The Essence of Halloween

It began with jack o'lanterns, at 11 o'clock PM. A quick Walmart run to buy our orange friends and then we spread out newspaper and commenced sawing away.

Nothing feels quite as wonderful as pumpkin goo on your hands. :)

While we created our masterpieces we watched Princess and the Pauper, sang along, and pointed out the terrible graphics and plot fallacies. It's a favorite pastime.

Each of our pumpkins represented us--Well, mostly:

Shanna made a Batman logo.

Michelle cut out a Christmas Tree.

Jessica made an artistic swirly-eyed face.

Hilary had a stem-nosed Harry Potter.

And I made a silly face with an overly large nose.

I am fairly certain that this is the best pumpkin I have ever carved in my life. I named him Bruce. 

After our carvings were finished Jessica and I commenced making pumpkin seeds. I never realized what a long and laborious task it is! 

1. Sort the seeds from the guts the best that you can. 

2. Fill a sink with water and dump seed mixture in.

3. Sort the seeds from the guts the best that you can. (The pumpkin sinks and the seeds float! Mostly.)
4. Boil seeds in salt water for 10 minutes. (Adds to the salty flavor.)
5. Grease a cookie sheet and spread a thin layer of pumpkin seeds on top.
6. Bake at 350 until crunchy! (about 45 min--make sure you flip them over/mix them around a couple times)

I decided that the COOLEST feeling is trying to grab a fistful of seeds when they are underwater. They slip out of your hands without resistance because they are so slick. It's like trying to grab something without sustenance, you can't put any pressure on it because it will slip away. Such a strange sensation!

The next day--Saturday--was a pancake day. The second batch we colored orange and attempted to make pumpkin faces with chocolate chips. It failed miserably. :) The orange was overshadowed by brown and the chocolate was either covered or distorted. Only one pancake turned out semi-decent. :)

That night there was lots of different festivities, but the last classic Halloween treat was yet to be made: Caramel Apples. It was definitely an adventure. Unwrapping all the candy takes an incredibly long time, and then you have to balance getting everything ready and making sure the caramel doesn't burn. I did not succeed at everything, but I did get the caramel ON the apples! They were stuck to each other and the wax paper, the knives were insufficient, and they were hard as rocks, but they were caramel apples.

Suggestions for next time:
Don't even try. What sounds more appetizing is cutting apple slices and drizzling caramel on top! Then you don't have to bite through a thick layer of sugar and get long gooey tails. I still need to find a way to solve the wax paper problem... We ended up just eating it.

We sufficiently achieved a perfect Halloween. Complete with jack o'lanterns, pumpkin seeds, and caramel apples. Who could ask for more?