Halloween! Pumpkin four ways - yes, four!!

It's that time of year again when the streets are full of children wearing skeletons or witch's garb, and I go out and buy sweets so that when they knock on the door I have something to offer them:-)

I bought my pumpkin to hack amateurishly carve into a face to sit in the window so that the children know they won't be ignored.  I planned to make soup and cake with the pumpkin flesh, and roast the delicious, nutritious seeds.  I'm going to split this into three blog pages so that you don't have one humongous blog to wade through - see how I care about you all?  Here's what I did:

Cut a lid from the pumpkin, scooped out all the seeds and pulp.  Set the seeds aside, soaking in some water so they'd be easy to clean.

I found the easiest way to take the flesh from the inside of the pumpkin was to use my apple corer.  I put the flesh into a pan as I went along ready for the soup.

When I'd removed most of the inside, leaving a firm shell, I took a large, sharp knife and cut out a couple of triangles for eyes, used the apple corer to give a "button nose", then a simple crescent for a smile - I'm not into spooky faces, just a simple, happy pumpkin for my callers:-)