Filed under: Cooking
Two of our carving party attendees brought with them some home-made infused vodkas that… they made in the dishwasher?!?! “Huh? I can’t have heard that right… did you say you made it in your dishwasher?” And then they start to explain and it all makes sense. First you need the right kind of bottle. (I am currently in the process of getting the detailed info from them on what kind and where they purchased said bottle but…) Fill it with vodka and the flavour infuser of your choice. They brought both apple cinammon and cranberry with them, but the possibilities seem endless
Then, ensuring they stay tightly sealed while in the dishwasher, run them through the cycle (again I need to know what cycle). As the bottles heat up (but don’t boil) the flavours are released into the vodka to give you an infused vodka of your choosing. Plus they look so pretty and are sure to impress your friends!!! I want to know exactly how to do this and try and make a cucumber infused vodka. I tried a cucumber infused vodka a couple of years ago, that when mixed with a cranberry juice made for the perfect refreshing drink!!!
This weekend we invited over some friends and had them turn 
our 200LBs of pumpkins into Jack-O-Lanterns. Check it!!! A skull and cross bones, a meta pumpkin and a yoda were just a couple of the different designs people made. It was a great success and now we have some great decorations for our porch 
There are also some cooking pumpkins left to make some pumpkin pies out of. I’ll be trying Cooks Illustrated recipe which uses a sweet potato as the secret ingredient to a great tasting pumpkin pie!!
And when you have a Pumpkin Carving party you need to have Halloween foods to go along with everything, so… along with our party staple of hummus, pita chips and veggies we made two selections with a little more holiday flair! Welcome the snake sandwich and the cucumber finger sandwiches which were both inspired from creations that were in a halloween book I had checked out from the library in anticipation of such an event!!! Both were big hits and really pretty simple to prepare. 
We didn’t have any leftovers of either of them when people had cleared. The finger sandwiches were made up of cucumbers sandwich with a cream cheese, sour cream, mayo and dill spread between two layers of rye bread with sliced almonds for fingernails. Easy to make and a short list for ingredients you could also make these ”finger” sandwiches with a tuna or chicken salad. 
The snake was a french bread loaf stuffed with spinach, ricotta, mozzarella, and roasted garlic. The stripes were made with an egg yolk glaze tinted with food coloring, and used olives for eyes, whole all spice for nostrils and a red pepper for a tongue. Of course this too could be stuffed with whatever items you may want to choose. Next time I’m going to experiment with using pizza dough instead of the french bread loaf. I used the french bread loaf available in the refrigerated section and rolled it flat before spreading the filling on one side of it and rolling it up to seal and bake it inside. However, the dough did not flatten out very well, and sealing the sandwich back up was much more difficult than anticipated.
