Make Ghostly Halloween Treats in Minutes

Now that the kids are grown, I miss the excitement of Halloween, when we would get the kids dressed up and shepherd them around the neighborhood. Neither of my boys was big on candy so recently, I called Chris in New York and asked him what made Halloween so special. He recalled the thrill of being out in the dark, the ghostly home decorations, jack-o-lanterns on front porches and the adults dressed in costume dispensing treats. San Francisco’s temperate fall weather also contributed to the enjoyment of the evening.

As a trick-or-treat “deprived” child myself, I’m glad Chris has such fond childhood memories. (Out of deference to his mom, he left out the middle school Halloween years when he gathered with other boys from school, when daring but harmless “tricks” were more fun that “treats.”)

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Pumpkin-Orange Smoothies

By Andrew Hunter

Halloween is the symbolic start of the holiday season in the Hunter household. For Marilyn and me, it’s a transitional time at the table too. Steaks and chops are on the grill less often with more roasts braised for hours on Sundays to eat the rest of the week; and our shopping trips yield fewer summer fruits and veggies and more squashes, roots and gourds.

Pumpkins this year will get carved, roasted, grilled and puréed. We like to buy small orange pumpkin, cut off the stem end, then cut in quarters, clean away the stringy and seedy insides, rub with oil, salt and pepper, and roast until soft and tender. With these chunks of soft pumpkin, we can do a bunch of things from dicing for pasta, to puréeing for soups and mashing into potatoes for an autumnal side.

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The Giving Pumpkin

By Marilyn Hunter

Once there was a pumpkin…a bright orange pumpkin with dimples, scratches and shine. She loved the two curious little boys who had plucked her from the pumpkin patch. Everyday the boys would come and play with her; pick her up by the stem and gently place her back on the hearth.

They would draw silly faces on her, pretend she was guarding a fortress filled with smaller gourds, and move her to shady spot when the sun shined bright in the room. And one day, near Halloween’s eve, they helped carve her into a spooky Jack O’ Lantern.

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Halloween Candy…Yum!!

By Lori Powell

After the autumn leaves comes the arrival of our spookiest of holidays, Halloween. I am ready for it this year with three bags of candy and I will be taking part of my neighborhood ghost walk. Since my town dates back to the 1600s there is a ton of history here and, well, some residents just have never left…spooky!

I am always hopeful that we will have a bunch of trick-or-treaters and I am always surprised the next day by how much candy didn’t get gobbled up.

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Homemade Peanut Butter Cups are Wickedly Good

By Katie Barreira

As a child, it was difficult to imagine anything more awesome than holding up adults for candy while in disguise. But I was lucky enough to have a pair of fairy god neighbors who sweetened the Halloween jackpot. More hair raising than the Pinsky’s haunted garage, more engrossing than Mrs. Feldman’s eyeball punch, the enchanted Victorian at 14 Ferncroft Road promised a special and, to my parents dismay, sizeable confection meant just for me.

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