Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween

the day when it's perfectly acceptable to play with your produce!

Ghosts in the Graveyard

This was a classic example of a "back of the box" or magazine advertisement recipe. Simple to make, approachable ingredients, and oh so fun to eat.

If I recall correctly, we even added some gummy worms into the dirt for a bit more creep factor. Easy to do when your Mom has a store with a candy counter!!!

There are many great spooky desert ideas out there for Halloween - the cupcake variations alone are amazing!!!

If you are looking to put together your own Halloween feast, Family Fun has a great list of creepy spooky recipe ideas to cover every course of the meal. Most are family friendly to make and serve, but also are a great starting point for creating your own creepy goodness. Better Homes and Gardens is another ghoulish resource.

Happy Haunting!

The Head of Medusa

Boy do I wish I had a picture of this dish.

This dish all started when my sister Terri and I found a package of Squid Ink Pasta. Now I don't remember where we bought it - but I do remember thinking it would make a great Halloween Dish - just with red sauce.

Terri thought it looked kind of like Medusa's snake hair.

So she got ambitious.

She made some bread dough. Then she inverted a pyrex mixing bowl onto a baking sheet. She covered the bowl with foil (and I think sprayed it with cooking spray), and then proceeded to mold a bread bowl of Medusa's face and a few snakes out of bread. The whole thing went into the oven to bake.

After it was baked, she flipped it over, cooked the pasta, tossed it with red sauce and filled the "head" with the black pasta.

It was deliciously creepy.

Dem Dry Bones

These aren't really "dry" - but they make great spooky body parts!

And they have bacon - everything's good with bacon!!!

Ingredients

* 1 box sesame seed breadsticks
* 1 lb. bacon
* grated Parmesan cheese - probably about 1/2 cup.

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Wrap breadsticks in uncooked bacon. (frugal note - you can stretch the bacon further by cutting it in half lengthwise down each strip. You will be able to wrap more breadsticks but they won't be as tightly covered in the bacon. Up to you.)

Place on a cookie sheet or jelly roll pan and bake for 30 minutes. (I like to cover mine with aluminum foil for this -makes clean up easier)

Put the Parmesan cheese in a shallow dish. Roll each stick through the cheese while still hot.

Allow to cool and crisp, then serve.

...there are a lot of variations of this recipe out there in cyber land. Different kinds of breadsticks, some with garlic (keeps those vampires away), and some with different baking temperatures.

But they've all got bacon -so they all must be good, right?

"I Want To Drink Your Blood"

When you are having a spooky Halloween dinner, of course the punch MUST be red. And what better way to serve red punch than in bottles with old style "blood bank" labels on them.

This recipe will make both + (spiked) and - (un-spiked) versions, so be sure to label your bottles accordingly.

Regina's Quick and Easy Red Punch

1 bottle cranberry juice
1 bottle club soda

(spike with your choice of alcohol - or you can swap things out and use red wine in place of the cranberry to make a wine punch)
Serve in a carafe (ours are recycled wine bottles) - with a "blood bank" label on them.

Enjoy.

What's In Your Cauldron?

A few years back, Matt and I hosted a Halloween Party. We asked each guest to bring a "spooky" dish to pass, and then labeled each one with a big manila "specimen" tag, giving the spooky name of the dish as well as a goofy made up Latin name for it.

It was loads of fun.

Unfortunately it was loads of fun pre-digital camera, and I have no idea where the prints and/or negatives are from that event. I hung on to the tags for a long long time, but think I finally let them go.

At any rate - in the spirit of Halloween we thought we'd share some "spooky" recipes with you all this week. Some are things we have made again, some are memories from that party.

Our first one is "Great Green Gobs of Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts" - better known in non-Halloween (or non-elementary school) circles as Sausage Stew.

This dish was provided by one of our guests - and was DEELICIOUS!
Unfortunately he never shared the recipe - so I went hunting online for one instead.

And I found this one.
It even has pumpkin in it - for those of you looking for ways to recycle Jack's innards.

Fine Weather Fare

Around these parts (Matt and I live in Western NY), autumn "falls" pretty quickly, and by Columbus Day weekend we have very often had our first hard killing frost, and sometimes even our first snow flurries.

This year we had the unexpected luxury of a later frost, a relatively balmy September (ok - there were a few days that were downright cold and miserable), and a furnace that did not get turned on until last weekend. We also experienced a picture perfect Columbus Day weekend - blue sky, low humidity, enough breeze to rustle leaves but not be annoying, and best of all - warm temperatures. T-shirt and shorts warm. Picnic lunch warm.

Our attention this weekend has been on the yard, the gardens, and the garage - getting everything cleaned up, put up, and organized (although the Munchkin enjoyed some good quality sandbox time, too), and food has been somewhat of an afterthought (gasp!)...

Fortunately for us, Matt's Saturday Night Pizza (tease... you will have to wait for that recipe) made plenty for leftovers, so we grabbed the container, a bag-o-chips, a few beverages, and the last remains of last year's order of Girl Scout cookies (need to make room for a fresh shipment), and converged on the Munchkin's Little Tikes picnic table for what is probably our last family picnic of 2008.

At least our last 'outdoor' picnic. We sometimes do these inside, too - in the middle of the living room - converged around another one of his little tables.

Picnics, they are good for the spirit!
So in the spirit of Columbus Day - today's recipe is to have a picnic - the menu is up to you.
Enjoy!