Am…musings

… unless they bought a big-ass ottoman and “baby” won’t fit in the middle of the tiny living room any more.

I put my Christmas tree (a.k.a. “baby” for the purposes of this post only) in its regular center-of-the-picture-window spot and had planned to put the ottoman somewhere else. But then I remembered that I live in a really small house and there really isn’t anywhere else available. The ottoman is also big-ass enough that it won’t safely make it down the steps, and I’d much rather put “baby” in the corner than scrape my windows every morning, which is what would happen if I replace my car with the ottoman in my miniscule garage.

So I dragged poor “baby” to the corner. It looks pretty good from the inside, and not too bad from the street. (Yes, I’m anal … I typically take an outside peek a few times in the tree-trimming process to make sure it’s centered and the garland and ornaments look ok.)

Now, if only my “Johnny” would magically appear for a kiss under the mistletoe and some dirty dancing. Instead, I’ll settle for one of my favorite holiday activities, turning off the lamps, lighting a few candles and admiring the gorgeous tree with a glass of wine or Bailey’s and decaf.

Yes … I’m a little behind the times. Because I like to decorate with pumpkins in the fall and keep my decorations up through Thanksgiving, I don’t carve most of them. I usually just pitch them after Turkey Day, but because I grew them in my new garden this year, the trash didn’t seem like a fitting end for some of them.

I say “some” because of the nasty worm issue that you may remember. Thankfully, my tactics for de-worming and preserving the pumpkins worked … all but one of the little orange guys I saved made it through and hit the trash just a few days ago. And the “some” I didn’t pitch were two that actually made it out of the garden without worms.

Although I tend to be a bit of a princess, I enjoy digging in to clean out the pumpkin “guts” (I guess from years of carving pumpkins with my dad as a kid), and I couldn’t resist cutting into one of survivors the minute it finished its decorating tour of duty.

Even though they were smaller pie pumpkins, there were lots of seeds for roasting. I found a few recipes on the Internet. This one suggested boiling the seeds before roasting them.

I was pleased with the crispy result, although I waited to salt them until after boiling so that I could add some different spices like garlic pepper.

I still have one pumpkin left. It just seems crazy to me to go through all the trouble of messing with the flesh when I can buy a can of pumpkin, but I may try a pumpkin pie just because it makes me smile to think that I actually grew something I can create a pie with.