October 21, 2023

WEEKLY MENU 10.22.23

The planning for Halloween ramps into high gear during the Weekly Menu 10.22.23~

Why is the Halloween planning ramping up during the Weekly Menu 10.22.23? It’s National Pumpkin Day on Thursday, October 26th, just in time for the big day! I love pumpkins throughout fall, but they are quintessentially Halloween in October. Plus, if you carve your pumpkins on Thursday, you are halfway prepped for the Halloween Party. Or, you can get the pumpkins in house and carve them FOR the party!

It’s not too late to send out some 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 was always creative, and 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 10.22.23

We’re staring the Weekly Menu 10.22.23 with a recipe that I culled from the fabulous Erie Times News. I usually look at the paper solely for the obits, but this dinner caught my eye because it sounds delicious. It is a little fussy though, which is why I’m planning it for Sunday when I have the afternoon to devote to cooking. It’s Chicken Roulade Stuffed with Chorizo and Monterey Jack on a bed of Creamy Pepper Jack Corn Risotto. I can’t find the exact recipe, so I’ve listed a couple that are close to the one published in the paper.

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 and cream cheese and it’s topped with a drizzle of caramel sauce. The original recipe came from Kraft Kitchens years ago, and has been a family favorite ever since.

Bert is making an appearance in the kitchen on Wednesday, cooking a classic dish. A single skillet dinner with ground beef, peas, corn and canned potatoes, all lightly smothered in a glorious jar of gravy. It’s good to have him back!

Thursday night is a birthday celebration for my OG Goddaughter. I was making a pie when I got the call to head to church (her father had asked me to be God Mammie but forgot to tell me date and time for said baptism) so I have flour in my hair in the pictures. And instead of pie for dessert we’re partying with a fabulous Birthday Cake Martini. So festive!