A Balancing Act: Pumpkin Carving and Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Oh Saturday, I have missed you so! I was supposed to tackle a lovely 8 mile run in the freezing cold this morning, but since it decided to snow this morning, I was stuck squeezing in 6 miles on the treadmill when the gym opened this morning! Updates on the snow and running to come tomorrow! I will say that this run was only the start of what will be a busy day! Since the Gougler's days in Pittsburgh are limited and dwindling quite fast, we're try to make the most of every day we have here! Today, we're heading out to West Virginia to go to one of JP's colleague's home for a football party! Naturally, everyone there are big OSU fans, but since the Texas A&M game is on at noon, everyone is coming out early to celebrate the Aggies with us! Updates and pictures to come on Monday's weekend recap post! I know there will be lots of food, booze and fun people, so I have a strange feeling it'll be a good time. Tomorrow night, we have a Halloween party to go to for one of our friends on our flag football team! I've never been a big Halloween fan, but I think it will be nice to dress up after skipping out the past few years!

Now let's rewind to Thursday night. JP and I met Maria up at the gym for a work out {obviously}. After we hit the cardio machines and the weights, we stopped by the grocery store to pick up our PUMPKINS!!! Neither of us had carved a pumpkin yet this year, so it was clearly time. We also made some french fries, zucchini fries and mummy dogs for a Halloween themed dinner :)

Mummy dogs! Before the went into the oven. They didn't live long enough to have an after pic...we were starving!

Drawing my pumpkin's face! I named him Mater {from Cars} because of his buck teeth!

Maria taking the first stab!

Pumpkin guts! My favorite part of carving :)

The finished product!

Okay, so we're clearly not pumpkin carving experts or artists by any means, but we had a blast doing it and that's what matters!

Yesterday I decided to roast the seeds from our pumpkins. I did a batch of sweet and another of savory. I based both of my recipes off of others which you can find at the end of the post. Take a look at some pictures and my version of the recipes I found below!

For the Spiced Seeds you need: 1 cup of pumpkin seeds, 2 tsp Worcester sauce, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp garlic powder, 1/4 tsp of chili powder and 1 tbsp melted butter

Preheat the oven to 275 degrees. Mix all of the ingredients together in a baking dish. Bake for 45 minutes, let cool and enjoy!

For the kettle corn style pumpkin seeds you need: 1 cup of pumpkin seeds, 1 1/2 tbsp of butter, 1 tbsp of sugar and a dash of salt

Preheat oven to 275 degrees. Mix seeds, butter and sugar together in a bowl. Spread out along a foil wrapped baking sheet. Sprinkle with salt then bake for 25 minutes, let cool and enjoy!