Alert! Alert! It is the last day of October!
Usually, Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. It’s so low-obligation, plus there’s candy, plus you get to see adorable kids and their semi-embarrassed parents marching around the sidewalks. It’s a lovely holiday.
This year, I didn’t even put up my bats. My bats are my FAVORITE decoration of all the decorations I own, and I just couldn’t summon enough energy to put them up (or to contemplate the inevitability of taking them down). I (Carla) finally put up our yard ghosties, and we bought some pumpkins, so I feel like I made SOME effort even if it was wildly late.
Carla insisted on carving our pumpkins yesterday. I have managed to avoid jack-o-lanterning since… 2019, maybe? I can’t remember. But it has been several years. I have to admit that I didn’t miss it. It’s so messy and I don’t like the feeling of pumpkin innards, and I hate how strenuous an activity it is, to remove said innards. Plus, pumpkin juice leaves my hands feeling weirdly mask-like, even after thorough washing. But Carla was insistent, so I was game; I am at the point in her childhood where I am wondering, “How many more [fill in the magical childhood event of your choice] will we have left?” and I’m trying desperately to Cherish. So I cherished some pumpkin-juicy hands and pumpkin guts all over my floor. But! The best part! CARLA DID ALL THE CARVING. All I did was remove one pumpkin lid (my husband did the other one) and scrape at some of the most recalcitrant innards. She did everything else, from planning the design to doing the actual carving. She even cleaned up (most of) the mess! And rinsed and strained the pumpkin seeds that she’d lovingly saved from the fate of the guts! It was wonderful. Nine is a stellar age, I’m telling you.
Carla is excited to go trick-or-treating (although she is overly worried, in my opinion, about this rumor/conspiracy theory that’s going around about drugs disguised as brightly colored candy; I think it’s bunk and that anyone who spends money on drugs or makes money from drugs would not just HAND THEM OUT to children, who – in addition to having no idea where they got said drug-candy – have no financial means to continue to BUY drugs, but she is hearing this from FAMILY and also from FRIENDS AT SCHOOL OMG, so I guess I understand why she is edgy) (we know all our neighbors and we inspect all her candy anyway) and I am excited to watch her traipse around to the neighbors’ houses, where many of them have secreted special full-size candy or little candy bags just for her.
We have the best neighborhood for trick-or-treating. Our houses are fairly close together, we know nearly all of our neighbors, there are tons of kids. When the weather is nice, some of the neighbors set up tables and chairs on their driveways so they can really get involved in the trick-or-treating process. It’s wonderful.
I am making tacos tonight, because they are easy and Carla likes them enough that she might actually eat some before she goes out on her candy-procurement mission. The rest of the week, well… I think I’ll make a pot of butternut squash soupto have on nights when my husband and I eat separately (he eats a ham sandwich, though maybe I’ll surprise him with turkey! I am so fun.) instead of black bean tacos. For the other nights, I’m feeling more adventurous than I have in awhile. We’ll see how long that lasts, won’t we.
It’s been a very long time since I’ve done a grocery store report. In large part because things seems to have stabilized somewhat (except for prices HOLY CAULIFLOWER it is more than $100 every time I set foot in the grocery store), or at least I’ve grown to roll with the occasional random shortages. However, my grocery shopping experience today was a little distressing — the vegetable situation was GRIM. We’re talking two red bell peppers and five stunted zucchini (zucchinis? zucchinii?) and NO ICEBERG LETTUCE level grim. But I circled around to the produce section a few times, and finally there was a big pile of iceberg lettuce heads (this is Carla’s preferred lettuce for tacos, hence the urgency), and, even better, they were on sale at 2-for-$5 rather than “on sale” for 2-for-$7 which is what they’ve been going for lately. I think I’d just hit the store too early, before things were restocked from the weekend.
(Small aside: Our grocery store staff is extremely kind and helpful, and I have often approached a staff member in the produce section and asked whether there is something available in the back, and sometimes there IS. I was going to try this approach this morning, especially because a staff member was a) wheeling out a big cartload of bagged lettuce varieties and b) she’d already brought something out for another customer. But then after she handed over the spinach to the person who’d asked for it, the staff member heaved a huge sigh and groaned “oy vey” under her breath in a manner far too world-weary for nine in the morning, so I moved along without bothering her.
I did buy a bottle of non-Huy Fong sriracha in my store’s house brand. I haven’t gotten up the nerve to try it yet. But I fear that the chili pepper / sriracha shortage is going to outlast my small stockpile, and I need to find an alternative.
