Happy Halloween

I do love a good Halloween party.

From what I've been reading (and sorry for the lack of references, I can't remember where I read half of this); for thousands of years, this time of year has had great significance. In the ancient British Isles the Celtic festival was called Samhain and spanned for days surrounding this changing of the seasons. This festival is thought to be a major part of the beginnings of Halloween. Back then it was seemingly the time of the year when winter and summer, warm and cold, light and dark, plenty and little, hopes and fears, all collided with what must have been a hard existence. Livestock not expected to last the winter were slaughtered and going by most sources it is believed to be a time steeped with the understanding that death was a real possibility in the months to come, hence it seems that this particular festival took on the air of death and with it, lots of the spiritual connotations of a pagan culture.

Moving forward in time; belief systems, culture and technology all moved on and due to being a human construct, the festival moved on too. First was the assimilation of this festival into similar Roman festivals, one of which was a celebration honouring the dead. Next came the spread of Christianity, and, as with most other festivals with pagan roots, a holy assimilation by some Pope or other. After it's placing on the substitutes bench by the Catholic Church, the celebration became known as All Hallows Eve - the night before the newly created All Saints Day.

Several centuries down the line and the festival gets caught up in another belief system dilemma, again wrapped up in politics and power, this time a good old Christian in-fight over which way to worship the ye'olde spaghetti monster in the sky. With a bit of dissent between State and Church came an alternative to All Saints day - a lack of it, however it didn't take long for the traditions of Hallows Eve and it's Celtic and Roman roots to be adopted into another day of remembrance. As the Catholic population had adopted many of the ancient traditions and symbolism centuries before, the Protestant community, albeit with yet another twist took on many of those age old traditions. The Gun Powder Plot of the 5th November 1605 eventually became celebrated as Guy Fawkes night or Bonfire night.

But as religion had superseded the dominance of survival as the focus of these festivals, so it seems in the past century that the focus has once again been tied to the dominant social driver of its time. This time - economics. Even with this new tie and a re-branding across the water in the USA, it does appear that many of the traditions accumulated through it's existence have stuck and are still moving along with popular culture and societies values, even if that is just an excuse to dress up, have a good time and celebrate all things supernatural and spooky.

In an increasingly secular and technologically advanced world, the thoughts, fears and the motivation we each have to continue the tradition of an ancient festival may have changed but it still continues, even if the very first origins of this are lost in time. As it did likely begin – through peoples thoughts and ideas – so it is that everyone who celebrates it each year has the ability to retain and adapt it's traditions and create new ones.

Last year we decorated the house for the first time and this year we did it again (The photos running through the post so far are all decorations we have up in our living room this year).

This year we also had a small party for our friends in our house, it wasn't technically on the night of Halloween itself but the night before as it was the time we could all gather. Take away food, party snacks and inflatable spiders were the order of the day.

That is handy because, on this, the night of Halloween, I can show you what we got up to.

This is a rare photo of me, probably not looking my undead best but somewhere along the lines of a 1970s vampire rock artist or something up that street.

Norngirl dressed up as a witch and we were soon visited by an Alien. Our extraterrestrial was shortly followed by the Green Lantern, soon followed by another witch.

And bobbing for apples was on the menu as was waving some sparklers around in the garden.

As well as the take away we ended the night watching The Japanese version of the Ring and Alien.

It was a really fun night!

Come Dine with Me: Home Edition - Results

The scores were revealed and the verdict was joint last for my gruesome cheesy meat feast. Apart from all being bloated from 4 days of 3 course meals, unlike the show on TV there were no fall outs during our 4 days of parties but sadly unlike the actual show there was no voice over dude with sarcastic comments (or 1000 prize money)! The scores were very close. Mum in law won with 23 points and a main of nom-a-licious Monkfish wrapped in Parma Ham with lemon flavoured Broccolini and roasted potatoes. The other scores were Sister in law on 22, and me and Brother in law/Norngirl both on 21. So with just 2 points in it between first and last it was a tight run thing. In the end the best meal won the prestigious accolade of hosting the best dinner party of the week :)

Here are some pics of the winning meal and the setting (thanks go to Norngirl for putting the camera to good use once again):

A starter of Savoury Tatin:

A main course of Parma Ham wrapped Monkfish with Rosemary flavoured potatoes with lemon and garlic flavoured Broccolini. It may look sparse but the overhead view doesn't do it justice and the flavours were delicious.

