A French Flair Halloween

This year I celebrated Halloween for the first time by accepting an invitation to a Halloween lunch with four other ladies in our apartment building. I was the only one under the age of seventy and couldn't participate in reminiscing about the dashing looks of Clark Gable and James Stewart. But I could participate in savouring the audacious lunch hosted by the oldest in our group, Gerty (85).

Gerty festooned her apartment with orange and black balloons, a carved pumpkin, black dinner plates and dark purple champagne glasses. In the spirit of Halloween, Gerty had black witches' hats, orange pumpkin hats, or red and black wigs for us to wear as well as black garlands with orange pumpkins. I opted for the dramatic black pointed hat.

I brought the starter nibblies to enjoy while we sipped Gerty's delightful raspberry champagne surprise from large bubble wine glasses. Gerty loves to entertain and Halloween is a good excuse to throw a luncheon party. I was already having fun but Gerty's recital of the lunch menu had me doing back flips.

"Ladies," she announced in her Jamaican accent, "I am quite hooked on 'French Cooking at Home' on the cooking channel and so this is our menu. First we'll start with a vegetable soup and home-made olive bread. Our second course will be the anchovy salad Freda brought. And then the main course is a baked tortière, stuffed cabbage, roasted carrots and butter squash, asparagus with stuffed olives and a seafood risotto. Ginger brought pumpkin pie for dessert and Iris baked lemon squares."

Our contributions to the lunch were meagre offerings compared to the spread Gerty had single-handedly pulled off. "You must have been so busy preparing all this!" we gasped. "Oh," Gerty dismissed the praise, "I do a little bit every day and then it isn't too much. Besides which" she smiled, "you are all my guinea pigs."

What a time to be a guinea pig. What a privilege to participate in this extravagant meal. What an honour to be invited to Gerty's Halloween celebration with its French flair. M was just as thrilled with the leftovers I took home for him. He lost out on the atmosphere but he still got to enjoy all the full flavour of Gerty's French cooking.