Weekend Rambles: Football & Pumpkins

I'm going to go ahead and confess that this post was intended to review some of the things Stephen and I did over the weekend but quickly turned into a hodgepodge of random things/recipes.

Saturday Stephen and I went back to our Alma Mater and the place we met to watch our UCF Knights kick butt. We had a lot of fun wandering around the campus, tailgating with friends and cheering on our Knights!

Had to get some pictures in front of the Reflection Pond

Freshman year I lived in the building to the right - such a fun location

 

Waiting for the game to start

Sunday, I decided to make some of Christina's delicious pumpkin dip. I've seen a few posts from her about the dip and everyone keeps raving about it so I had to give it a shot! Stephen and I loved it and I think I'm going to bring it to a cookout we're attending next weekend. We halved her recipe and it still made a lot so if you want to full recipe, click here or double mine.

Four things to note: 1. Christina called for some pumpkin pie spice but I couldn't find any at Publix. 2. We decided to put some saran wrap inside the pumpkin before adding the dip so the clean up would be easier. 3. We tried to be festive with the "carving" - the pumpkin was very fresh and was extremely difficult to carve (note the crack from my cut at the eye lol) 4. This was not all of the dip that was made - there was easily double left in the fridge.

Ingredients:
- 1/2 of the 15 oz can of pumpkin
- 2.5ish oz of instant vanilla pudding (don't make the pudding)
- 8 oz cool whip (we used low fat)
- 1/4 tbsp pumpkin pie spice (we didn't have any)
- 1/4 tbsp cinnamon

Directions:
1. Mix  all ingredients (pumpkin, pudding powder, cool whip, pumpkin pie spice & cinnamon) together in a large bowl

2. Chill several hours before serving. Carve your pumpkin while waiting.

3. Optional: Line the pumpkin with saran wrap for easier clean up

4. Fill the pumpkin with the dip and serve with whatever items you like! We used graham crackers and vanilla wafers.

I wanted to make sure that during the fall season, I had the opportunity to make pumpkin seeds. Making the adorable pumpkin dip bowl created the perfect opportunity to get some seeds! This was probably the best batch of roasted seeds I've ever made and I wanted to share the quick and easy steps I followed. I used these instructions but did some modifications. 

Before roasting the seeds (sorry it's a little blurry)

After roasting the seeds (this one's blurry too! Sorry)

Ingredients

- Pumpkin Seeds

- Olive Oil

- Salt/seasoning of choice (we used garlic salt)

Directions

I'm not going to give exact measurements for this since it will vary for everyone. Just use common sense and your judgement for how much of each ingredient to use.

1. Gut your pumpkin and wash pumpkin seeds, removing any remaining pumpkin guts.

2. Dry the pumpkin seeds to the best of your ability. I wasn't able to get mine too dry so don't worry too much about it.

3. Coat your seeds in a little bit of olive oil. The oil will go a long way - don't douse them in olive oil.

4. Add whatever salt or seasoning you want and mix making sure all the seeds are coated. 

5. Place on a baking sheet (I did another quick coating of garlic salt once on the baking sheet) and bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes. 

6. Remove from oven and stir the seeds and bake for another 8-10 min. Enjoy!!