Halloween is my favorite holiday. I love to decorate. And every year I search for inexpensive dramatic decorations that cost next to nothing. Every year I find new creations on the Net.
Spiders are a theme. One year, chicken wire Ghosts were all the rage. I think Spiders are really scary and that, after all, is the point.
I am making a Giant Spider Web out of trash bags for my door.
Sure you can pay $12.00 and get a web ready made but where is the fun in that? Why shop when you have the makings of giant spiders at home already.
Warning - some of the costumes at the linked site seem less than dignified and a bit cruel. However, most are funny and make you go AWWWW! Take your silly pictures, laugh if you must and get that damn costume off your long suffering pet ASAP.
I was looking for Pumpkin recipes. Fall And Winter are the seasons to eat Squash and Pumpkin. I share my find with you, cher Reader.
I found an entire page of Pumpkin recipes that truly go from Soup to Nuts. You want to go there if you cook for Vegans and Vegetarians at Holiday time. I plan to make a Curry. See a recipe for Pumpkin Burfi below.
I am so happy to share Lord Ganesh made in Pumpkins for your enjoyment. This year Diwali falls on October 24.
Sweets are part of the annual Diwali Festival of Lights. Pumpkin burfi made out of vari tandul and boiled pumpkin, sugar, ghee. I will be back when I know what the English equivalent of the Indian ingredients is to translate.
Ingedients:
1 cup Red pumpkin boiled and smashed
1/2 cup Vari tandul
1/2 cup Grated coconut
1/2 cup Sugar ( +/- as required by you)
1 cup Water
1 pinch Kesari colour
2 drops Vanilla essence
3 tbsp Ghee + little for geasing the plate
1/4 tsp Cardamom (elaichi) powder
2-3 pinch Nutmeg (jaifal) powder
1 tsp each Charoli and Charmagaz
1/2 Cashew (kaju) pieces for garnishing.
Method:
1. Heat ghee in a kadai, add the vari tandul and roast the same as you roast for the sheera.
2. When it changes the colour to brown slightly, add 1 cup of water. Cover and cook till the water is dried up in slow flame.
3. Add the sugar, boiled and smashed pumpkin, grated coconut, and kesari colour. Keep stirring and cooking till it leaves the kadai.
4. Add elaichi powder, vanilla essence, charoli, charmagaz and mix well for another two minutes.
5. Transfer it into a greased plate. Allow it to cool. Cut into desired shape. Garnish with cashewnuts and serve.
Variation: with mango pulp, apple pulp, papaya pulp.
Preparation time: 30 minutes
Cooking time: 45-60 minutes
Serves: 5-6
My Mom and Dad loved to take long car trips. We all sang on long car drives. Sometimes we had a radio and sometimes we did not. We sang these songs anyway. Con brio.
We always stopped at an ice cream stand that looked like an ice cream cone. Roadside attractions in the 50s tended to look like what they were selling.
We would drive down the Delaware River sometimes. At the end of one bridge you could get charcoal broiled hot dogs and real root beer from the window of an old frame house that edged the road.
Everytime I hear one of these songs, I am transported to happy. Love you, Dad. Miss you every day.
ACCENTUATE THE POSITIVE ~ Johnny Mercer & The Pied Pipers (1945) (live recording). Words by: Johnny Mercer - Music by: Harold Arlen - copyright: 1944
Minnie the Moocher is a jazz song first recorded in 1931 by Cab Calloway and His Orchestra, selling over a million copies,
St. James Infirmary Blues, sometimes known as Gambler's Blues, is an American folksong of anonymous origin, though sometimes credited to the songwriter Joe Primrose (a pseudonym for Irving Mills). Louis Armstrong made it famous in his influential 1928 recording.
Louis Prima (December 7, 1910 – August 24, 1978) was an Italian-American singer, actor, songwriter, and trumpeter. Prima rode the musical trends of his time, starting with his seven-piece New Orleans style jazz band in the late 1920s, then leading a swing combo in the 1930s, a big band in the 1940s, a Vegas lounge act in the 1950s, and a pop-rock band in the 1960s.
