Dental issues and pepitas

I lost a filling in a lower molar yesterday. It doesn't hurt but the cavity feels enormous. I suspect that there is not enough tooth left to repair it and the dentist will advise that I get a crown.

Mrs ERJ is supportive. In spite of the fact that I am becoming higher-maintenance, she isn't making any noise about trading-me-in for a newer model.

Very early on, in our relationship, I observed that her VW rabbit had 147k miles on it and I asked her "Why don't you get a newer car?"

Her response was "There is nothing wrong with this car. I know where all of the controls are by-heart and it does everything that I need a car to do. Why would I get a new one?" 

To some guys, that would be an eccentric quirk. To me, that is a major feature. She doesn't discard items (or people) because she is bored with them or because the paint is faded and the doors have a few dents in them.

Pepitas

Pepitas are edible, inner-seeds of squash or pumpkin seeds. They are usually cleaned of their seed-coat by roasting but the coating can be removed by sudden depressurizing (the bends method) and some varieties of squash have "naked seeds".

In fact, the botanical name for most pumpkins, Acorn, Delicata, Zucchini and Spaghetti squash is Cucurbita pepo.

Ethnobotanists speculate that squashes were first domesticated for their seeds and only later were they selected for edible flesh.

In an austere situation, it is good to be mindful of the fact that pepitas are almost 50% edible fats/oils by weight and those are exactly the nutrients that are hardest to obtain in a subsistence enterprise. While the oil can be extracted and used as liquid oil, it is much easier to simply add the pepitas to your salad or munched on as snacks.

Don't throw squash seeds away after the SHTF. If nothing else, you can use them to bait mouse and squirrel traps.