Saving squash seeds

[Primrose]

What does everybody do with their winter squash seeds? Do you just compost them or dry them so they can be toasted & eaten as a snack? If the latter, what's the best way of dealing with them? (We've recently been trying various varities of Dr. Karg chrispbreads from a Health Food shop with pumpkin seeds and they're absolutely delicious, so would like to be able to make use of them in future.)

[Alison]

I have tried roasting ordinary squash seeds, but they had a very fibrous covering / skin and were therefore inedible - we kept spitting bits out and they got stuck in our teeth!
You need particular varieties which have 'hull-less' seeds. I then grew Lady Godiva, which produces only masses of seeds - the flesh is not edible. The seeds were nice, but it seemed rather a waste not to have lovely flesh as well. There is also a pumpkin called Triple Treat (I think) which has hull-less seeds AND has edible flesh, so that would be the one to grow to get both!
Alison.

[Primrose]

Thanks for that Alison. I'm currently drying a batch of Crown Prince seeds which are rather large and I wondered if the outer skin would be too harde & tough when roasted - you have confirmed my suspicion. Since they can't be sown as new plants never come up true, I guess I'll just have to buy seeds for nibbling from the health food shop, unless anybody else has discovered a different way of treating them which makes them edible.

[peter]

I tried the hull-less type last year, don't think I'm very good at drying them.

They all stuck together and went smelly and orrible in the warm oven. Didn't dry out properly either.