Halloween is on its way

So...we're having another Halloween party. Smaller than last year's. In fact, on request. A friend whom we met last December will be having guests next week: her brother and his girlfriend, from France. They're unfamiliar with American Halloween celebrations, and she (the friend) has heard about our parties, and....

I told her we'd have a small gathering. There will be eight or ten all together, and instead of chili this year, we'll be having pumpkin soup. I still have to come up with the recipe, but it will probably be a kind of bisque, very smooth. (I'm going to buy an immersion blender, finally, so as to be able to make this and not deal with cleaning the blender and pureeing hot soup that way.)

There are gingerbread bat sandwich cookies in the freezer--filled with ginger and chocolate, and frosted with more chocolate--and I will be making orange flavored sugar cookies cut out in pumpkin shapes and decorated with an orange icing. The pumpkin bread is already made, and I'm going to make gingerbread or maple spice cake or some other similar thing. I found a recipe for maple spice cake in a 1938 issue of McCall's. It's like gingerbread, but with maple syrup in place of molasses.

Then cheese, raw veggies, and the other usual suspects. We are serving red or white wine and sparkling water.

I'll be wearing (probably) the "daytime" pin-up witch costume from last year, provided that (a) I can find the dress and (b) the damn thing still fits! (I really should stop eating my own baked goods, it's dangerous. Dancing once a week doesn't cut it these days.)

Does anyone else have plans for Halloween? It's on a Saturday this year!