~ More Guts Than I Can Handle ~

Brace yourselves for campy inanity.

‘Course, if you have come to this blog on purpose, you were not expecting anything else.  Good for you!

Last night we as a family decided to carve our Jack O’ Lanterns. And by ‘we as a family’ I mean that I barked and bellowed and gnashed my teeth until they all came out onto the deck to shut me up.

I’ll tell you straight out that I am no novice at this.  Years of trial and failure have brought me a squash wisdom….call me the Gourd Whisperer.

And don’t mock my gloves.

I don’t ‘do’ cold and squishy if I can help it.

Oh, they laughed at me, of course, as they always do.  But I held fast as I pulled the nasty guts out of my flat little reddish gourd, with nary a dry heave.   And I had the last laugh when I saw Varmint sport this face:

And this face:

She could hardly get past the innards, my little Rosebud.  But Critter, total boy that he is, didn’t let anything bother him as he plotted and crafted and designed this year’s masterpieces.

He didn’t let Varmint’s squeals of disgust shake him as he worked. He had the concentration of Dr. Frankenstein!!!

With deft surety, he grabbed my best apple paring knife and proceeded to Edward Scissorhands the heck out of a pumpkin that weighs more than he does.

That’s right, I just turned Edward Scissorhands into a verb.  Let’s move on.

Sure, you’d think that My Captain would admonish him to be careful, but he was too busy carving his pumpkin IN HIS LAP.

That’s right, right on top of the ‘ol family jewels.

Even Varmint was concerned about that particular choice.  She envisioned sliced femoral arties mixed with pumpkin guts.

I reminded him that ‘safety never takes a holiday’, and would a Montgomery County Safety Officer approve?

He largely ignored me.

I begged Grandma Jane to step in.   But she was busy participating in her own way….  I hoped she was knitting a tourniquet as we would surely need it.

I kid you not.  The entire time she was just sitting there knitting and snickering.  What the heck, Grandma!

And me?  What did I get to spend the rest of the evening doing?   See this pile ‘o seeds?

I had to sift through them to get the gold out.

Gold that I then cleaned and dressed in a mixture of soy sauce, Worcestershire, garlic salt, sesame oil, sugar, and vinegar, and then baked slowly for this:

Oh YEAH, baby!

Like I said, I’m no novice.  I know EXACTLY what I’m doing here.

No Tourniquets required.