Some girls get flowers, some foodies get pumpkins

Loving Boyfriend, and I must give him kudos for this, is not one to get flowers for me when he's pissed me off. Instead, he gives me flowers on days when I'm feeling down, when he wants to surprise me with something nice, sometimes just to celebrate how great things have been between us (I know, oh, barf), and often, for no reason at all. He picks out each bloom with care and makes his own beautiful creations to give me. I love that he does this.

However, when he does irk me in some way or another, like he did a weekend or so ago (although, I must confess that his incredibly charming smile is often enough to make me forget why I was ever upset in the first place, and lucky for him, I already can't remember why I was upset), he finds other ways to reconcile. This time, he came home with this...


The most perfectly shaped pumpkin I've ever seen. Now, this isn't exactly a pumkin that screams, "Cook with me," as it's a bit too big and I think the flavor might lack a bit, but it does scream out to me, "Carve me!" In essence...a blank slate.

This takes me back to my younger days: days when mom would take us to the grocery store to pick out our favorite pumpkin from the giant wooden bins that showed up a few weeks before Halloween. We would choose our pumpkins, take them home, and spread out tons of newspaper on the floor, drawing and designing the faces of our pumpkins to the best of our not-exactly-artistic abilities, and spend hours carving into them amidst the cautions from my mother, "Don't chop your fingers off! Be careful with that knife!" My father (my parents are divorced, and both re-married to wonderful people), I remember, also used to get very into this seasonal art (he is a very skilled artist, although he doesn't get to use his talents very often these days), and even purchased a set of small pumpkin carving knives that we would often use to carve out elaborate designs on our pumpkins at his house. After the grueling work was finished, we would light up a candle, place it inside our creations, and put the pumpkin artwork on display on the front porch, where it usually remained until nature got ahold of it and the faces started to change with the folds and creases of decay. The best part of carving pumpkins, of course, is sticking your hands into the ooey-gooey orange mess of seeds and strings inside the pumpkin and pulling out the seeds to roast and toast in the oven.

All of this got me thinking. Since I wanted to name the title of this post what I did (well, I think it's cute anyway!), and since I had promised I would mention that he'd gotten me a pumpkin instead of flowers - I was thinking how I could incorporate a Jack-o-lantern pumpkin, more suited to carving than to cooking, into my foodie blogging world. I thought, well, I could carve something foodie-oriented in it...thinking perhaps apple trees, foodie gadgets, etc. Anyone have any creative ideas? Anyone as dorky as me and actually done this? I haven't gotten to it quite yet, but as soon as it's carved, I'll post a picture and we can all have a good laugh about how my father's artistic ability didn't get passed down!