Category — Halloween

Happy Halloween, everybody!

We ended up skipping out on an after school Halloween party because the girls were freakishly tired. Instead, they stayed home and practiced piano/cello and then vegged out in front of the tv. By early evening the prospect of candy re-invigorated them.

Just as we were going out, M asked for eye make-up. Well, duh, she’s Cleopatra, but as you know, I never think of make-up. I don’t even own eyeliner, so I improvised by dipping a paintbrush into a container of mascara. When M saw me do this she asked, “Is that a paintbrush?!?” with this complete why-am-I-stuck-with-such-an-amateur-for-a-mom tone of voice. But I managed some passable black swoops from each eye and she looked pretty good. J had a cozy Eskimo girl costume, which was perfect for the weather.

I took them out trick-or-treating early, then they came home for a soup dinner and went back out with Cute W. Then, and this is where it gets ridiculous, they went back out, briefly, again. They’d been to a neighbor’s house who’d handed out big candy bars last year and they were disappointed because they got mini-bars. Then a friend dropped by (trick-or-treating) and reported that  he’d received a giant candy bar. So the girls, who had already trick-or-treated at this house once, changed into entirely new outfits (yes, we have an excellent dress-up section in our playroom) and walked up the street again. No dice. Apparently the neighbors were giving the candies selectively and our girls didn’t make the cut. Granted, it’s cheating to go a second time. But they were so cozy and warm at home that I could hardly believe that they were motivated enough to get up, change, and go out again. Behold the power of chocolate.

Anyway, here’s what I’ve found for this week:

Tuesday, November 1st:

• At 1:30 pm, Bethlehem Public Library has On My Own, where 3- to 6-year-olds enjoy a story time while parents stay close-but-not-too-close.

Wednesday, November 2nd:

• From 11-11:30 am, it’s Worldwide Wednesdays International Games for preschoolers at the World Awareness Children’s Museum. Included with museum admission.
• At 1:30 pm, Bethlehem Public Library has On My Own, where 3- to 6-year-olds enjoy a story time while parents stay close-but-not-too-close.
• It’s World Travelers at 1:45 pm at the Children’s Museum at Saratoga.

Thursday, November 3rd:

• Take a family-friendly hike starting at 9:45 am.
• At 1o:30 am, Bethlehem Public Library has On My Own, where 3- to 6-year-olds enjoy a story time while parents stay close-but-not-too-close.
• Elementary-school-aged kids can be After School Adventurers from 3:30-4:30 pm at Albany Pine Bush. $3/person or $5/family.

Friday, November 4th:

• Take a First Friday Hike at noon at Albany Pine Bush. $3/person or $5/family.
• Clifton Park is doing a Stewardship Walk at 1 pm at Veterans’ Memorial Park.
• It’s First Friday in Albany from 5-9 pm.
• Malta Mama is once again doing Kidsgiving at Treepaad in Malta. It’s from 6-8 pm, and it’s $12/child, $8/kids 2 and under, and the money raised goes to impoverished children.
• Go on a Star Watch from 6:30-8 pm at Grafton Lakes State Park.

Here’s a guest post from June, my colleague at Kids Out and About. She occasionally (and it’s very occasionally lately–ahem!) writes a blog called My Name is June. I Like to Cook. She also wrote the post about making pancakes. Thanks, June!

Do you order pizza on Halloween to scarf down while you pass out chocolate to the trick or treaters? Really? Lame. Really lame. If you plan ahead a little, you can make this stew in advance and then just pop it into the pumpkin at the last minute. You still have two weeks to plan and cook it, because since you’re a good parent like me, you have abdicated all responsibility for the young ‘un’s costumes to the young ‘uns. It’s good for them. Makes them use their little noggins to come up with something original using only duct tape and the leftover tulle from their sister’s wedding. Can you say “Mummy”?

So, while the little ones thrash about desperately trying to complete their costumes before sundown on Halloween, pop this fun stew into the oven and you can pull it out just as the first little monsters show up at your door and demand protection money in the form of chocolate. And let’s not even get into those of you who are too cheap to spring for anything better than a mini tootsie roll. Puhleeze. It’s once a year. But then, who am I to judge? We live so far off the beaten path that I have never had a trick or treater darken my door. I have to go sit on a friend’s porch, but not before we eat the traditional Halloween pumpkin stew. Grandma Foodie used to make it every year when I was a kid. But I’ll bring a pumpkin roll and a bottle of wine with me to my friend’s house, so she’ll be happy to see me. I might even bring her a bowl of pumpkin stew.

