Making sunlight liquid | Big Size Pumpkin Seeds

To hull dried sunflower seeds, begin by breaking them up with a rolling pin, hammer or food chopper. Then,  drop seeds and hulls into a large container of water and stir vigorously. The kernels will sink to the bottom and the shells will float. Dry the kernels before roasting or storing.

Not long after, in the spring of 2015, VanHeulen literally was moving on up — from the basement kitchens to the penthouse restaurant, 27 floors up in the sky. VanHeulen’s stellar cooking led to his promotion to sous chef, then to chef de cuisine after a brutal audition against ambitious chefs from New York City and Chicago who hungered for AAA Four Diamond mark of distinction prestige.

You can wait until New Year’s Eve to set forth goals — but it could be the wrong time to make a change.

But if managed well, cottonseed meal and cotton residue can help cattle farmers put the full product of a cotton harvest to use profitably. Cottonseed hulls have about 17 percent less protein than soybean hulls, but soybeans hulls cost about 25 percent more.

Holidays are prime time to ride the wave of truffle season, as every chef in Aspen has a hookup. “We’ll make it rain truffles on anything,” confirms Casa Tua Aspen front-of-house manager Andrea Testa, adding that last year’s effort totaled more than 5 pounds. The chic Italian restaurant is blowing out New Year’s Eve with a baller white-truffle-topped tasting menu—including on mille-feuille dessert. 403 S. Galena St., 970-920-7277, casatualifestyle.com

ANTIGO – What was once a quaint seed oat cleaning operation owned and operated by a lone potato farmer in Antigo, Wisconsin, has evolved to become a sizable rotational crop specialist for almost every potato farm in Langlade County.

“All of the nutrition and feed value is in the groat [hulled kernel], and generally the lighter the test weight, the higher the proportion of hull to groat. Neither commercial oat mills nor feed mills want light test weight oats—there is just no value to them,” Scott says.

Hulled sunflower seeds, which are also called sunflower kernels or sunflower chips, are ideal for most birds because they are pure food — no waste, no mess, no germination. The extra step of removing the shells, however, increases the cost. Also, hulled sunflower seeds spoil quickly when wet, so they should be placed in a feeder that keeps them dry. GoldCrest’s All-Weather Feeder is the only truly weather-proof feeder on the market, and it’s ideal for kernels.

For at least half a decade, a handful of beauty ingredients and treatments have reigned supreme: retinol, hyaluronic acid, vitamin C, microdermabrasion, lasers. Wendy Ouriel, the creator of the Los Angeles-based organic skin-care line Oumere — an amalgamation of her surname and “telomere,” the compound at the end of chromosomes that prevents DNA strands from unraveling — takes issue with all of the above. A trained cellular biologist, Ouriel believes the treatments to be damaging on the cellular level — and what is aging if not the accumulation of cellular damage over time? Since launching her brand in 2016, and her blog, Bioluminescence, a year later, she’s become a sort of skin-care renegade, amassing a devoted fan base that includes China Chow and the artist Katerina Jebb. Dover Street Market recently stocked Oumere, which is also available at Sally Hershberger, for its new store in downtown L.A.

In the late 1990s, the Mullers pivoted to pumpkins as a way to save their farm. This quickly made them local legends, in part because the Mullers moved in when others were moving out.

Moko is resolute about not having a nanny—“Why do I have to pay someone to raise our kids?” she asks—so the two keep the café closed on weekends and late nights. The girls have become a fixture for regulars, who they’ll often engage. Today, Mia is pointing out her sparkly new shoes.

Brian Barcus, recently named executive chef at The Commoner restaurant in downtown Pittsburgh, says consumers should think outside the box when using pumpkin in cooking.