Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays. There's just something about the way it celebrates drinking blood and also sharing that makes me feel like a kid again. I mean really, who can forget the happy times they spent as children frolicking around their neighbourhood on Halloween night with a bag of candy, a glass of blood and a Hello Kitty costume handed down from their older brother. I know I sure can't!
Because of my fond memories, I like to go all out at Halloween. For a week beforehand I watch a ton of super-scary movies (Blacula, Blacula II, Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School, etc) and on the big night itself I clear out my yard so I can deck it out with a ton of props. You name it: tombstones, empty graves, blood-soaked clothes, I move ALL that stuff out the day before so I can set up fake ghosts and hide a ghetto blaster that plays a looping tape of the Monster Mash. When it comes to giving out candy however, I takes things a bit more seriously. I believe the children are our future, and I don't feel it's right to just give them a bunch of nutritionless candy which will decay their teeth and make then goofy and hyper. That's right, I believe that to really have a "graveyard smash", you have to give out vegetable treats. I thought that for this holiday I'd explain a few of my favorites and hopefully you'll try making a few of them yourselves for the kids, or even just for your own snacking enjoyment.
Bloody Radish Eyeballs:
This is a great treat that really conveys the message that Halloween foods don't need to lose any of their chilling gruesomeness just because they're healthy. These are also really easy to prepare, you just need to fill a bowl with radishes, and pour some beet juice on them. You can even mix in some brown sugar if you like, a little won't cause any harm! Once you've mixed it all together, just chill these guys for a few hours and then wrap them in tin foil.
These have always been a staple around my neighbourhood, and I think after tasting them you'll see why!
Apples with cucumber razors:
Trick-or-treating and getting apples go together like eating italian food and getting heartburn: One always leads to the other, and who would have it any other way! This year though, why not spice up the kids' night by sneaking in a little something extra. All you need to do is to slice a cucumber carefully into thin (but thick enough to stay firm) slices the shape of razorblades. Then sneak them into the apples and watch fun happen! For extra enjoyment, phone up all the neighbourhood parents later that night and say: "Someone put razorblades in your kid's apple!" then wait for about 10 seconds and add: "Cucumber razorblades! Have a happy and healthy Halloween!". You'll be the hit of the neighbourhood!
Potato ghosts:
Not only is this one healthy, it's incredibly funny! All you need to do to prepare these is to take a potato, cover it with some white cloth (toilet paper works but isn't very durable) and then glue peas to the cloth where the eyes would appear on the potato, if the potato was a scary ghost with peas for eyes. If you do this correctly, noone will be able to look at it without laughing: It's a potato in a ghost costume, with peas where it's eyes should be!
Absolutely hilarious! Once the kids have had enough fun looking at and playing with the potato ghost, they can boil or mash him for a nice - and healthy - side dish.
These are just a few of the many vegetable-based treats you can make for halloween. Your only limits are your creativity, and the fact that many vegetables taste very very bad, and that you can't use much sugar or basically anything that tastes good. Within those constraints though you can let yourself go wild!
At the end of the night you'll be able to sit back, have a nice chilled glass of blood and reflect on the fact that not only did you make halloween a bit more healthy, you made it a bit more fun too!
note: Is this not really a diary entry, and just an unpublished column for Bigwords, who went under? Yes. Did I just write to my notify list and say I wrote an entry about garbage? Yes. Does that entry actually appear just before this one in my diary? Yes. Is this the most annoying paragraph ever? Yes.
14:58:33 - 2000-10-31