Garden to Table Challenge - Week Eleven

Hey, look at that - I'm actually posting when I'm supposed to be!

This is the last week to enter the Garden to Table Challenge. Prizes will be drawn this week, so if you'd like to enter, this is the week to do it! Just share what you've been cooking, from your garden or locally purchased fruits and veggies, and link up with Wendy at Greenish Thumb.

This week's 'recipe' is a simple, high-energy, tasty, and mostly homemade snack. It's not really a recipe, and it's completely alterable, but here's what we had on hand this morning.

Spiced pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, dried apples, and dried apricots.



To make spiced pumpkin seeds (you have GOT to try these):

Wash and dry your pumpkin seeds. I scrub them over a colander, then spread them on a stoneware cookie sheet overnight to dry.

Mix up your tasty goodness: about four tablespoons of melted butter, a dash of salt, then cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves to your taste. (Or you could use allspice. Or you could use apple pie spice. Or you could use anything else that sounds good.) I added a pinch of stevia. If you're not on a no-sugar diet, you could add some sugar instead. Mix all that in a bowl to make a "sauce".

Put your dry pumpkin seeds in a plastic bag. (Or a bowl.) Pour the "sauce" over them, seal the bag, and let your small ones squish the bag to their heart's content. (Or stir in the sauce, if you're using a bowl.) Make sure the seeds are well covered, then spread onto a baking sheet.

Bake at 275* til golden, stirring about every five minutes. Mine took almost half an hour.

Then, unless you had no plans for them, hide them from your children, who will happily burn their tongues on the hot seeds in order to eat them as quickly as you'll allow.

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To the spiced pumpkin seeds, I added some dried apples (from a local farm), dried apricots (from a neighbor's tree) and sunflower seeds (some from our yard, some from the store.) Then I raided the cupboards to see what else would be good with them, and found some raisins, almonds, cashews, walnuts and dates.

I make up little baggies of mixes like this anytime we're going to be out and about during the day. Inevitably, children end up starving dramatically as soon as we walk into a store. This seems to fend that off, and I can snack along with them and not feel too guilty about it.

And now, we'll take our snack mix along as we go parade on Main Street with the other kids in costumes, in hopes that my children will fill up on this wholesomeness before they have sacks full of candy to devour.