I could talk about so many things in this space. Giving out Halloween candy at the new house, dressing a recalcitrant boy up as Tigger, pictures to follow, or even gossiping with neighbors. But no the thing i wish to impart is much simpler. After a speed carving of the pumpkin to grace the outside of our house tonight I left all of the pumpkin guts in a big bowl for later sorting and pumpkin seed creation, i love pumpkin seeds.
Now i had to wing this whole pumpkin seed creation thing so please bear with me. BTW i also made a pumpkin mash out of the meat from inside the pumpkin, good stuff. Ok so here is how this went down. I start by sorting the seeds out. Check, step one simple. Oil and spice the seeds, check! drop seeds into oven after removing all other pans. errr check? ok so i forgot one cast iron skillet and removed it after about a half our at 400 degrees, we’ll be back to this so remember it.

Let me set the scene for you its 11 o’clock we finally got a recalcitrant boy dressed as Tigger, undressed and put to bed relatively quietly. Wife is exhausted as the boy was a mess today, every hour not wanting to be put down, always crying seeming not to be comfortable in his own skin. She passes out upstairs. Smoke alarm goes off due to cast iron pan in oven, smoking. Remove pan. wipe excess oil from seasoned seeds, steal a few.
11:30 seeds tasted and away, fabulous job for winging my way through the process. Pans washed and drying. kitchen cleaned up. Starting to put the pans back in the oven. Oven is off. one by one i grab all of the pans thinking towards tomorrow and sharing the aforementioned damn fine seeds. I grab with my bare hand the handle of the cast iron pan and quickly pick it up not thinking. Apparently cast iron retains heat remarkably well.
Pan burns hand. What happens next I can only describe as a quick reflex battle between mind and hand. Pan burns hand, mind tells hand to thrown burning pan across room, mind halts this halfway through swing, Mind makes body leap in response to pain towards the rug and then drop pan quickly. Mind then puts the stop to a blood curdling yell in response to now red swollen hand, baby is asleep you know. Body responds by jumping what can only be described as the highest i have ever jumped in response to pain, and the inability to yell. I swear to god i cleared the counter, 4 feet vertical leap. Hand burned, pride injured, blog posted.