Pumpkin Stew

3 T vegetable oil
3 cloves minced garlic
2 chopped green peppers
2 chopped onions
2 lbs beef stew meat
2 chopped tomatoes
1 T sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 pkgs frozen corn
3 diced potatoes
3 smallish sweet potatoes, diced
2 C beef bouillon
8 peach halves
1 medium pumpkin (if you can find  a pretty large pie pumpkin, they are sweeter and not stringy)
3 T butter
11/2 tsp salt

In a large dutch oven, brown garlic, peppers, onions, and stew meat in oil. Add tomatoes and salt. Simmer 20 minutes. Add corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, bouillon, and peaches and simmer 40 minutes.

Brush inside of pumpkin with butter and sprinkle with salt. Add stew and put lid on and bake 45 minutes at 350 degrees or until pumpkin is tender.

I think that this concludes the festive string of posts celebrating J’s birthday. This yummy pumpkin cheeseball could work for a grown-up party, too. We got the idea for it from the Southern Living Kids Cookbook, but J wanted to go with our much-loved family recipe for cheeseball. And then I decided that if there was a chance in hell that any kid besides J would eat any of it, I’d have to simplify. So I cut out all the veggies and about half of the spices.

The thing about cheeseball is that you just have to give in and use your hands. ut once you just surrender to the process, it becomes like creating a work of art. J wanted no part of “touching the ickiness.” But I had fun.

First, I sculpted the main shape, with ridges for the pumpkin.

Cheeseball shaped

Then I cut a little rectangular stencil shape and shook on some paprika.

Shaking on Paprika

The stem and leaves are from broccoli. This part, J was willing to do.

J puts on finishing touches

We served it with apple wedges, crackers, and pretzels. The kids admired it, but they didn’t eat much. I mean, come on: it was competing with popcorn balls. So, yeah. I finished it off.

Besides freeze dancing and general running and squealing, we planned two activities for J’s party. Once again, they were both all J’s idea.

First, she came up with Pin the Spider on the Web. We had a witch hat planned to assist in the blindfolding process, but it didn’t really happen. And each spider was labeled with a guest’s name. We had a huge web decoration stretched out onto the wall, and the little spiders had painters tape to stick them onto the web.

They looked cute all ready on a platter. The silver was tarnished which, I reasoned, just made it all seem more Halloweeny.

Here’s J moments before M accused her of cheating. Hmmm. . . .

We saved Bobbing for Apples for last in case people got wet. I expected that some of the girls would be anti-bobbing. I mean, it wasn’t too long ago that many of these kids were afraid to put their faces into the water at the pool. But they were unbelievably enthusiastic. We had J’s and M’s robes on hand to try to keep the girls as dry as possible, but those girls decided to go deep. I mean, seriously deep. And when they’d come up, apple trapped in teeth, they were triumphant.

I guess there’s a reason why Bobbing for Apples is a classic.

J picked out Snack-o’-Lanterns from Family Fun magazine as one of her many Halloween treats. I was skeptical: they looked tough. So I made a test orange jack-o-lantern. Turns out, it wasn’t too bad:

Of course, the whole point is to get the kids involved, so I took a deep breath and handed each of them a paring knife. Generally speaking, I’m in favor of giving kids knives. They tend to be much more careful with them than grown-ups, anyway. Still, it was nerve-wracking.

Careful, honey!

You cut off the top, pull out most of the insides, and cut a face. Then we popped them into the fridge for later. For the party, we filled them with fruit salad.

M loved making these. They were her favorite of all the Halloween treats. J liked it, but she’d get frustrated, too, and so she’d take breaks between o’-lanterns. If I’m honest, I have to admit that she was partly frustrated by me stressing out and saying, “Watch the knife! Keep your fingers higher on the handle! These are sharp!” Once she even said ouch and I freaked completely, but it was just because orange juice had squirted into her eye. Phew!

Anyway, the oranges were cute, and the kids loved them!

Hey! I keep expecting hotels to let me use their Wifi for free, and I’m consistently disappointed. So I’m writing this one up quick at a Starbucks in NYC. Luckily I’d already collected photos. Here are a few more Halloween treats that J planned for her party.

First, some popcorn balls from our Southern Living Kids Cookbook. Basically, it was your standard popcorn balls, to make it more festive, the cookbook suggests chocolate Teddy Grahams and candy corn. Yummy. These were marshmallow-y, so they were sticky and messy. For another sticky, messy option, you could go with caramel (here’s a recipe I’ve shared before).

Because I’m insane, I managed to leave this job ’til one of the last things before the party started. About 12 minutes before start time, all four of us had marshmallow hands, and my mother phoned us. She got the machine. Two minutes later we had, maybe 3 clean hands between all of us and the doorbell rang with our first guest. Phew! But they’re cute, right?

Of course we had the punch bowl, but J had an idea to make the lemonade more Halloween-y.

That’s right! We dyed it green with some food coloring!

And finally, we went with chocolate cupcakes and chocolate frosting with spider webs. This turned out to be our easiest treat-just make circles with white decorator frosting and drag toothpicks from the center out. They loved doing this, and it was yummier than those crazy eyeballs. There are recipe variations of like this all over the place.

One of the items J wanted for her party was the Forked Eyeballs that she saw in Family Fun magazine. Basically, they’re donut holes dipped in white chocolate and decorated to look like creepy eyeballs. I ended up scheduling them for the bring-to-school treat instead.

Of all the things that we made, J thought that these were the most fun to do.

The recipe says to use white chocolate chips and a double boiler, but I went with the almond bark-style stuff and melted in the microwave. For us, it was a bit goopy. Someone who commented on the site (linked above) tried frosting. I don’t know: I found it a little bit stressful. We also used Dunkin’ Donuts and found that the plain glazed held together better than the chocolates for this project.

Since this was clearly not going to be a gourmet venture, I took what I thought would be the easy way out and bought some instant red icing.

I didn’t notice that you were supposed to buy the tip separately. Well, that’s irritating. I was bitter, but luckily I still had that super-cool decorating kit I mentioned before, so I transferred the frosting. The recipe also suggested cutting the chocolate chips, which would have been a pain in the neck and a complete waste of time. Again, if you check the comments on the recipe, someone posted cute ones with M&M pupils as well. I didn’t go that crafty.

M lost interest after a couple of eyeballs, but J enjoyed helping through the whole process. Ours came out a little bit messier than the glossy magazine examples, but the good thing about Halloween craftiness is that MESSY=SPOOKY.

While tucking M into bed tonight, I mentioned that the Halloween extravaganza will continue tomorrow, and she actually groaned!  This whole Sunday thing isn’t working out for us.  It’s too many days–Friday school festivities, Saturday parties, and then the actual holiday.  When I was growing up and there would be multiple celebrations for the same event, like parties in class, with friends, and with family, my dad would say, “It’s a pagan festival!”  Which is funny, because, you know, Halloween really is a pagan festival.

But anyway.  Yesterday my friend had made some freakishly adorable Mummy Cupcakes for J’s class.  I wish that I’d taken a picture, because I just Googled “Mummy Cupcakes“, and none of the pictures were as cute as the one my daughter ate yesterday.

It put me into the mood to be a little crafty, and since I’ve volunteered to bring snacks to church, plus we had two parties to attend, I thought that I’d try to make something cool.  I decided to go with Gingerbread Skeletons:

These were a mistake on many levels.  First, umm, who likes gingerbread?  Well, it turns out that M does, and I’ve been meaning to make a batch of gingerbread to try it again.  Not my cup of tea.  J thought it smelled good, but then she tried it, and she spit it out.  And then she asked me if it was possible that something could be wrong with her mouth.   W & I don’t like it, either.  I kept decreasing the bake time and it still cooled off into little bricks.  Unfortunate:  I’m a chewy, possibly-almost-still-dough style cookie.  Second, it was just too time consuming.  I was supposed to chill the dough for at least 4 hours.  I don’t have the patience for that.  Third, way too labor-intensive.  My hand started cramping from drawing the bones.  All of which was a bad choice when I was already feeling grouchy about all of the business, anyway.  Still. . . cute, right?

NOW, by comparison a few years back we made a Pudding Graveyard, and that was easy and fun, with plenty of easy kid participation.  I think that I’d found the recipe in Family Fun (you can even see the photocopied page), but I couldn’t find it online today.  It was basically:  a layer of store-bought pudding covered with a layer of chocolate cookie crumbs, then decorated with Milano cookie “headstones”, instant-whipped-cream-and-chocolate-chip “ghosts”, and some of those candy pumpkins.

The kids loved making it, and of course it was tasty.  And easy.  Clear winner of the smackdown.

In other news, we had our last soccer games of the season, and M finally scored a goal.  And my little sister  had her baby–a boy!