Halloween

Are you ready for Halloween? Do you have your costume? Do you have enough candy to hand out to the little goblins in your neighborhood? Do you have whiskey? No, not for kids, for you.

Here's how it works: Make yourself a batch of David Lebovitz's boozy butterscotch pudding, and chill it in the fridge all day. Then after you've finished handing out all of your Halloween candy, put the kids to bed, turn off the lights and treat yourself.

Just be sure to serve it tricked-out with a dollop of freshly whipped cream and a few candy corn. That is, if you haven't already gobbled up all the candy corn in your house. If you have, then switch to salty, roasted pecans.

From All About Food

It was a sunny afternoon during the last week of September. I was driving up and down rolling hills and rounding curves as I enjoyed the scenery along a Minnesota county road. I knew it was autumn when I saw a large, can’t-miss-it sign that announced Grandpa’s Pumpkin Patch. I slowed down and pulled into the driveway, even as I thought to myself this was a place to visit with a carload of young children.

Bright pumpkins in all shapes and sizes were piled in long rows, basking in the September sun. I grabbed one of the big wagons parked near the pumpkins and began filling it up as I strolled through the impressive display. I never saw Grandpa. I wanted to thank him for sorting the pumpkins by size and for having all the little pie pumpkins in a pile by themselves. I wound up with several of those cuties in my wagon.

These edible, orange winter squash are not all created equal. The big, bright, deep-ribbed pumpkins that make the best Jack-o-lanterns don’t make the best pie. And they don’t make the best Spicy Pumpkin Dip.

Jack Benny (who was famously cheap and made fun of himself for it) gave out silver dollars on Halloween.
                  True

Lucille Ball used to answer the door herself.
                  Also true

A witch lived in the witches’ house on Walden Avenue and gave out apples on Halloween.
                  Don’t know the answer because “the witches’ house” was so scary that none of us ever made it down the walkway. But the witches’ house wasn’t really a witches’ house. It was really offices and dressing rooms at a silent movie studio in Culver City before someone (don’t ask me why) relocated it to a corner lot in Beverly Hills in the 1930s and moved in.

“No,” I said to my husband, “you don’t get it. You can be born a vampire, or you can be made a vampire. Like being in the mob.”

“So how did Damon and Stefan get to be vampires – were they born that way?” he inquired gamely, steering the car through college town traffic on a bright, October Saturday.

“Well, in the book and the show, you know, they’re different in a lot of ways, but in the book and the show they only talk about ‘made’ vampires. In the book they became vampires because of Katherine. If a vampire drinks your blood and nothing else happens, you just die – like that girl Vicky – but if they drink your blood and then you drink some of theirs, you become a vampire, and live forever. You have to go through a lot of changes, but eventually you’re a vampire.”

“They must be great in bed after a few hundred years as guys in their twenties,” he mused.