Tuesday 30 October 2012

It's That Time Of The Year Again

And with that I of course mean "Time to carve some pumpkins!" in honour of Halloween. Not only that though as this year I got to carve two pumpkins, one to take with me to work — for the office "Carve-Off" — and the other one because quite frankly I'm spoiling my wife. She wants a pumpkin, she gets a pumpkin. As a bonus, this year is the first year where my son is old enough to appreciate/fear the pumpkin carving.


As every year. First things first. The delicate task of finding the pumpkin with just the right size in just the right shade of Orange. Going to the Farmers market or knowing a farmer on a first name basis is your best bet. Which of course also means you should have thought about this last spring, because it's way too late now to start thinking about which farmers you should know. Unless you have really large breasts and/or a penis, which might — wait… and? — help expedite the process.

Nah, I'm kidding. I just went to the nearest super market where I knew they had reasonably priced pumpkin that didn't look like complete crap. Last year we were still living in Finland so my wonderful picked one up at Citymarket. This year Sainsbury's received the honour of filling the enormous shoes that Citymarket left us with. Thankfully though Sainsbury's actually did a half decent job at that because their pumpkin was bigger than any pumpkin I've carved before. Sure it was a bit mangy in some spots but overall a fine looking pumpkin.

My tools of choice — or rather a look thereof — are the following; utterly useless fruit knife, a Lancashire peeler and a random tablespoon. So yeah, not perhaps the best choice of tools but my other options were a hammer, some screwdrivers and my fists. Neither of which are well suited for the art of pumpkin carving. But 90 minutes and some swearing later we have two pumpkin; one S-sized pumpkin that I'm taking with me to work tomorrow and one L-Sized bastard that has proudly begun it's smelly decay on our windowsill.

So without further ado and because I don't know what else to say I present you with this years pumpkins. This is what the pumpkin from 2010 looked like. And here's 2011 just in case you feel like comparing them.


Carving pumpkin #2. I hate this fruit knife.

The leftovers. We're not going to bother roasting the seeds this year.

Happy Halloween, all you 8 (maybe even 9) readers of mine!