Pudding of lemon flavoured tart:

Served by candle light:

So what dinner party tips did we learn?

1) Heated sugar and butter are universally accepted forms of nom.
2) We learnt that we could all do with at least one table between us that can be used as a dinner table which isn't too tall or short for the chairs we own.
3) There is such a thing as too much meat
4) Limit the complexity and amount of hands on cooking time unless you've a chef or some help (keep it simple).
5) 4 three course meals in 4 days is an awful lot of food.
6) The early evening schedule of the Vintage channel rocks as background entertainment (unless you're still a teenager and like auto tune more than actual tune).

Come Dine with Me: Home Edition - Halloween Special

Halloween spookily flew by on Sunday. Happily I bring you some photo's from what was my night of a Come Dine with Me: Home Edition... and for the special occasion; a Halloween Special.

Me, my mum in law, a two-headed crazy team comprised of Norngirl and my brother in law, then last but not least my sister in law, are having a bit of fun with the TV sarcasm classic that is Come Dine with Me. I'll fill you all in more after the 4 day event but in the mean time as this is eating into time to blog this week, here is a selection of photos from the first night and my attempt at some spooky food:

The scene was set with a some inter-webs tableclothage.

Starter was two of these each. Chicken and Pak Choi Eyes

Followed by a main of Cheese Coated Fingers with Roast Pork, Roasted Parsnips and Cauliflower Brains. If only I'd had been able to source some grated cheese or a grater... I mean who doesn't own a grater... oh yeah, that would be us!

Never having made caramel before this was a bit of trial and error but beginners luck paid off!

Some Halloween decorations garnished the walls

The pudding was finally ready, the cake baked and shaped the night before (after a bit of a minor disaster with the flour) and the popcorn courtesy of a bag of unpopped corn and the microwave, but it all worked out in the end... well when the clotted cream ice cream and Haribo was added at least.

I called it; Spooky sponge cake with a creepy caramel popcorn & ice cream haunting.

Everyone had a different cake shape :)

Ghoooooulish Ghosty

And kitteh who I promise is not having a poop of carmel onto the pop corn!

And the crème de la crème... a giant inflatable spider... is there anything supermarkets don't sell?

Overall was pretty happy it all went pretty much to plan, way out of practice with all this cooking malarkey and no one fell ill overnight! w0Ot :)

P.S Kudos to Norngirl for taking most of the photos when I was indisposed.

Party miniatures, its the little things.

Last night was good fun! As mentioned on my twitter page prior to the event, we were headed to a family 50th Birthday party and it proved to be just the thing for us all to have a good laugh and catch up with fun people we usually only get to spam through Facebook. Such is the way of the world in this day and age. Its almost like these events are suffering a real shortage.

After a taxi to the venue we arrived only to find that we had perhaps got there a little early. Well, we were on time but just early for everyone else but it wasn't so bad though as we had time to get settled down and get ourselves comfortable for the evening. The tables were all nicely decorated with balloons, party poppers and foil shiny shapes with stars and '50's and Happy Birthdays and the likes which I found to my satisfaction to be immense fun to play with, especially with a camera around.

Before long the bar was opened and the drinks were in. Several of the decorations ended up in and around my pint of Guinness. The foil shapes tended to float which was good, after becoming a little daring we also found that with the flat edge of a halved peanut, the said half a peanut also sits nicely on a head of the Guinness... one to try when you're next at a bar.

The evenings festivities got under-way and everyone had a good time. The live band were great and the inflatable zimmer frame was in full use. A tasty buffet filled us all and camera's were flashing all the time. Sober or drunk everyone was dancing, singing and laughing in their seats or on the dance floor... me being a member of the first group much to my wife's dissatisfaction but sometimes two left feet really are best left under the table.

Time flew by and it was soon last orders and time to head on. The birthday boy, Norngirls Uncle, seemed to have had a brilliant night which is what its all about - slightly tippsy in the small hours he was trying to fathom who was the most sarcastic between Norngirl's sister and cousin... its a tough call as both have a refined talent seemingly honed by the inter-webs and a similar taste in TV shows.

