Roast pork belly with honey and mustard parsnips, carrots, onions and roast garlic cloves; red cabbage with bacon

This has got to be one of the most delicious meals I've ever cooked. It was quite improbably, unusually, disgustingly delicious. Everything caramelised, sticky and gooey, the crunch of the red cabbage and the saltiness of the bacon (they really know how to do bacon in Germany) and the garlickyness of the garlic cloves and the sweetness of the onions, parsnips and carrots - and the crackling! Oh, my, the crackling!

For pudding, as an afterthought, I whacked together an apple tart using some leftover ready made pastry that had been sitting in the fridge for weeks and a couple of ageing apples that had been in the fruit bowl for almost as long. Served with vanilla ice cream, it was delicious.

And because it's Hallowe'en, we made our pumpkin, which ended up looking more gruesomely ghoul-like than intended when the red candle inside started dripping blood-coloured wax all the way down to the floor: