Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween!

Let the competition begin

I hope you are enjoying the fun wherever you may be. While it sounds like the northeast is buried in absurdly early snow, we are finally back to being sunny San Diego. After may gray, june gloom, cloudy july, awful august, silver september, and cloudtober, we have finally had more than two consistent days out from under that sheet gray sky that had lingered over us all summer. Just in time for all the fun fall activities.

Gravestones and black cat in the garden

On Thursday I hosted my annual Halloween Dinner and Pumpkin Carving Contest. I love theme/holiday parties, and this one always turns out fun with everyone in costume and taking part in arts & crafts. While I love decorations, I am usually a big slacker on them. I'm really just not good at aesthetics (which most of you probably already knew). So I was in luck when my friend Ren showed up with 3 big boxes of extravagant Halloween decorations. I'm talking stuffed Frankensteins and werewolves, orange lights, a giant pirate sail, skulls, candles, gravestones...you name it and she brought it. so while I finished up the food, she decorated the back yard. The garden looked amazing!

pirate ship on the hops tower

I had all sorts ideas for fun Halloween recipes to make, I was even dreaming of them Wednesday night. But when it came to the day of the party, I realized I was a bit over ambitious for one person making that much food. Especially because I was trying to make dinner for 20 some people with the widest array of food intolerances imaginable. Halloween themed food gluten free, dairy free, cane sugar free, vegan, paleo, and nut free, not to mention I like everything to be made from scratch and organic. I soon found that this was way too many restrictions to try to make a decorative halloween meal to fill up that many people.

I had started cooking around 3:30pm for the 6:00pm dinner. My ideal Halloween Menu included:

the spooky appetizer table

Appetizers:
Gluten Free Rosemary Cracker Ghosts with Pepita Seeds for eyes
Garden Squash Veggie Dip
Carrot Platter Jack-o-lantern
Chips & Salsa
Roasted Rosemary Pumpkin Seeds
Main Event:
Fall Colored Red Quinoa and Orange Squash Soup
Sauteed Apples & Onions English Muffins
Dessert:
Pumpkin Bread with Cashew Date Frosting and Chocolate Icing Spider
Gluten Free Chocolate Cupcakes with Avocado Frosting and Chocolate Icing Monster Faces
(nearly) Raw Vegan Almond Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cashew Pumpkin Frosting
Beverages:
Warm Apple Cider
Creepy Ghoul-Aid (kiwi juice and chia seeds)

remnants of halloween cupcakes

Well, that would have been quite the spread! But of course things never work the way you plan, especially when you get excited about something. The ghost crackers stuck to the parchment paper, the pumpkin bread was too pumpkiny and stayed gooey instead of baking through, I forgot to put the pumpkin seeds out (which I had roasted the night before), the chocolate seized up when we tried adding maple syrup instead of sugar, I ran out of cacao powder, the ghoul-aid just looked like thick rotten juice, the person bringing the carrots forgot them, the squash soup turned out burn-your-face-off-hot, and there were 10-15 people piled in my kitchen and my sister on the phone when I started to chop the onions and apples so I gave up on that idea quick.

Sooo...the menu that resulted was:

my un-artistic spider cake

Appetizers:
Chips & salsa
Squash Veggie Dip
Cheese platter with pumpkin butter and Mary's Gone Crackers (thanks Rachel, but sorry vegans and dairy-intolerant)
Green Olives (thanks Rachel again)
Main event:
Giant pot of Red Quinoa
Intolerably-spicy Squash Soup
Dessert:
Vegan Almond & Pumpkin cupcakes with chocolate pumpkin cashew frosting
Carob Cupcakes with Avocado Frosting and Coconut Sugar Sprinkles
Carob Cake with Cashew Date Frosting & Seized Chocolate Spider
Seized Chocolate turned Truffles rolled in coconut sugar
Beverages:
Apple Cider that no one wanted to drink because it didn't have alcohol in it

at least my soup was inspiring for the pumpkin carving

Since nothing (except for the carob cupcakes) turned out exceptionally well, I am not going to share any recipes...not to mention in the craziness of it all I didn't pay a bit of attention to what and how much I put in anything.

maria's casper pumpkin

the carving station

Oh well! Live and learn! I had discouraged the potluck style dinner because someone always seems to bring something crumbly or drippy that is full of gluten and ends up contaminating the rest of the food. And even though I wanted so badly to accommodate everyone else's dietary needs and preferences, I think making things gluten free is hard enough. So I may have to either go back to potlucks style or just make things gluten free.

It was ok because the decorations were fantastic and our roommate's friend that was visiting is a DJ and took care of the music and brought a fog machine, so the ambiance was great. And the pumpkin carving was a great success as well.

Maybe I'll practice all year and be ready to make the best gluten free, dairy free, refined sugar free, vegan, nut free, organic, homemade Halloween dinner ever!