Dotty Textiles: Halloween Weekend

Happy Nearly Halloween!!! It feels a bit strange that actual Halloween isn't until Monday, it feels like it should be tomorrow (Sunday) so that people can really party I have spent most of the day getting spooky in the kitchen, setting up a scary tableau on the table, carving pumpkins and making pumpkin muffins!

It is suitably Autumnal outside which is good as British summertime officially ends tomorrow. Kids are rustling around in the leaves and it is getting chilly my friends!! These Crocuses are a little confused though (above), and are flowering already. Hopefully they won't all flower otherwise we won't know when Spring has arrived.

This morning I popped to the shops for some provisions. A Halloween themed bunch of beautiful flowers, and some treats to fill our cauldron. It is becoming something of a tradition to decorate the end of the dining table. We don't get many trick or treaters our way and The Parents tend to turn the lights off and hide under the table in fear of being called upon anyway, but we decorate the kitchen just for ourselves.

These flowers are absolutely beautiful!! Such gorgeous orange and purple flowers. I added a few bits of my own from the garden; some extra purple leafy foliage, Fennel flower heads and the dried seed heads, I think these perfectly compliment the boldness of the cabbage and Dahlia.

We bought our pumpkins last weekend in case they ran out by the time we wanted them (although we needn't have feared, there were enormous cases of them in our local supermarket when we popped in earlier) and I heaved them out of the bag to begin the squelchy, smelly and slimy job of scooping out the insides and scraping away some of the flesh.

Meet Bertie and Theopopolis Jr.!!! I really like traditional pumpkins (although some of the scenes people carve out can be quite astounding can't they?!) so mine are usually quite simple scary faces. I'm looking forwards to seeing them staring in from outside in the dark later on.

Every year there is the debate on what to do with those scraped out pumpkin inners? Should it be soup, pie, cake, bread, cookies, chutney.... I decided to have a go at Pumpkin muffins and trawled the internet for a simple recipe (which I have now written down and can't find the original website it came from!).

The ingredients include fresh and ground ginger, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and of course, pumpkin, so the scent when these are cooking is divine!! Although they are moist and tasty, I think when I make them again (which is highly likely looking at the amount of flesh left in the bowl), I wouldn't use the cloves, or at least not nearly as much as the recipe calls for, they leave a funny aftertaste. Dad is also very keen to try making some of it into a chutney so I will probably have a go at that as well.