Things that are Halloweeny

Since this is my blog, I'm going to brag about something I did, okay? Okay. Here it is: I made an AMAZING pomegranate sorbet that pretty much blew everyone away. No, seriously, it was THAT good. So do I have pictures of it to show you?

Sadly, I do not.

In lieu of pictures, please accept the following background information.

A few weeks ago, I became sad when I looked around the farmers market and realized that Summer Fruit Season had ended (it trails on a while in San Diego but the peaches of October are hard to eat after being spoiled by the peaches of August). On Sunday, I took another look around and quickly got over my melancholy as I realized that Autumn Fruit Season is here. Woohoo!

I zoomed from stall to stall, grabbing bosc pears and the first of the tangerines and pink lady apples... and pomegranates. Heavy, cracked, delicious pomegranates.

I've been a pomegranate fiend since I was a kid, but I am not crazy about Pom Wonderful juice (or any of its competitors). The taste of these juices is too concentrated for me, but beyond that, they only sort of taste like pomegranates. I suspect this has to do with pasteurization.

As it happens, however, I live in a pomegranate-friendly climate and frequent a good farmers market so I have more options than some. What I'm getting to here is that another thing I greedily snapped up on Sunday was a quart of freshly squeezed, NOT pasteurized pomegranate juice. Wow. Drinking that juice was like being punched in the mouth with a pomegranate, only in a good way. It was not cheap but it was totally worth the price because now I could make sorbet and I would not have to pull apart all those pomegranates to do it.

I used this recipe* and the results were amazing, as previously stated. Very intense, and perfect with the rich chocolate malt ice cream I had made the day before. Mmmm.

So how, you ask, is any of this Halloweeny in the least? Because the desert was made to eat after making these guys:



This weekend, Valerie and I went to Tyee's house to carve pumpkins. I am very grateful to Tyee for suggesting this activity because I am pretty sure I wouldn't have done it on my own this year. Plus Tyee's lovely husband made us pizza AND her daughter was charming and burbly as always.

(Mine are the two little ones in front: a friendly troll or hobgoblin or goat or something, and another one that's menacing because, you know, fangs.)

Happy Halloween!

* Except I skipped the fancy touches (champagne and garnish) because that lily just did not need gilding.

Catching up, Part 3

I decorated two nightgowns to give for April birthdays. The first was for Valerie and the second was for my mother. You'll notice a certain similarity... It was such a cute idea, I felt compelled to use it twice.

This is Valerie's present. She posted some pictures on her blog, too.



Here's the one I'm giving my mother for her birthday tomorrow. I think I like the composition on Valerie's a little better. Shhh, what Mom doesn't know won't hurt her.



A closer look.



I would have included a small brown cat in the photos for scale purposes, but she was too wiggly.

Catching up, Part 1

The deal is that I get to post to my blog when I finish something, but sometimes I can't post because the thing I've finished is for someone else and that person might see what I've posted. So I need to wait. And then I forget to post about it later.

Have I ever mentioned that I have the attention span of a hummingbird? Or a certain small brown cat?



Anyhoo, this is a tote bag I gave Valerie over the holidays. (You know, the ones back in December. Last year.)



As you probably know, Valerie is a Knitter Extraordinaire. So this is a bag for knitting stuff. With a mouse knitting on it. See?



Plus, the aforementioned small brown cat, now used for scale purposes.