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.
Halloween
Halloween
Don't Forget the Cookie Monsters on Halloween
Little munchkins and monsters, big ones, too, will be looking for special treats this weekend. Why not have some cookies to tuck into their hands?
My little two-year-old grandmunchkin will be with us this weekend. She’s one of the muffin monsters in our family. I don’t have muffins ready for her yet, but I think these cookies may be a good substitute.
Butterscotch Pumpkin Spice Cookies are not cloyingly sweet, although a thick smear of Maple Cream Cheese Frosting topping each cookie does add a fair amount of sweetness. Chopped butterscotch morsels stirred into the dough add flavor without big hard chunks in each bite. Old-fashioned oats add a nice bit of chewy texture.
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.
Adam's Scary Apples
Full confession: When I was about 4 or 5 years old I was so utterly terrified of Halloween that I once ran from the dinner table to the bedroom where I locked myself inside it for 20 minutes while Trick or Treaters came to the front door of the house. I’m not sure why I did that exactly as I wasn’t normally a timid or shy child; I think my dramatic exit had more to do with the fact that I enjoyed that sense of fright, darkness and mystery that rolls around every October. I like to be scared when I know nothing bad will actually happen.
This explains my interest in fright nights, scary movies, haunted houses, macabre scenarios, you name it. I think there’s a part of all of us that likes that thrill…why else would we visit haunted houses, watch slasher films, and listen to Paris Hilton songs and videos?
Not that I’ve done the latter. Even that’s too scary for me.
When I mentioned to Adam that I wanted to do my first Halloween blog post about a cocktail I tried he quickly informed me that it would neither be a) exciting b) deep enough or c) have enough pizazz. “What’s so exciting about a cocktail, all by itself?” he asked. I could see his point as there are tons of others who focus on spirits and do a much better job. Besides, this drink wasn’t anything exciting or thrilling but perfect for the grown-ups at any Halloween party. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll help you out” said Adam.
Wow. Was my drink really that lackluster that it needed help? Apparently so.
Beverly Hills Urban Halloween Legends
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.
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