Jack o Lantern oranges with fruit salad, and more Halloween photos

At our recent Halloween lunch, we wanted a fun-themed healthy end to the meal.  These fruit salad jack o lantern oranges were just what I needed.  They looked really cute and were full of healthy seasonal fruit.  I am also going to share some of the Halloween stuff in our life over the past month or so.  As I looked at all the photos, I noticed that every one had a jack o lantern somewhere in it. 
  

Sylvia was really into Halloween this year that a crazy amount of Halloween merchandise made its way into our house.  There is a little cynicism in packaging regular products with Halloween on the outside.  Sylvia love the Tiny Teddies boxes because they had masks on the back.  The Chobani ghost yoghurts were cute but a couple are still in the fridge.  And the best packaging has to go to Heinz for the Hallowbeans and Spookghetti.

You might also notice a couple of little pumpkins we bought with the intention of carving them but never did.  Goodness knows what I do with them as I must prefer our local pumpkins for eating.

 As well as supermarket food products, Sylvia managed to bring quite a bit of Halloween decorations into the house and set up a little Halloween corner of her room.

We went to a local neighbourhood house open day where Sylvia got this fantastic face painting on her arm.  (Arm painting?)  Kudos to Mary Grace who does the best face painting.  She had to be shown a jack o lantern picture to understand what Sylvia was asking for and did this detailed picture from a simple online picture.

Sylvia also took advantage of the craft table at the open day to make some Halloween bunting.  We hung it up in the house but sadly the flags did not sit flat and curled a little.  It looked quite good anyway.

Sylvia and her friend were keen to do trick or treating.  I am not keen on visiting houses but we went to the local shopping centre where they were able to do a little trick or treating, especially in the kids bookstore.

Weeks and weeks before Halloween, Sylvia and I were excited to find Hersheys kisses in the foreign section of the supermarket.  We had never seen them before but we bought them just to try making witches hats that are a staple of Halloween posts on Pinterest.  I like the purple icing Sylvia mixed and she did a great job of piping just enough icing (about the shape of the kisses) and then pushing a kiss into the icing to make the purple rim.  I think the oreo thins we used were a little dark but they still looked pretty good.  Sylvia decided she didn't fancy the taste but most of them went by the end of the lunch.  She also made some monster grubs - ie chocolate balls with some sugar eyes or lips.

We found these Halloween babybels in a packet in the supermarket.  Sylvia bought them for the kids at our lunch yesterday as there were 5 kids expected.  I am not sure what happened with them in all the hustle and bustle but there were only a couple left in the fridge afterwards.

The baby bel characters matched up nicely with the masks and colouring in figures that Sylvia had organised for the kids.  She got the masks from the Tiny Teddies boxes (please don't start counting how many little bags of those little biscuits we have bought - there are still quite a few in the pantry and I hope not to see too many more boxes in the house as I am not so keen on them.)

We made the jack o lantern oranges, the day before.  I suggested Sylvia cut off the top of the orange and use a juicer to empty the orange.  She ended up with lots of splits in the orange.  So then I worked on cutting out a chunk of orange flesh with a sharp knife and then using a spoon to scoop out flesh and juice.  Sylvia carved all the faces.  I also cut the pineapple and watermelon the day before. 

We finished making the fruit salad on the morning of the lunch.  I am not a fan of fruit salad with melon but Sylvia wanted watermelon.  My preference is berries and stone fruit and kiwi fruit.  We agreed to leave out the kiwi fruit but I was excited to find the first local nectarines of the season and added one.  We only filled 5 oranges and had heaps of fruit salad over.  I thought it would last for days.  Then I forgot about the fruit salad in the fridge.  Luckily Sylvia found it.  I was surprised how much of the fruit salad got eaten.  We had finished it by the end of the next day.

I really loved these oranges with fruit salad.  In fact I wonder if they could be served with different patterns or even with cute stickers on them for party food during the rest of the year.  It reminds me just how much I love a good fruit salad.  With summer fruit coming into season, I hope to have more fruit salads.

More fun fruit recipes ideas on Green Gourmet Giraffe:
Choc-nut banana and fruit kebabs (gf, v)
Fruit Christmas tree 
Fruity icy poles (gf, v)
Rainbow fruit kebabs (gf, v)
Watermelon monster (gf, v)  

Or find more Halloween food on Green Gourmet Giraffe.  

Jack o Lantern Oranges with Fruit Salad
inspired by Mums Who Think

Oranges
1/2 pineapple, diced
2-3 cups diced
1 banana, diced
1 apple, diced
125g punnet raspberries
2 x 125g punnets blueberries
125g strawberries, diced
1 nectarine, diced
Juice of 1/2 lemon
Orange juice
Maple syrup

Cut the top off the oranges.  Scoop out the flesh out of the oranges.  Firstly take a paring knife and cut around the flesh by the edges of orange skin and prise out a chunk of orange flesh.  Then take a spoon and carefully scoop out the flesh and juice.  (I set aside the flesh and juice to strain.)  This can be done the day before.  Just keep the oranges in the fridge.

Now mix all your diced fruit (having it well diced so it fits in the orange) and stuff in the orange.  It can be made the day before but stuff the oranges on the day.  We kept our stuffed oranges in the fridge a few hours before lunch.  Leftover fruit salad was eaten in bowls.

On the stereo:
Talking with the Taxman about Poetry: Billy Bragg