It seems that the Halloween pumpkin Evan and I carved has somehow contracted Single Parent Dad’s hideous body wasting disease. I think it must have happened when we took it down to his house last week. I think I may even been able to pinpoint the exact moment of infection:

Thankfully I’m not worried about the health of any of the Hughes family as the disease is only transferred from vegetable to vegetable.

But this pumpkin is certainly rotting at quite an extraordinary rate, far faster than Amy’s one. Even renowned pumpkin expert Professor Beryl Chicken says it’s beyond hope:

I’ve still got three healthy and uncarved pumpkins sitting out in the front garden however. I did have four but I used one on Monday to make a pie and some soup.

I was particularly pleased with the pie (made from a recipe very kindly sent me by DJ Kirkby). I even made the pastry from scratch and everything. Of course it took me about six hours in total to do it, and when I’d finished the only person who actually liked it was me (Kerry and the kids not being too keen on cinnamon). But I enjoyed myself and that’s the main thing. Plus I got a thrill out of the fact that both the pumpkin and the eggs I used were purely the product of Old McHughes farm. Tom Good has nothing on me.

On the other hand he soup was ok, but nothing special. I think it suffered from the fact that the variety of pumpkin I planted is intended for carving rather than cooking – the bigger ones are less tasty apparently. Again I was the only member of the family who was willing to eat it, but even then I ended up throwing half of it away. Don’t feel too sorry for me though as that’s the outcome of much of my “cooking” efforts so I’m very much used to it.

My next culinary project is going to be a Christmas cake, something else that I’m the only one who’ll eat (my family are both picky and weird). I put a call out on twitter for recipes and got a gratifying number of replies. I think I’m going to go for the one given me by Jane from Nine Long Months; mainly because it’s one handed down to her from her mother and I like the provenance that goes with that.

However, judging by the fact it took me so long to make the pumpkin pie, I think I’m going to have to clear a full week in my calendar for the cake. Maybe it’d be wise to aim for next Christmas rather than this so as to avoid disappointment.

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Related posts:

1. Vegetable Week: Pumpkin Bed
2. Who ate all the pies?
3. The end of Fat Club and a few pumpkins

1. Vegetable Week: Pumpkin Bed
2. Who ate all the pies?
3. The end of Fat Club and a few pumpkins

I’m back on the celery sticks now, but for the purposes of the Fat Club Competition it’s all irrelevant anyhow as this Wednesday Ian from Single Parent Dad managed to shed his final lb in order to cross the finishing line. Therefore it is my unfortunate duty to crown him the winner of our contest to see who could lose 14lb in weight the quickest.

So commiserations go to my fellow contestants Kerry, Catherine, Erin, and Barbara. I think we can all take consolation in the fact that losing 14lb in just four weeks is probably a symptom of some horrible wasting disease, and no doubt Ian will end up with various bits of his body rotting off by the end of the month.

For the sake of the blogosphere I’m hoping his hands will go first so he can’t type any more.

I would suggest continuing the contest to see who comes second. However I suspect that may well be my wife Kerry and, quite frankly, I don’t need that kind of humiliation in my life at the moment. So I now bring the contest officially to a close. Feel free to continue it on your blog if you wish however.

We were actually down at Ian’s house on Wednesday and I had intended to film some sort of award ceremony where I would present him with his prize (a Ginster’s Steak and Ale Pasty). However once we arrived I remembered how impenetrably thick Ian’s Birmingham accent is and I didn’t really want to lower the tone of my blog by giving it airtime.

We did have a good time down at Ian’s however, one of the highlights of which was carving three of the home grown pumpkins we brought down with us.

Amy and Evan had their usual fantastic time playing with Max. And Kerry and I were just about able to tolerate Ian’s incessant whittering. So all in all it was a pretty successful trip.

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Related posts:

1. Fat Club, Week One
2. The Midnight Movie Club
3. Fat Club: Week Two

1. Fat Club, Week One
2. The Midnight Movie Club
3. Fat Club: Week Two

Arjan and Dad Who Writes thought it was a giant courgette. Don’t they know that giant courgettes are actually called marrows? Arjan I can forgive because his first language is Holandish (or is that Netherlandese), but for Dad Who Writes there is no excuse. Go away and study your Alan Titchmarsh more carefully next time.

Over on flickr, JJ Daddy-O suggested it was a zucchini – which is actually the US word for courgette anyway (those wacky Americans). I’m not sure what the US word for marrow is, probably “xisuduw” or something. Then again everything is supposed to be bigger over there, so perhaps they would just regard it as a medium sized gherkin.

Anyway, this is all irrelevant because it’s not a courgette, marrow, zucchini, xisuduw, or gherkin. It’s a pumpkin.

Honestly, it is.

I’ve got three more that look exactly like it too. The reason that it’s green not orange is that it isn’t ripe yet, but I’ve no idea why it’s elongated like that. It’s not because of the variety because I got three normal looking pumpkins from the same plant, see:

Maybe it’s that uranium fertilizer I’ve been using.

Anyhow according to the internet there isn’t much of a chance of it ripening now it’s been taken off the vine (which I had to do as the parent plant was going rotten and yucky). I’m not sure if there is anything you can do with mutant unripened pumpkins. Anyone got any suggestions?

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Related posts:

1. Vegetable Week: Pumpkin Bed
2. Rhubarb

1. Vegetable Week: Pumpkin Bed
2. Rhubarb