A Feast for Halloween

I copied Shaheen's spiders idea from Allotment 2 Kitchen for our starter. You wouldn't believe how fiddly they were though! The cheese toasty stars were just a bit too small for the olive spiders, but you get the gist.

The main was a cheesy vegetable bake - all from the allotment: parsnip, potato, carrot,
beetroot and onion. With a bit of black garlic in the sauce.

It looks a bit burnt, but that's just the cheese sauce, which had gone nice and red from the beetroot to make it suitably Halloween-y.

I sliced all the veg thinly and thought they'd all cooked pretty well in about 1½ hours but Jamie  thought they were still a bit undercooked. He's used to eating veg slightly more crunchy than he'd choose to cook them :-)

Earlier we'd visited the allotments to put a Jack-o-lantern in the gateway - another nice bit of carving by Jamie. And we put a light-up ghost balloon on our plot on a long string, but not sure how many people would have spotted that - unless they were going along the canal and saw it over the hedge!

Hallowe'en Feasting

So the pumpkins had their big day yesterday! We gave some to friends and family and we used three for our Halloween activities. We still have a couple left in the greenhouse which I think will be soup (I'm keen on making a thai-style one).

We carved these two during the day and I roasted some more of the seeds - not all of them we'd never get through that many. They're so tasty roasted in a little oil and seasoning, I also added a little turmeric.

I read about taking the hulls off and using the inner kernel like sunflower seeds. The idea of breaking the outer shell beforehand was entirely unsuccessful, so i just boiled them as they were. The hulls didn't slip off easily - in fact it was a real pain and took ages, so I'll stick with the roasting whole method in future!

Our Halloween meal consisted of a starter of purple carrot soup (flavoured with a bouquet garni). And accompanied by cool star-shaped toast.The main was Cornells Delicata squash roasted in rings and filled with chilli Quorn mince.

The allotment site had one Pumpkin Jack as protection against the night's ghouls.

 

Jamie and I went for a midnight meander and it seemed to be doing its job - no trouble on site apart from two slightly tipsy plotholders ;-)

Pumpkins are not just for Halloween...

The Jack-be-Little pumpkins produced lots of fruits for carving and we've got plenty left to eat. I just have to get round to making it!

Colds and cold weather have kept me away from the blog for a bit, but it'll be back in action soon...

Happy Halloween

We had our squashes stuffed with Quorn mince bolognaise on Halloween night. Still have 3 squashes left over which will still be edible when we get back from our hols hopefully.

Jamie's head hurt