My husband has taken a few days off from work and you would think that having him home would make things easier. I have found it isn't true at all.  It may just be me but I can't seem to get that much of my housework done with him home.  We end up sitting around watching tv or joking around.  Not a bad alternative but my house needs serious cleaning daily with four kids, 2 adults, a parrot and two hamsters living in it.

To help make cleaning easier I use the basket method.  When cleaning my front room I take a small laundry basket and put everything in it that does not belong in that room. Tidying everything up as I clean.  When I get everything picked up in the room I put away all the items from the basket and then continue with another room.  I love using small laundry baskets to clean but laundry is one of my least favorite household chores to do.

I love small laundry baskets.  Everyone in my house has one with their name on them.  When doing laundry I gather the baskets I place the laundry in each basket as I fold.  Then I have my children put their laundry away.  Even my four-year old tornado puts away her laundry.  Sometimes it inspires her to have a full-blown outfit change, but it's one less basket of laundry I have to contend with.

Clicker Training Hamsters

I am a sucker for animals that need a home. Our African Grey parrot Mezmo is a rescue bird. (He came to us just last December) Mezmo had some behavior problems but after serious clicker training he has changed drastically. It took some work with great guidance from a set of Bird Tricks DVD's I purchased. My only regret was not buying the DVD's sooner.

My youngest sister is moving out-of-state soon and I guess her friend thought it would be the perfect chance to pawn some angry hamsters off on someone. (someone she may never see ever again.) After accepting them my sister realized that there was no way she could take the hamsters on the long move.

In turn our family recently acquired 2 dwarf hamsters with cage and supplies, from my little sister. They are two girl Dwarf hamsters, one is white with pink eyes and the other looks just like the picture. Her friend's kids had stopped handling them as often as they should due to other newer pets in the house, which was why their mom got rid of them. The hamsters are not very well socialized and they will bite. They are very aggressive when treats are given. I think they had also been teased. We are going to try to do clicker training with them. Clicker training is a great trust building activity. It has worked very well with our parrot.

I learned what I know about clicker training from the DVD's we purchased from Bird Tricks. After some research on the web I found someone using clicker training for hamsters as well. Rodents being a food reward type animal clicker training the hamsters will be very similar to the bird. I will just use what I learned from the DVD's and adapt the training for small animals and not a bird.

My goal is to get the hamsters to the point that my kid's can hold them without the hamsters attempting to bite them. As a family, we plan to go visit the nearby pet store this weekend and pick out some new accessories for the hamsters' cage. Our oldest two daughters want to name the hamsters as a family this weekend as well.

Related Articles

• Is a Hamster a Good First Pet? (brighthub.com)