halloween sheep cookies!

I made these sugar cookies last week - not until today did I get around to blogging about them. The icing on them is my first attempt at making homemade cookie icing, so all things concidered, they turned out pretty awesome!

In case it's hard to tell: the top 3 are just regular sheep with bloody bites missing, the two black ones are bloodthirsty sheep (there's blood coming from their mouths!), a jack o lantern sheep, a candy corn sheep, and the three on the right are zombie sheep! :D

The bites were simply made using the scalloped edges of the sheep cutter, and I bought the candy eyes from Bulk Barn.

dual purpose cozy

As it turns out, the carboy cozy I designed for my husband's beer making has a dual purpose, it works well for a large-pumpkin-cozy too:

Can't wait to carve this thing tonight! Woo hoo!

Autumn Soup (aka Squash & Pumpkin Soup)

Prep & cooking time: about a couple hours - it's a bit of a long process, make sure you've an afternoon free! (It's well worth it, it's so tasty and makes a wicked amount of soup!)


Ingredients:
1 baking pumpkin, halved, seeds and stringy fibers removed and set aside
1 white squash, halved, seeds and stringy fibers removed and set aside
1 butternut squash, halved, seeds and stringy fibers removed and set aside
1 winter squash, halved, seeds and stringy fibers removed and set aside
1 small parsnip
1 yukon gold potato
1 sweet potato
1 turnip
3 tblsp sesame seed or vegetable oil (sesame seed oil is preffered, it's got a delicious nutty flavour)
1-2 sprigs fresh thyme
1 handful fresh sage leaves
1 tblsp fresh ginger, grated
3-3.5 cups chicken or vegetable broth
3 cups water
1 vegetable or mushroom boillon cube
1 tsp curry powder
1 tsp marjoram powder
1 tsp coarse salt
black pepper to taste
1 can (170ml) thick cream
1 tblsp brown sugar

Take the halved pumpkin and squashes in a dish, face down, into a preheated oven - 400F - for 50 minutes.

In the meantime, put all the seeds and fibery insides of the squashes and pumpkin in a pot with a tblsp of oil and cook for about 3 minutes. Add broth, water, bouillon cube, sage and thyme, and bring to a boil. Lower to simmer for 10 minutes, then put aside.

Put the rest of the oil at the bottom of a large pan. Add the onion - finely diced - and heat until onions are yellow/golden coloured. Dice the sweet potato, potato, turnip, and parsnip and mix in with the onion. Strain the squash and pumpkin fiber and seeds from the broth and disgard, and add the broth 1 cup at a time, mixing well with the potato mix. Simmer.

When pumpkin and squash are ready, remove from oven, and scoup out pulp from skin and puree in a food processor, along with the ginger. Add to soup, mix well, and simmer for another 5-10 minutes.

Remove from heat. Pass the soup through the food processor again to turn the entire thing into a puree. Mix in curry powder, marjoram, salt, and black pepper. Put back on heat and cook for another 15-20 minutes.

Remove from heat, mix in thick cream and brown sugar, and serve.

Refrigerates up to 7 days, freezes for 6 months.

This makes a boatload of soup, I recommend storing a bunch in the freezer to thaw and nuke for those cold winter days!

My cousin and her fiance are getting married in November, and are having their Buck & Doe party the weekend before Halloween, therefore having a Halloween themed costume party for it. It's no secret that Halloween is my favourite holiday of the year, so I'm rather excited to put their Buck & Doe gift together for them.

Traditionally, wedding and Buck & Doe gifts tend to be housewares, and DH & Iwill likely gift them a gift certificate somewhere for the such (since they already live together and have pretty much everything they need, a gift certificate can help get something they want) - but I couldn't resist knitting something. And the most appropriate thing I could think of is Halloween themed dishcloths. Homely indeed, with all the fun of the spook of the season.

The 5 patterns I used were a bat (purple), ghost (white), kitty (black), jack o' lantern (orange) and skull (yellow) - a great way to eat up a lot of miscellanious dishcloth cotton I had laying around the house. I found some printable cotton-twill label paper at Wal-Mart, which is excellent for customizable labels, where I was able to print the care info, fiber content, and names for the dishcloths as well.

The great pumpkin-shaped and bat-shaped ribbon I found at Michael's; and a while ago I found a great price for gift bags at Zellers (13 for 4.95!) to which, in that collection, is yellow gift bag with a bit of an antique yellow Victorianesque print to it, which is vintage enough looking to be holiday appropriate for the gift.