In Philadelphia there is an apartment complex on the Benjamin Franklin
Parkway called Park Towne Place. It is a cluster of four high rises –
cleverly called East, West, North and South. I had three friends who
lived there – Laura, Adam and Erik – and most years I spent Halloween
night with them, riding the elevators in our costumes and tearing
through the hallways, ringing every bell we could get our little hands
on in an effort to collect maximum quantities of candy.
It was widely understood that trick-or-treating in an apartment
building was the most efficient way to trick-or-treat, and for that
reason Park Towne Place was the ne plus ultra because there were four
apartment buildings arranged in one lucky clover shape – the prospect
of that much candy simply boggled the nine-year-old mind. Our method
was to exit the elevator, dash up and down the hallways ringing every
bell, and then we’d wait a breathless moment to see who answered their
door.
Halloween
Halloween
Forty Cloves of Garlic Soup with Pistachio-Crusted Shrimp
Despite my family of garlic haters, I love garlic. And I love lots of
it in all forms. A very close older family friend eats it raw and
rubbed on toast, then spread with butter or rendered duck fat. It's now
his daily health ritual since he learned garlic has been shown to keep
the heart healthy and keep cancer at bay. Maybe he knows a thing or
two, because he's going to be 90 next year. Sometimes I even indulge in
a slice of garlic toast too. Though I try to keep the practice at a
minimum because I don't want to go around smelling. Even so, almost all
my cooking and the recipes on this site start with sautéing garlic.
Garlic is just one of those vegetables that many people use and it
crosses many cultural boundaries. It's a base flavor in Mediterranean,
Asian, and North African cuisine. I have always wanted to use garlic
for something more than just a base, instead a main ingredient.
A
few weeks ago I had the idea of making garlic soup. With the chilly
weather here in the Northeast, I was craving a warming and comforting
soup packed with flavor. But when thinking about garlic soup,
'comforting' might not be the exact word that comes to mind for
everybody. Most people hate garlic for its pungent taste and odor, but
boiling it really tames its pungency. The garlic becomes mellow but
still keeps all the wonderful properties of its unique flavor. Another
bonus of this preparation is that there is much less smell after eating
compared to sautéed garlic. Garlic haters might actually change their
minds after eating this soup.
Peanut Butter Chocolate Mini Cupcakes
Rich, dark, devilish. Like a big Reese’s peanut butter cup. The recipe for these cupcakes sounded amazing, although once I started following it I had to tweak it a bit to get it to work. When they were finished, they were sublime!
I used two 12-mini muffin tins to yield 24 tiny cupcakes. They have a small mound of peanut butter frosting on top, then a glaze of dark chocolate and a Reese’s peanut butter candy on top. I know you will love these once you try them.
They are even great right out of the freezer!
Pumpkin Head
As the trick or treaters approach my door with their parents in tow, I often wonder who exactly is wearing the costume...
BOO!
Halloween: I'll Pass
Each holiday comes with it’s own brand of unpleasantness and
disappointment. New Year’s Eve offers forced joviality along with the
prospect of being French kissed by a blowzy stranger with Cold Duck on
her breath. Christmas means spending lots of thought and money on
presents for people who already have way too much stuff and enduring
long hours with folks you’d never spend five minutes with if you didn’t
share a smidge of DNA.
However, most holidays also have an
upside. Thanksgiving often brings out the charitable side of people
who donate to food drives and volunteer too serve dinner to those in
need. Easter signals the final days of winter and sometimes the final
round of the Masters.
Then, there’s Halloween, the holiday, with no redeeming features. For starters, it’s not even a proper “holiday” because nobody gets to miss school or work.
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