Creepy Fingers and “Blood” Dip

By Sandy Hu
The latest from Inside Special Fork

Halloween seems to be getting more and more popular each year. In my San Francisco neighborhood, more houses seem to be strung with orange lights and giant spider webs grace more front doors.

Steve bought us our pumpkins and I plan to carve them next week. Some years, if I don’t get around to it, I just keep the pumpkins until Thanksgiving, when they become part of the table centerpiece.

Since our kids are grown, Halloween isn’t as exciting as when we took them trick-or-treating in the dark of night. And no ghosts or goblins knock on our door because we’re on a busy street, so we no longer buy Halloween candy, which we’d just end up eating ourselves.

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Spooky Halloween Treats

By Sandy Hu

Congrats to Madeline O. from Colorado Springs CO who won our Zojirushi sweepstakes!

I have three ideas for Halloween treats for you. One is a little “iffy,” one is easy and the other…you’ll get on Video Friday this week.

First the “iffy” one. With Halloween coming up, I’ve been toying with how to make baked apple mummies. My idea is simple: scoop out the core of small baking apples, stuff with a raisin mixture, then wrap with puff pastry dough strips for the bandages, stick in cloves for the eyes, and bake. Seemed easy enough….

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Turn Leftover Halloween Candy into Dinner

By Katie Barreira

In his stand-up comedy, Bill Cosby does a bit about the morning that his wife tasked him with feeding the children breakfast. His brood, seeing this changing of the guard as an opportunity, asks Dad for chocolate cake. Considering the request, Cosby ticks off the ingredients in chocolate cake…eggs, milk, wheat… “That’s nutrition!” he concludes.

And so, the giddy children sit down to a breakfast of chocolate cake. “And then,” says Cosby in his best ghost story voice, “she came downstairs.” You can guess who that she might be, and how thrilled she was to discover her little hens shoveling down dessert at 7 a.m.

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Halloween Spaghetti Casserole

By Marilyn Hunter

I don’t know about your house on Halloween night, but ours is hectic, especially this year with it falling on a Monday! This means by the time we get home from school, changed into costumes, go through the usual hysterics of two excited boys, then settle down for photographs before venturing into the jack o’ lantern-lit streets, there’s no time for preparing dinner. So I dug out a tried-and-true baked spaghetti casserole recipe that can be made on either Saturday or Sunday and then pulled from the fridge and reheated about an hour before serving.

It’s funny how memories work, but Andrew’s cousin Chipper sent him an email a few days ago asking if he remembered how Gramma Hunter used to make her baked spaghetti casserole. While this recipe isn’t hers, it is in her spirit that we offer this version to you. Gramma Hunter loved all holidays, mostly because the whole family would come to her house for food and fun.

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A Ghost in My House

By Lori Powell

With a chill in the air and goblins on their way, I welcome fall!

Candy, although alluring in their tiny packets, are not my big craving so I am safe from temptation, at least for this holiday. My Halloween pleasure would be a devil’s food cupcake or a hunk of brownie, instead.

My house is one of many in my neighborhood that is part of a ghost walk this weekend. I made the ghost A-list due to spooky stories about the prior tenant and my own personal pleasure at hearing him (but not, thankfully, the pleasure of meeting him) in the night.

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