October 19, 2024

WEEKLY MENU 10.20.24

We’re getting awfully close to fright night – the mighty pumpkin has it’s big day during the Weekly Menu 10.20.24~

Why is the Halloween planning ramping up during the Weekly Menu 10.20.24? It’s National Pumpkin Day on Friday, October 26th, days before the BIG day! I love pumpkins throughout fall, but they are quintessentially Halloween in October. Plus, if you carve your pumpkins on Saturday, you’re mostly prepped for the Halloween Party. Or, you can get the pumpkins in house and carve them during the party!

It’s not too late to send text invites and plan a Halloween Party. We’ve got the ideas for days…

How to Have a Screaming Good Halloween Party

Okay, first of all, some interesting info about the mighty gourd from Oh, My Gourd! 13 Pumpkin Fun Facts and Calandarr.com

Pumpkins Are Technically a Fruit
Each Pumpkin Produces About 500 Seeds
Canned Pumpkin Isn’t Actually Pumpkin (It turns out that “pumpkin” puree sold in a can is usually made of Dickinson squash, a relative of butternut and acorn squash.)
Cinderella Popularized Pumpkins (The story of Cinderella wouldn’t be the same without that pumpkin that turned into a coach to take her to Prince Charming’s ball, so it’s fitting that the fairy tale was the first time the word “pumpkin” was used in the form we know it today.)
Pumpkins Grow Everywhere Except Antarctica
The U.S. Produces 1.5 Billion Pounds of Pumpkins Every Year
Pumpkins Weren’t Always Popular on Halloween
The tradition of carving pumpkins on Halloween started from a scary Irish folktale about a man named Stingy Jack. People in Ireland and Scotland eventually started carving faces into root vegetables like turnips and beets to create jack-o-lanterns to keep evil spirits away.
Pumpkins come in many different colors like orange, pink, white, red, green, and even blue pumpkins! They also come in different sizes, one of the smallest varieties being called the ‘Jack-be-little’.

Decorating Pumpkins has gotten very high tech. There are fabulous stencils and carving tools designed for just this purpose. (Affiliate links follow – see Disclaimer Page for Details)

Pumpkin carving gone awry…

Back (way back) in the day, my teeny tiny baby seester went to town on her very big pumpkin, enjoying the freedom of wielding the largest knife in the kitchen. She enjoyed it so much that the pumpkin ears took up much of the pumpkin. (She had exquisite attention to detail, but a little issue with scale.) Mom, ever creative, plopped a plump green pepper in each enormous ear hole. DOLD couldn’t even catch his breath when he saw it because he was laughing so hard despite promising Mom that he wouldn’t laugh.

No one really likes the gross innards much around here, and I’ve cleaned out way more than my fair share. Bert decided to forego that entirely a couple of years ago – he draws on a scary face with permanent marker. Once he even cut a perfectly round, very small whole to hold a smoldering cigar. Spooky indeed!

This guy in the video below is a pumpkin carving master, obviously. But there are a bunch of easy ideas in there too. I know because I watched, with complete fascination, the entire video. You’ve gotta love a pumpkin urping guacamole.

I keep my stencils and tools with the Halloween Decorations so I can locate them year after year. I’m good for one pumpkin carved per year (and I always go for the little ones – less gore) so I have pages and pages of stencils waiting for me from years gone by. If you go with stickers, you don’t even have to clean out the pumpkin. But that means no pumpkin seeds.

Pumpkins for days…

My most favorite costume for babies is the pumpkin. We used our costume three times, and it might still be in the costume box.

Is it any wonder I love Halloween?

We’re getting into the “eating pumpkin” mode this week too:

WEEKLY MENU 10.20.24

We’re starting the Weekly Menu 10.20.24 with chicken pot pie covered with puff pastry on top. So fancy! Our recipe calls for rotisserie chicken, but we’ve got chicken on the bone from our butcher haul, so I’ll poach that up with an onion, some celery, and a carrot or two. Maybe a garlic clove if I’m feeling extra special.

We’ll appetize with whipped ricotta and some fabulous crackers. The salad is a simple green one with sliced apple and chopped walnuts on top. I’ll make up a balsamic vinaigrette, and it’s good to go.

I’m making a fabulous statement dessert cake, too. This one is much easier than it looks because it starts with a boxed cake mix and a can of pumpkin. The filling is a mix of Cool Whip, cream cheese, and a little more pumpkin, all topped with a drizzle of caramel sauce and some toasted pecans. The original recipe came from Kraft Kitchens years ago and has been a family favorite ever since. It would be perfect for Thanksgiving, but we always go with pies (and pumpkin cheesecake) so it never makes the cut.

First pumpkin dish of the season!

We’ve got delicious Pork Italiano on the menu again on Monday. I absolutely promise that I’m going to take pictures and post the recipe this time. I know I said it the last four times I made it, but I am super serious this time. It’s a simple dish with a perfect pepper and tomato sauce on top of pasta. Even Bert likes this one. We’re having campanelle pasta this week to spiff it up a bit.

There is an absolutely divine sandwich as part of the Weekly Menu 10.20.24 on Wednesday. The trick is toasting the buns in the bacon fat before assembling all the goodness. The spicy spread helps, too. Ham & Bacon Sandwich sounds simple, but trust me: if you try it, you’ll be sold!

We’re having an Asian-inspired night on Thursday, and since we’ve got meatballs in the freezer, that meal will come together in a snap. The Mongolian Meatball recipe has all the information on making meatballs from scratch, but we’ll just use the sweet and savory sauce to dress our pre-mades. The Instant “Fried” Rice is made with Minute Rice, and it’s not fried. That’s a dinner!