Thanksgiving - Give Thanks With Ice Cream

Thanksgiving is a special time for many people and provides a wonderful focal point for family and friends to get together and enjoy a special celebration.

Most people celebrate Thanksgiving at home with a large and special meal. Many Thanksgiving meals feature roast turkey but when it comes to a dessert, there's lots of 'traditional' options that include pumpkin, cranberries or gingerbread.

Pumpkin Bread Pudding is a super dessert for Thanksgiving. Diana Rattray offers a great recipe if you follow the link. Whatever dessert you choose, you might want to serve it with ice cream. It could be your favorite flavor or you could go for a guaranteed 'hit' with your dinner guests by choosing a straight vanilla ice cream. However, if you'd like to try something a little more unusual to make your Thanksgiving meal more special, you could try making a special homemade ice cream - here's one of my all time favorites ...

Crunchy Pecan Nut & Maple Syrup Ice Cream

If this doesn't appeal then you could try another from a range of unusual ice cream recipes - follow the link and you get recipes for everything from coconut ice cream, to nougat ice cream, chestnut ice cream and lots more!

Whatever dessert you choose, whether with or without homemade ice cream, simply enjoy being with those nearest and dearest to you and the joy that sharing a good, hearty meal can bring. Happy Thanksgiving!

Halloween - Halloween Ice Cream Recipe

Halloween provides a great excuse for family and friends to get together, eat together and have fun, especially the children. Many people eat a traditional pumpkin pie on Halloween and that's fine but how about a special Halloween Ice Cream? If you use pumpkin in any of your cooking, just save some (about 12oz or 300g), cook it and use it (mashed) along with some maple syrup in this great Halloween Ice Cream recipe.

There seems to be an automatic association of pumpkin with Halloween but do you know why that is? I didn't until recently. Apparently, the tradition of hollowing out a pumpkin as a lantern at Halloween is an old Celtic custom, brought to the USA by Irish immigrants and 31 October is the New Year of the traditional Celtic calendar.

Also what do you and your children actually know about the pumpkin itself? I had always thought of pumpkin as a vegetable but I was wrong! Its botanical classification is actually that of a fruit; maybe that's why it works so well as a dessert when you come to think of it. Pumpkin is also the state fruit of New Hampshire and in Keene New Hampshire there's a Pumpkinfest every October - this year it's October 20. To read more visit the Pumpkinfest link (Wikipedia).