Springy February

It is February 1, and despite the freezing temperatures we still get at night, a Lebanese proverb says: February, no matter how loud it screams and kicks (referring to any February storms), it will always have the smell of summer in it.

In the proverb's spirit, I thought I will feature a summer story from le jardin. I had three sunflowers that were huge and as high as the house. Once they have had their days, I dried the flowers and extracted all the seeds.

The big question became what to do with the seeds. Roasting them, using a common sense recipe, was the most logical solution.

I spread the seeds in a pan, sprinkled them with oil and salt, mixed them around and roasted them.

Given that I have not made sunflower seeds before nor was I following a recipe, I had no benchmark for roasting. So I kept roasting them until they were crunchy and opened easily with my teeth.

Now I had a whole bunch of seeds, they were fun to eat and crunch, but there is a limit to how much one could eat in a month. 

The only interesting recipe I found was for a Pumpkin Seed Brittle. It looked easy, it worked well, but it tasted horrible. Was it because I did not take the shells off? Or was it because they were salted? Any thoughts anyone?


At least the cat enjoyed his flying to the heights of sunflowers along the way.