All fright on the night

And hasn't the month gone quickly again! In fact Stephanie gave us longer than usual for this month's blog party and yet still I rush to complete it by the deadline. Ah well nothing changes! This month is was all about Halloween. I was thinking spooky food, creepy food, some sort of witch's brew or maybe more sensibly orange and black food - or as it ended up orange food served on black crockery.
I realised that I'd never tackled carving a pumpkin and felt that this was the time to master this skill hitherto lacking in my repertoire. I didn't heave the largest most obese pumpkin from the pile but bearing in mind that I wanted to contrast my carved pumpkin with my canapés I selected the smallest. In fact I was hoping to find a little squash but only the oversized orange vegetable was available for my delectation. I also picked up some vital pumpkin carving tools and particularly liked the little saws.
And after sketching a miscellany of scary, pointed teeth pumpkin faces, I totally changed my mind and went for the 'J' and the lone bat. Somehow it seems much more me!
I was planning on using the pumpkin interior chopped up into cubes and skewered with some chipolatas. However as veteran pumpkin carvers are surely already aware there's really nothing but seeds and some stringing fibrous pumpkiny bits within so entirely useless edibilty wise!
So instead I made some carrot with a touch of ginger soup and served it in the tiny Nigella espresso cups. Though it looks a little like orange sorbetit really is carrot.
Next I made little welsh rarebits (or it really should be "rabbits" but apparently the original name confuses vegetarians) with cider and double Gloucester to ensure a more carrot topped hue. I am rather partial to a rarebit, it just seems a couple of notches up from cheese on toast. I loved the slightly glazed topping and the ever-so gooey circles were maybe not particularly spooky but more importantly, delicious!
And for a blood-curdling drink I went for the very refreshing freshly squeezed orange juice with a dash of raspberry.
All very chilling I hope you agree. And when I catch up with the other ghoulish blog party entries, they will be here...

PS - I stumbled on so much bat-speckled and ghost strewn crockery and also a plethora of pumpkin table paraphernalia when researching for this party, but I resisted! Though if I had stumbled across little orange pumpkin table confetti I might have caved in!