Due to work commitments the bonfire party took place on Monday 6th November, instead of the traditional 5th, which weather wise turned out to be a good choice. The 5th, in our experience, always turns out to be cold wet and windy! And it was!
We started out running a little behind to say the least, and at 2pm we still hadn't made the bonfire toffee, so we rushed it through and I ended up putting the trays in the freezer, so when we took it out at 6pm it was rock hard! It didn't make any difference to the flavour though, as Logan (who is ten years old and very wise!) said "Last night at our bonfire party, we got some bonfire toffee from Asda, and yours is a lot better." Note to public you can make it on the day if you want and do this!
Food wise the Pumpkin Soup turned out to be really nice. We nearly didn't have the Pumpkin Soup at all though, because the pumpkin that we had bought previously had seen better days, so it was well after Halloween (because we had been on holiday), when we tried to source another one. We rang around, but the cupboard was bare so to speak, and then, on a random trip to Morrisons later that day, we discovered a whole range of them at 50p each. Crisis over! They turned out to be the best pumpkins I had ever seen, and the one i chose was nice and orange and not very difficult to peel either because this is not a job that i relish! Surprisingly it went down very well with the children who thought it was nice and spicy. It also went down very well with some of the adults who had never partaken of Pumpkin Soup before, and had several helpings. We made 3x the quantity as featured in the video and still had half of the pumpkin left over, so we will be making it again this week!
Parched Peas wise, there were a few who had never had them before, they tried them and they liked them. Health wise if you check out their vitamin and mineral content, they are probably one of the healthiest foods you can eat. I have also heard it tell that the best way to do them is to put a little bit of vinegar in the water before you simmer them up. I haven't tried it myself but i might do later.....given that i have another whole bag left unused - we overbought somewhat!
Cider wise because of having to drive, samples were given to guests to take home and try out when the little monsters had gone to sleep. Hopefully they did get up for work the next day😃.
We also made some hot dogs (Tesco meat free) on finger rolls, buttering the rolls first, then added onions fried in butter with a little ground black pepper, we also had ketchup available for the children, or relish and mustard for the adults, which also went down really well. For those of you who haven't read the previous post, it's right here along with all the recipes on video.
The next step now is to work on our Christmas channel art and recipes, because horror of horrors there is only six weeks and five days left until Christmas.....in the meantime here is some music - no really here is the firework video!
