A few days ago I woke up with a start, let out a strangled “Arrrrrrgghhh”, partially woke up Mr NQN and then scrambled out of bed as if I had found a horse’s head in it.

Do you ever have those times where you forget about things? I just realised that in the chaos of the last few months I had completely forgot to put the Anthony Bourdain Medium Raw copies up for auction as promised! “How on earth did I let that slip?” I wondered chewing on my bottom lip urging my computer to turn on. But then sage, half asleep Mr NQN suggested that now was possibly a better time than any because people could buy them as Christmas gifts. So I took photos and here they are, your very own copy of Medium Raw, signed by the man himself during his recent time in Australia for the Sydney Writer’s Festival, all proceeds going to Tony’s charity of choice, Médecins Sans Frontières! Click here to bid on any of the copies. 

The other thing that I almost forgot was Christmas. Well I couldn’t forget it completely, after all there were the telltale decorations everywhere but I was being forced at gunpoint or spousal sad face point into using google calendar after about a year of resisting. I love my paper calendar and although this means that I have to bring said paper calendar with me when I make appointments inevitably garnering some odd looks, I am still quite  beholden to it. Mr NQN promised me something good in my Christmas stocking if I stuck to an online calendar (it’s like bribing kids to do their homework). I was flicking through the calendar, which he had populated for me deciphering my messy scrawl, and then I realised that we only had about a month to go until Christmas which necessitate another strangled “Arrrrghhhh”!

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So there I was, waiting for a batch of blood for my annual Halloween party. Not the human kind mind you, but nevertheless a batch of blood. The only problem? It was about to arrive when I was going to have a meeting with my book publishers at Penguin to discuss publicity for my upcoming book.

“What am I going to do?” I asked Mr NQN. “It needs to be fresh, and I can’t pick it up any other time”

“Bring it with you to the meeting?” he suggested.

“I suppose, I can’t be the only author that has brought a bag of blood to a meeting, can I?” I reasoned.

Well as it turns out, blood isn’t the easiest thing to get and it ended up being late which saved me from a fate of explaining why I was carry half a litre of cryovaced pigs’s blood (well at least it wasn’t in a bucket and I wasn’t in a 70′s style prom dress I didn’t have said bucket tipped over me a la Carrie…).

Every year I look forward to my favourite time of the year, Halloween where I get to say goodbye to the pretty and embrace the ghoulishly morbid. This year for Halloween I ended up making 14 items – I know 13 is a lucky or unlucky number depending on who you talk to but an additional thing just slipped in in my excitement. I prepped the party for the week prior to it-I was holding it early as I wasn’t able to hold it on the last weekend of October and I also figured if anyone wanted to cook the recipes they would have time in order to make them. As I have for the past few years, I went to my favourite party supply store The Party People for items including a backdrop that would transform our neutral toned apartment into a dungeon and for good measure I hired a fog machine so that guests could be treated to the sight of a foggy, misty Halloween evening! I do love the delightfully creepy!

A few days before the party I sent around a little reminder to my guests:

“My dearest, darling ghoul
I’ve been busy mixing up spiders and gruel
For a Halloween night
That will give you a fright
See you on Saturday at 7pm, don’t forget there’s only one rule…

Please wear a costume! ”

Well I never laid claim to any poetic talents. So without any further dithering allow me, dressed as your Disneyland Haunted Mansion Maid wearing a costume made by my mother, to present you with my hellishly horrible Halloween party of 2011!

Press the doorbell to enter…

Blood punch

My esteemed guests, let us start with something to drink. Some blood punch Madam or Sir? Presented most delightfully in a clear blood fountain, the mistress of the manor likes to drink blood so she thought you might like to try some. Perhaps you’ll get a taste for it like she has…

Please help yourself to anything on the dining table…it’s all gruesomely edible…

Have you ever visited  a pet cemetery? Here is a haunted one made of an avocado, spinach and chickpea hummus dip where ghosts abound visiting tombstone crackers and pretzel fences keep them in.

If you haven’t visited a dentist lately I wouldn’t recommend these apple rotting teeth with caramel peanuts…

Watermelon brain

This was the brain of someone that displeased the mansion’s mistress. She’s a little despotic so she decided off with his head and that she would share it with all of you…

Oh dear, and here is the rest of the man that displeased the mansion mistress. Apart from being a despot she also has a nicer side and believes in nose to tail eating…So she thought that we should eat all of him from his bbq pork ribs to his spicy sausage intestines! With a bloody tomato sauce of course

Smokey pumpkin cheese ball

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Sometimes I’m not a very good wife. Sometimes I do things that I want and drag Mr NQN along as a somewhat unwilling participant. The restaurant visits, well they’re fine as he gets fed but the shopping and the movies, now that tests his patience. There was the time I took him to see a movie called “Bright Star”. I didn’t actually tell him what it was about on purpose (a movie about the last three years of poet John Keats’s life). He turned to me a few minutes into the film looking alarmed and searching for the exit. “Where on earth have you taken me?” he asked panicked. I mean this was a chick film and then some.

He fell asleep during it head leaning back against the headrest in his loudest posture of protest possible. I had to make it up to him and that was to do something or make something that he likes. And every time I ask him to come and do something that he doesn’t want to with me, I am only too happy to make him something to make up for it.

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