In orange and black

I'm still waiting on pictures from our party last night, but until I have them, I will just say that it was an unqualified success, a bona fide Halloween costume party, albeit several weeks after the fact. We actually managed to get almost all of the Catalans to dress up, even an uncle who avowedly has never dressed up as anything in his entire life (he put a kitchen towel on his head with a rope around it, and painted a mole on his face: a Catalan Yasser Arafat?). I practically gave bear hugs to anyone who was game enough to show up at the door looking ridiculous, so relieved and gleeful I was. The apartment was full to bursting.

I was asked by an aunt if I was "una parenta de la Robin?" (Robin's relative) because she didn't recognize me in the Cleopatra wig. Judging by that alone, I would say my costume was also a success, and I enjoyed swanning around in a white sheet, wig, and eye makeup with my Antony, whose brilliant gold laurel leaves were easy to spot across a room.

The food was also a hit, especially my pumpkin apple bread, and although a whole bunch of people asked me for the recipe, I don't know how they're going to find Libby's pureed pumpkin in Barcelona. The adults enjoyed the punch with a hand floating in it and marvelled at the popcorn and my method of preparing it (evidently there it's prepared in a frying pan, with sugar?), while the little kids got appropriately chocolatey and sugar-high. The kids were the best: even though I spent an awful long time scrubbing little chocolate fingerprints off the walls, it was so much fun to see them running around in their little costumes (especially my niece as caputxeta, little red riding hood) and enjoying the holiday sweets.

The menu, reprising my color theme from the actual night of Halloween, was all orange and black:
pumpkin apple bread
chocolate muffin "spiders" (I attempted a crude version of these using muffins for the bodies, pocky for the legs, and icing for the eyes)
toffee candy with orange wrappers and black candies and oreos
an assortment of bright orange chips and cheese puffs
(orange) cheese and (black) olives on toothpicks
carrot sticks with cheddar cheese dip and black olives
salmon-tuna-olive terrines (made by M's mom because it was orange and black)
orange cumin popcorn (plastic gloves stuffed with the popcorn, crawling out of the bowl)
dried apricots and mandarin oranges
orange-mango punch (with a hand ice "cube" floating in it; I froze some of the punch in a glove)

I dare say everyone had fun. I sure did! It was hard to get up this morning and harder still to find myself in gray and cold Brussels. But I'm thankful for a wonderful weekend, the opportunity to catch up with friends, and for the beginning of what we hope will be an annual tradition, the kind of thing our friends and family in Barcelona look forward to every year.