3 punkin seeds

A tasty vegan snack, coming tonight, cause dan is running late...bah

The post, months late:
Preheat oven to 300
Gut the pumpkin, it's easier if you carve them out with a spoon. Separate the seeds from the orange stringy stuff, you can soak them in water to soften the seeds if you want. Then shake the seeds in ziploc filled with olive oil and sea salt, and put them on a cookie sheet in a single layer. Bake for 30-40 minutes stirring occasionally, until lightly browned. You may have to taste them to make sure they are totally dried out.

2 DIY pickles

As you may or may not already know, I'm secretly domestic in an "I rock out to The Cramps while I cook food I dumpstered" kind of way and try hard to be the closest thing I could be to a homesteader, you know, only living in an apartment. So, to learn one of the oldest and most preserved (literally) food skills, I got some boil canning equipment from my grandparents barn and Dan and I made pickles a couple weeks ago. The recipe
-1/3rd cup picking spice
-1 1/2 liters vinegar
-2 liters water
-5-6 pds FIRM pickling cukes
-1/2 cup sugar
-1/3rd or 2/3rd cups PICKLING salt. Not regular salt.

1) Soak yer cut up pickles in a bath of ice and cold water for 2hrs-24hrs, being sure to keep the bath cold.


2) Sterilize, lest you like botulism. Put the lids and bands in a small pot and simmer them for 10 minutes (YOU CANNOT REUSE LIDS, ONLY BANDS). We sterilized the ball jars (don't use mayo/old pasta sauce/etc jars, they don't seal properly when reused. Use ball or knox) by boiling them in the canner rack for about 20 minutes. Water should go 1/2 inch over the top of the jar. Be careful when taking out the rack and draining the jars because the jars are filled with scalding water.



3) Brine. While this is going on, make yer brine. We mixed the water, salt, vinegar, spice, and sugar. Let it simmer for about 20 minutes. The vinegar burns your throat and nose so put a fan on if you have one.


4) Jar. Put the pickles in the jar, cram them in as tight as you can. It helps if you keep the jars in the rack. Ladle in the brine leaving 1/4th inch of headroom. Sprinkle in some spice if you'd like. Then take a knife and slide it up and down the sides of the jars to remove air bubbles. Put the lids and bands on.

5) Seal. Put the rack with the jars back in yer canning pot and boil for 25 minutes. Water should be 1/2 inch over the tops of the jars. If you boil them for too long the pickles get kind of soft, which unfortunately happened to some of ours. Remove the jars and let them cool for a couple hours. If you can't push down the lid of the jar, a+ job! Store yer pickles in a cool dark place for between 8 weeks to 1 year. If you can pop the lid down, do not pass go do not collect 200$ the jar didn't seal. Put it in the fridge and eat it within the next few days.

6) Wait. Unless yer like us and opened a jar after 2 weeks.

1

I like air travel. It's travel for the chronically late. I'm on average 30 minutes late for every flight and have never missed one. This week at Logan I was 30 minutes late for my flight, 30! Not only did I get to cut in line at security, but my flight was delayed and so I was actually right on time. Now, later that week I was traveling with an early to Reagan International. We got there thirty minutes before my flight and I had to wait around for 3 hours thanks to delays. Three hours! A plight that coul've easily been avoided. We're on the same wavelengths, US Airways, Alitalia, Delta and I. The early, the anal, feel frustration at the time they will have to spend in the terminal because of their flights untimely delay. Has anything been gained from being early? Have you ever been bumped up to first class because you got there early and the flight isn't full yet? Has the captain ever announced "This flight will be leaving an hour earlier than planned! Avast ye early, rejoice, fuck, and make merry!". The late traveler is immediately greeted by a euphoric wash of relief upon seeing "Depature 6:00" jump to "Departure 7:00". As the chronically late, we live in a constant state of adrenaline rushes for just. barely. making. it. We walk right on the terminal for the late flight without having to kill time buying overpriced peanuts and chick-fil-a.