How to harvest & roast sunflower seeds – and some other fun things to do with them

It is just towards the end of sunflower seed harvest time.  If you still have those giant sunflowers standing in the garden, you can harvest the sunflower seeds and toast them, or save the seeds for next year’s planting as well as to give to friends and family as gifts this holiday season.

First, The Big Red Kitchen made an excellent post on how to harvest and roast sunflower seeds, she includes just about everything you could possible want to know about doing the task, including a ton of very detailed photos she took of the process.  Brambleberries in the rain is just starting the process and included some good “work in progress” photos.  I am always amazed at how large some of these sunflower heads can get, although might were much closer in size to these ones this year!

Dianes Dishes has a great recipe for making whole wheat sunflower bread, which should give it a really unique flavor, especially for kids who tend to tire of whole wheat bread, especially when they are begging for white bread!

Love, Honor & Cherish has adorable Sunflower Seed Favors that can be used at weddings, but you must look at them because they have so many great ideas you can use them for, such as for place tags at Thanksgiving dinner.

Eat Real has pumpkin muffins with plenty of sunflower seeds used on top… they are making me hungry!  The recipe is on Barbaric Gulp but the pictures on Eat Real are fabulous.

RecipeZaar has a brand recipe for making your own honey roasted sunflower seeds… and these are still less expensive to make even if you buy your own sunflower seeds, than buying the seeds that have already been honey roasted.  And these would be great for giving out to trick or treaters that you know well (such as kids and family friends).

Speedvegan made sunflower pate… I admit, this was the first time I had even considered such a thing, although I knew there was such a thing as sunflower butter (in the style of peanut butter), so pate isn’t that much of a stretch!

Kopiaste has photos of Whole Wheat Rolls with Sunflower seeds, with the recipe originally from Canadian Living.

And don’t forget the birdies!  Milkweed Diaries shows some different ways to use the entire sunflower as bird “Feeders” of sorts, such as tying them on a trellis.

And just because, I follow the Getting Stitched on the Farm blog, and while I follow it for the crafty side of things mostly, she does have some awesome pics of the Moulin Rouge sunflower… a sunflower that is a deep wine color.