There really are too few good excuses to have a good party and by party I don't mean the heading out to the clubs and throwing up in the streets at 3am type party. I mean the type of party where you have chance to take some photos and catch up with people, good times.

Madness in March

There is just too much going on at once for a dedicated post of each event that March has thrown my way so far, its madness, madness I tells ye! Thankfully, possibly related to the quantity of hours being put in at work, there has been a silver lining (or in my specific case, a giant glowing hourglass in the sky!) to all the rushing about. Though there have been far too many early mornings and late nights. A busy schedule has led to some nice photo opportunities, photos of things I would perhaps have missed had I not been moving around at funny times of the day, and here are a few of them:

It all kicked off on the 1st March with Crusaders first game live on Sky Sports and first game under our new floodlights at Seaview. The game was the kick start for a run of good results getting our season back on track with a guaranteed top 6 finish due to the league split after 33 games. Leeds sadly haven't got their act together and didn't look great this Monday just gone. In fairness though injuries aren't helping either team but there is still plenty of season to go though and its never dull when it comes to Leeds or the Crues.

Next up was part of Norn Girls birthday weekend and a trip to Dundonald and more specifically a Sunday afternoon trip to the Pirates Adventure crazy golf by the Ice Bowl. It's great fun and we've been a few times now. We prefer the course to the right because of the wet musical hole (that sounds wrong), but both are great. None of us won a free game token at the last hole but it is possible!


We also made it to two restaurants, one occasion was a trip to Gingerroot on Great Victoria Street and the other a trip to the Bellevue Arms on the Antrim road up near the zoo. 2 completely different types of food but both very, very nice. Gingeroot is the best place I know of in Belfast for a curry, though for any big heat in your curry be sure to ask for it. The flavours are yummy though and the set meal was huge! The Bellevue was great even though they were out of pineapple juice last thing on a Sunday which was disappointing as we were eager for a cocktail or two. The food itself more than made up for it though. I had the roast beef and it was perfectly cooked for a joint. Delicious and only to be equaled by the all you can eat carvery we headed to for mothers day at the Clarion hotel, the only shame there is that you have to go easy on the first 3 courses to be able to manage to sample the vast array of sugar loaded deserts.

The all you can eat was a bit like the mad hatters tea party but with cups that hold fluid and another outing we went on was a trip to the Yorkgate Moviehouse cinema to see Alice in Wonderland 3D. I hadn't made it to see Avatar whilst it was out so this was the first 3D movie I'd seen with real actors included on screen and I really quite liked the mix. I think the enjoyment was aided by the familiar voices of the computer generated characters, many of whom I didn't realize had actually been in it until the very atmospheric credits were growing and rolling.


As with the story in the movie whereby Alice finds herself at an engagement party, I found myself at my first ever engagement party. Not my own mind you (we couldn't nor really wanted one), we were invited to one of Norn Girl's friend's celebrations. The celebration was a nice evening out in the end. It was held at the Malone Rugby Union social club and the happy couple were eager to show everyone a great time. That was echoed by the performers of the live entertainment. They had a lead singer who was very eager to get audience participation. The crowd was quite young (or at least young at heart) and the tactic of joining the audience if they didn't come to you seemed to work well. I managed to escape the dance floor but had a really nice time never the less. It reminded me of a wedding reception which confused me a little but if that's the warm up, who knows what their wedding reception might be. Good luck to them in their build up to their wedding.

We had turned up a little later than we had hoped to the party that night. We had gone into town to change buses, but instead of the 6A we found David Coulthard being interviewed. He then proceeded to jump into a Red Bull F1 car and drove up and down in front of Belfast City Hall making an awful lot of noise in the process. As our bus stop was now part of a mock up race track for a one man piece of exhibition driving with hundreds of people swamping it. We realised we had to head on somewhere downstream of the event going on to some place where we might happen to find our bus. We eventually found the one of it's later stops on the bus route and the bus, thankfully, wasn't long. We sat down in seats that looked a lot more comfortable than the multi-million pound technological play thing that was wearing down its tires performing spins just down the road. One car traffic jams, whatever next.

After that, I invented a new form of sandwich or wrap, taking 2 slices of 50/50 bread and using them as a condensed wrap... any ideas of a name for this delicacy?