Pumpkin seeds

[Paulines7]

I bought some really delicious pumpkin bread from a local baker a few weeks ago.  I don't know if it was ordinary bread with just the seeds on top, but I would love to know which pumpkin seeds can be used for cooking.  The ones on the bread were green.

This year I have seeds from Howden, Lil pump-ke-mon and Sugar Pie.  Does anyone know if the seeds from these will be edible please?  I would also be interested to know which pumpkins produce green seeds.  I assume seeds have to be roasted before use.  Your help in this matter is much appreciated.    :D

[Paulines7]

[valentinelow]

I roasted the seeds from my giant pumpkin (Hundredweight) and they were delicious. After wiping most of the pulp off - but not washing them, apparently you want to leave some of the gungy stuff on - I mixed them with some oil and flavoured them with salt, pepper, celery salt and a bit of paprika. Apart from the fact that I slightly overdid the salt, they were great.

[Ceratonia]

As an alternative to roasting them, they're pretty nice after a couple of minutes in the microwave. We made some nice sugar/vanilla coated ones as well as doing them in salt.

I *think* all pumpkin & winter squash seeds are edible, but the thickness of the hull varies a lot and I think you'd need to be quite keen if the seeds have a thick husk.

[Jeannine]

Hi, yes they are all edible, I use all my pumpkin and squash seeds,you can roast them  or eat them green, try breaking open a large seed from your stash, you will see inside the kernel is not dried out, I just ate one and it was delicious, Just discard the outer husk and then use the inner seed, this is what is one your bread, same with sunflowers. If you want to roast them, leave them in the husk, the same as you would do with a peanut, just crack the shell open and eat the roasted kernel.

PLEASE DON'T EAT ANY SEEDS THAT HAVE BEEN TREATED, they are dyed a vivid green or pink and it is unlikey you would miss it.

I am not suggesting you dive in and eat all your seed collection either but opening a large seed will show you what I mean. I eat the ones I grow.


The bigger ones are easy to get out so you will find the Howden the easiest, the Sugar Pie OK, but the Pumpkin man night be very faffy.

It is only the outside husk that is white.

So chomp away, you will like them.

If they are fresh, you can eat the husks too, but they do get hard very quickly, I often eat the seeds of the smaller squash when they are picked fresh.

XX Jeannine

[VP]

Hi everyone,

I've grown Kakai the past couple of years just for the seed as it doesn't have the outer husk. The pumpkin's good too, though probably just meets Jeannine's soup standard. I dry roast the seeds and they taste fabulous. The pumpkin is medium sized, so you need to grow a few to get a decent haul of the seed. I got mine from Suffolk Herbs. If I have some spare I'll put them in Jeannine's seed swap.

I've also got Baby Bear from Dobies to try this year, another huskless seed. The pumpkin's are much smaller, don't know about the pumpkin flavour or seed haul yet. The packet's a bit on the smallish side, so there won't be enough for swapsies - sorry

[Paulines7]

Thank you very much everyone for your replies, at least I know now that I won't poison myself buy growing and eating seeds from the wrong ones.

Jeannine, what do you mean by "faffy"?  I have never heard of the word before.  Is it Canadian?  This is what I found when I looked it up on the Internet.    :o   ;D ;D
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=faffy

[Jeannine]

Fiddly, small and difficult to do.  Screaming with laughter here nowXX Jeannine

[Rob08]

Fiddly, small and difficult to do.  Screaming with laughter here nowXX Jeannine

LOL, the meanings listed in the urban dictionary are somewhat different aren't they?

[Jeannine]

Especially because my Mum used to say stop faffing around with that and get on with the job!!

XX Jeannine

[Paulines7]

 ;D ;D ;D

[JimmyJames]

Hehe!!  My Mum always says 'stop fafing around' too :)

I think its great to see all the different meanings for a word that I have always assumed to mean one thing.

I looked for 'Faf' on that website.  Many of the results were quite rude, but here are 2 of the cleaner, and more appropriate results:

5. faf 

A faf is a job or task which is seemingly pointless and arduous.

Shaving is such a faf.


6. faf 

Someone who messes around doing a lot of activity and takes a long time to get job done

Instead of fafing around, I'll get an expert to fix it

;D

[Paulines7]

FAF is also short for Friends of Avian Flu according to this website!   :o 

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/334/7608/0

Quite topical at the moment.   :(