Sunflower Guts!

Sometimes I feel guilty talking about the hippie neighbors upstairs. I mean, they are well intentioned. Also, I told them how much fun I had toasting the sunflower seeds that they gave me an entire bowl full of sunflower seeds, already removed from the flower!

I washed the seeds and laid them out to be toasted. Then I had a thought! Since the hippies were so nice as to already remove them from the flower, why don't I remove them from their shells. This way, when they are done toasting, they will be ready to eat, sans shell. Brilliant!



5 HOURS LATER...



I had the product you see below.



Left: Hulled shells, sans seeds
Right: Seeds, sans shells...Not much of a pile.

And some rather bruised thumbs. Ow!


I persevere (despite the thumbs). I lay the freshly hulled seeds out to be toasted.

Seeds a toasting in the dim toaster oven.

I was amazed to learn that the seeds still POPPED! Despite the lack of shell. I had thought, that perhaps the shell cracking was the popping noise I heard the first time I toasted sunflower seeds. But there they were - right in plain view. Sunflower seed popcorn was jumping off the foil like mad.

A little to quickly, too. Because, after five hours of intense labor, hulling seeds for easy and more delicious consumption...

I burnt half the product in just under 10 seconds.


Burnt and unburnt toasted sunflower seeds.

The upside is the ones that survived the carnage tasted pretty dang good.

And Andy wasn't complaining because he got to eat a bunch of tiny tasty sunflower seeds, in ten seconds flat. Plus, he likes burnt things.