The Ballad of Peter Pumpkin-head

There goes October, flying by and ending with a pumpkin-filled Halloween weekend.

On Saturday we spent much of the day cooking. Jamie made a roasted red pepper and pumpkin soup, with shallots, garlic and onion.

A great colour for a Halloween starter.

I used the other half of the pumpkin for pumpkin pie. I used this recipe, but baked the pumpkin rather than boiling it.

I was pleased to see how much pumpkin purée it produced.

The pie case was bought rather than home-made. I think it could have been a bit deeper.

I was pleased with it. A very tasty dessert…and breakfast…and lunch.

For the main course of our Halloween meal we had Veggie haggis with mushed-up roast potato and celeriac. We used the celeriac that I grew from seed. Although they were extremely slow to grow they eventually produced some pretty good veg - though nothing like the size they sell in shops. We got these two chunks from two plants.

We visited the allotment to leave two Jack-o-lanterns on the site. We carved these three.

At the plot it was sunny and warm with a clear blue sky, but an hour earlier the wind was howling and there was torrential rain. In fact it took down several trees in the area and blew a whole roof off a barn just down the road.

Luckily there was little damage on site; just a few branches, the usual compost bin lids and a couple of cages in unusual positions!

So the weekend ended with the film ‘Young Frankenstein’ (I do love Gene Wilder) whilst chomping on roasted spiced pumpkin seeds and today I have a day off work. Yay!

I expect we’ll visit the plot later. Here is XTC for the song title.