Fight to the Death

Remember please... the terrible lesson you learned tonight. That grinning, glowing, globular invader of your living room is an inhabitant of the pumpkin patch.

— Orson Welles





And now for something only vaguely culinary...

G and I are both, slightly, perfectionistic. We are also both, slightly, competitive. So let it be known that IT IS A MISTAKE to pit the two of us head-to-head in armed competition.

It was about a week ago that G casually mentioned he had never carved a pumpkin for Halloween. Wait. What? Sometimes I think he's lying when he says he had a childhood. This of course required an immediate trip to the pumpkin patch, followed by swift presentation of both pumpkin and pumpkin saw. "What now?" he asks. Upon explanation he gives me a baleful look. "Does this mean it's going to be gross?" So I scoop out the pumpkin and again present him with pumpkin (now hollow) and saw.

The trouble came when a friend casually mentioned that we should have a competition for the best jack-o-lantern. (I just love those casual, throw-away comments.) That sounds fun. Right? The entries can be judged be a jury of your peers and everything.

To be fair, it was fun. But my fingers now hurt. A lot. And there are probably other things I should be doing. I also have to admit that G's (winning) entry was very, very sweet. It's not everyday that a muffin gets her face carved into a pumpkin. Even if G says that he made me look like an Eskimo Inuit.





I was generally pretty pleased with my pumpkin, though there are definitely a lot of mistakes. To boot, you can't really see all the places where I carved through the skin at night. But for a losing pumpkin, it could be worse.

Apologies for the quality of the night picture. Oh, for want of a tripod (or a decent camera). Even if you can't tell, though, G's pumpkin is quite spooky in the dark.