I was a weird kid. I never ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. My mother never had to tell me to straighten my room. And I liked Halloween more for the decorations than the candy.
Except for Snickers. I loved Snickers.
Something about the mix of sweet chocolate, sticky caramel, dense peanut butter nougat, and crunchy peanuts made me swoon. I still remember the house at 101 Pinewood Drive in our neighborhood that gave out the king size Snickers bars to every kid who came by on Halloween.
Bam! That big bar would hit the bottom of your plastic pumpkin. Then you'd have to center it, otherwise your pumpkin would lilt for the rest of the night. After you hit that house, it didn't matter how many Dum Dums or Tootsie Rolls you got.
There’s nothing like Halloween in New York City. New York is home to some of the most artistic and creative people on the planet, most of whom will jump at any opportunity to put on a show. Consider the city’s eight hundred thousand drag queens, who, just to take a trip out to the deli, will put on seven-inch platforms, a sequined butterfly shawl and a two-foot wig. In the weeks before Halloween, the whole city began to fill with a fizzy, randy excitement. Shop windows were crammed with bondage gear, feather boas, broquaded undies and outrageous wigs, and the window boxes of the West Village overflowed with chrysanthemums and pumpkins and squash—all in their final bursts of color before the decay of the winter set in. And all those flamboyant colors; all those sequins, feathers and rubber masks started to bring out everyone’s inner drag queen. And it was no different for the dog people. There are more that thirty dog runs in the city, and therefore more than thirty annual doggie costume parades.
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.
The countdown to Halloween is well under way and we are enjoying a few holiday treats! I celebrate Halloween all month because I love it!! I also love mason jars, which goes back to my love of glass storage containers.