Cajun Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Jim and I carved pumpkins the other day.  

I know I give Jim a hard time a lot, in and out of the blog, but he told me that he's only carved pumpkins maybe twice before in his life.  How does that happen?  

So, needless to say, I bought two big pumpkins and imposed my Halloween spirit on him, once again.  

Now for those who don't know, Jim is a Wake Forest grad.  For those of you who are like me out there, you may have never heard of that school before.  Well apparently it's a pretty big deal and we need to educate ourselves.  

Jim is super into his school, and their mascot is a Demon Deacon, shown here.

A maniacal crazed holy man?  How 'ween-appropriate!  I wanted to carve him into a jack-o-lantern, which proved a difficult task, but after Jim declared it impossible...that was when I really hunkered down and got it done.  Here is my pumpkin rendition, with Jim's scary face pumpkin.

I was so proud of myself.  And of Jim, for carving one even though he probably didn't enjoy it nearly as much as I did.

Back to roasting seeds.

While I have yet to attempt roasting the actual pumpkin for pumpkin puree purposes, I will definitely use those seeds.  So scrape the pumpkin gunk off them, rinse them off and roast yourself up some pumpkin seeds.  (Side note, if you do want to roast the actual pumpkin, you should use a sugar pumpkin, not the ones that you buy for carving.)

I made these Cajun, but you can just use salt if you prefer.  

Cajun Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

2 cups washed pumpkin seeds

2 Tbsp olive oil

1 1/2 Tbsp Cajun seasoning

salt to taste

Preheat your oven to 325.  Line a cookie sheet with foil and spread pumpkin seeds out on top of the foil.  Drizzle with olive oil, then sprinkle with seasoning.  Add salt to taste.  Bake in the center rack for 45 minutes, stirring seeds every 15 minutes.