There’s no more classic Halloween image than a glowing jack-o’-lantern perched in a window or on a porch, setting a merrily macabre mood. For decades, carving a pumpkin has been a beloved autumn tradition in America, celebrated with parties, festivals, and televised competitions.
We thought we’d give it a go this year, and enlisted the help of Henry and Oskar. Pumpkins can be bought reasonably priced at the moment. Ours came from Willys, which had the cheapest pumpkins of all the supermarkets that we visited. If you go shopping tomorrow they’ll likely be reduced even further as most Halloween parties happened this weekend.
Normal have a pumpkin carving kit (24kr) that includes a scoop, two cutting knives, and a few scary face stencil printouts. The knives were sharp enough to cut through the thick flesh of the pumpkins, but not sharp enough to do any damage to little fingers. Half the fun of pumpkin carving is deciding what you are going to create. We drew our faces (inspired by a few Google searches) onto the pumpkins then got to scooping out all the juicy flesh and seeds.
This is such a great activity for kids (supervised by adults) and a welcome break from the endless requests for screen time, or heading into the city for the day.
Pumpkins are cheap, cheerful, and after you’ve carved your creations, you can toast the seeds in the oven. Simply lay them on a baking tray and lightly sprinkle them with sea salt. They taste great after warming in the oven for around 30 minutes and they are rich in antioxidants, healthy fats and minerals. Just don’t overdo the salt!
If you’re feeling really virtuous, why not make a soup from the pumpkin flesh. We used this recipe from BBC Good Food, and switched out the cream for coconut milk.
Happy Halloween!
