This
doesn’t have anything to do with any of the so-called themes of this blog,
but since I’ve never cared about that before, why start now? ;)
Last
weekend we celebrated Halloween – a fairly new custom in Finland.
There are ancient Finnish traditions which are not entirely
dissimilar... but fascinating though that topic is, this post is not
about that. (I’m trying so hard not to digress!) Anyway. I thought
I’d share some pictures with you.
I call our
Halloween party the world’s smallest Halloween party, since there’s
usually just three of us. Sometimes, however, we’ve received
reinforcements as my sister-in-law has visited us, and she was able
to join us this year too. (Apparently, we haven’t scared her off
with our weirdness. Or goofy dancing to frighteningly awful Halloween
party music.) That was lovely, we had a good time! :) And it also
meant that I was able to delegate decorating to her and my daughter.
This way, everything was organised excellently, as my sister-in-law
has a good eye for things like that, being very creative, and I had
more time to dedicate to the preparations in the kitchen, with my DH
as my dutiful slave helpmate. In addition to obeying my “grate
this”, “peel that”, “chop those” commands, he also carved
our first ever pumpkin! It turned out beautifully, as you can see in the image at the top of this post (that would be the bigger pumpkin in the centre; the one behind it is actually a ceramic lantern).
We usually
have some sort of icky/weird/funny foods for Halloween, such as these
mice...
...but my
daughter pities the poor mice too much and so I wasn’t allowed to
make them. Instead, we had witches’ fingers (made of turkey
sausages):
And
Jack-o’-lantern shaped quesadillas:
Plus
mandarin orange pumpkins and banana ghosts:
This candy
platter with its skulls, worms, brains etc. delighted my daughter:
And for
dessert, there was also a flourless chocolate cake (which I've made before) with a licorice
spider (I should have put some thought into the web design and the spider in
advance rather than just hastily throwing everything together... I mean, improvising... right
before serving the cake, but, you know... you can’t plan
everything. ;)) The cake turned out very moist and intensely chocolatey, and I received plenty of requests to make this cake more often... I believe the actual words were "all the time" :D
Hurmaavan hirmuinen Halloween kattaus!
ReplyDeleteKaikkea olisin voinut maistaa...
Kaunista marraskuuta!
Kiitos! :) Varpun kanssa piti suunnitella tätä juhlaa jo pitkään etukäteen... tarkkaa hommaa: ruokien täytyy olla sopivasti karmaisevia mutta ei kuitenkaan liian pelottavia/ällöttäviä.
DeleteIhanaa marraskuuta sinnekin! :)
Wow! You prepared a lot of dishes! And that pumpkin looks great, too! Congrats!!! :D It's nice to have assistants, huh?! :)
ReplyDeleteThe supermarkets here were selling a plastic version of the pumpkin that I considered for a while, though I thought it was a bit expensive... But in the end I just got some bats that glow in the dark... ;DDD
i-reader
Hi dear i-reader and thanks for your comment! :)
DeleteMost of the dishes were fairly easy to make and I had done some advance preparations (e.g. I baked the cake the day before) - and you're right, it's nice to have assistants! :)
Oh, the bats that glow in the dark sound amazing! So cool. :D Did you have a Halloween party?
Yeah, they are cute - as opposed to scary!!! :D So, I like them. :)
ReplyDeleteAs for the party, no, we didn't have a halloween one. But I liked your idea of having a small party. It seems fun! Maybe I'll try it. ;)
Have a nice evening.
i-reader.
Oh, cute glow-in-the-dark bats - what could be better! :)
DeleteWe've had a Halloween party almost every year - first it was just two of us (my DH and I), then three. So it's a very small party! :D But sometimes we even invite the one guest! And yes, it is fun. :) My daughter loves it (she can't wait for Halloween!) and when it's a small party, you don't have to stress about the preparations. :)