Happy Halloween
Our first ever Jack O’Lantern, made on request for a friend’s Halloween party. It was a lot of fun to carve. North America can keep its trick-or-treating — I really don’t like its weird social imposition and I’m glad it’s never taken off in Australia despite the efforts of the few kids every year who fight to change our slack Aussie culture just to feed their sugar cravings — but carving pumpkins for Halloween parties is a tradition I’d happily import.
Tags: halloween, jack o'lantern
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Amanda was badgered by trick-or-treating tots on Friday, apparently, so the meme is spreading. In Auckland, all I saw were drunken adults. Any excuse. :-)
The fireworks on Saturday were nice.
I love Halloween, which seems to me to be a corrupted Day of the Dead. The Hispanic/Mexican festival is amazing…all those sugar skulls and bright colours. I don’t have a problem with ancestor worship. But I wanna talk about pumpkins.
David Jones here in Sydney had US lantern style pumpkins selling for $50! Perfect for carving, they have a thin skin and only about 1cm of flesh as opposed to Aus varieties which are almost solid flesh– ever tried carving a Queensland Blue?
The local fancy food place around the corner had US tins of pumpkin pulp selling for AUS $8.99…..the same tins sell in the States for US 59 cents. Used for pumpkin pie, that’s about the only use for them in the US other than pig fodder or lanterns. The thin flesh is too much trouble to prepare for cooking.
I usually buy little Golden Nuggets — about the size of a grapefruit — which are perfect for table decorations, candle holders, or carved with a tea light candle inserted.
Nick, I’d much rather we imported the Day of the Dead than the Main Street USA’s version of Halloween. As for pumpkins, I don’t know how much it cost us as Andrea bought it. But I can tell you that it took a solid knife and a strong arm (and a power drill for the small eye) to carve the bastard!