What a day: good food, clear skies, Hallowe'en programs, a "blue moon," and the end of wretched Daylight Saving Time.

In the past few months, though, Alex has been testing recipes on us. Last month he brought some "breakfast sliders," which even I ate (I gave the egg to James). Plus with folks bringing fruit, or fruit trays, veggie trays, etc., we were having pretty good breakfasts.

So today, with all the conversation and the camaraderie, we had some outstanding food. Our contribution was the least interesting: we brought pumpkin bread (Entemann's pumpkin loaf is surprisingly good) and two kinds of Pepperidge Farms cookies that went very quickly. John and Oreta brought candied bacon (an Alton Brown Good Eats recipe) and candied turkey bacon, and it was just superlative, sweet and salty all at once. I think we all ate too much to be good for us. Alex made creamy onion soup. Now, I'm not a fan of "French" onion soup with the thick coating of cheese on it. But this was...astounding. It had cream and butter, and sweet onions sliced finely, all in chicken broth, and was so good! Plus to offset the decadent bacon and the succulent soup, Ron and Lin provided a veggie tray heaped with celery, cucumber, baby tomatoes, broccoli, and lots of carrots with ranch dip on the side. So good!

Alas, good times had to end, people wandered off on errands, and we had to go to Lidl for milk, bread, chicken thighs on sale, and other necessities of life. Unfortunately they had no carts available, so I ended up pushing James in their available manual wheelchair through the store. Let's say I had my cardio for the day and was wiped out when we got home.

Thankfully we had an extra hour to relax (except for having to turn twelve clocks and five timers back one hour). We had no Hallowe'en visitors at all (I don't think anyone on our street did trick-or-treat) and sat back later to watch The Haunted History of Hallowe'en, the For Better or for Worse special "The Good-for-Nothing," and, of course—and not on stinky AppleTV—It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. "You've heard of the fury of a woman scorned, haven't you? Well, that's nothing compared to a woman who has been cheated out of tricks-or-treats." 😁