I also bought two cartons of yogurt that expired yesterday, so that was annoying. But that’s on me, I guess, for only doing a quick check of the expiration date of one yogurt and assuming that all flavors would expire on the same date. They do NOT; the expiries vary wildly from yesterday to December 5. Let that be a warning to you.
Dinners for the Week of October 31-November 6
- Ground Beef Tacos
- Garlic Balsamic Crusted Pork Tenderloin: This sounds yummy and I haven’t made it in AGES. I think I’ll throw some root veggies into the oven to roast alongside the pork.
- One Pan Pesto Chicken: This is a new one for me, but it sounds good (sans tomato, of course) and fairly easy, maybe?
- Sheet Pan Crispy Salmon and Potatoes: This sounds good and I have some salmon filets ready to go in the freezer. Now I just need to find some good looking asparagus that isn’t mind-blowingly expensive.
- Butternut Squash Soup: This is so easy, even if it does involve chopping an onion. I just use cubed frozen butternut squash and it’s fine. The last time I made it, it was a teeny bit watery, so I am going to add a third bag of squash to the mix without adjusting any of the other elements of the recipe. I also bought a loaf of sourdough from the grocery store bakery and I have Big Plans [Confidential to those of you who hate mushrooms: LOOK AWAY] about sautéing some mushrooms with a little butter and garlic, and spreading the mushrooms on some Swiss cheese on top of a buttered slice of the sourdough and cooking it, grilled cheese style. That would make a delicious side to my soup, wouldn’t it now.
Now I need to go find a bowl big enough for all the candy I plan to dole out to our trick-or-treaters.
Happy Halloween, Internet! I hope your night is full of treats!
I love your pumpkins… or should I say Carla’s pumpkins…. she did such a great job. And I’d like to chime and agree with your little ghost that I cannot believe it’s November tomorrow. How, why?
I enjoy your grocery reports (because I love to hear how other experience the trips to the store right now) and I have to agree: why is every trip SO FREAKIN’ EXPENSIVE?? A couple of weeks ago, the clerk at the checkout at TJs even took a double-take at my receipt because he couldn’t believe how much he was charging me for not even having any meat or booze to show for.
BTW, I bought Harrissa at TJs and I think it’s a perfect Sriracha substitute (which they haven been out off for a while – I haven’t checked the other supermarket).
Oooh – good tip! I don’t think I’ve tried harissa!
Some strange man stopped me in the dog park to tell me about the drugs in candy and, listen, mister. These rumours have been going on forever. Acid on lollipops. Razor blades in candy. Now it’s pot gummies. What moron is going to give away his or her edibles when they could just keep them for themselves? JUST STOP WITH THE RIDICULOUS PANIC. “In our day” he says, “we could give out apples or homemade popcorn.” SIR. He was not much older than me and I don’t remember anyone giving out homemade treats then, even at that time people checked the damn candy. SO JUST STOPPPPPPP.
Wow, I have feelings. It must be reading Unmask Alice. COME ON.
That cat-o-lantern is darling and one of the greatest things about older kids is they can do these things themselves, with minimal parental help!
Suzanne, I have 1/3 bottle of sriracha left and I have not seen any store brand. *deep breath*
NICOLE. That is not enough sriracha!
Happy Halloween! I love Carla’s pumpkins! I love sautéed mushrooms so much that I can eat them with a spoon. Never thought about consuming them like that; sounds scrumptious.
And, for Pete’s sake, the drugs disguised as candy theory is ridiculous – that rumor has been going around since *I* was a kid.
Right?! It is always Something. (And never Anything.)
I’m Very Firmly in the ‘mushrooms are simply slugs on a night out’ camp, so we shall gloss over that bit! However, your two cartons of yogurt will be absolutely fine to eat. Generally, unless you’ve opened them and then treated them unkindly (double-dipping your spoon and so introducing bacteria etc) it’ll be perfectly edible for many more days, if not weeks, after the expiry date.
Mushrooms as slugs! Even as a mushroom lover, I can understand this viewpoint.
Thank you for the look away warning in reference to the mushrooms. Ha. I love the ghost decorations. I pulled won metal pumpkin out of the storage room, but that was all the energy I could muster.
Those pumpkins are super cute. We have not carved pumpkins here in years. I feel for Curly sometimes. By the time she was still interested in doing all of the things, the rest of us were tired. She went to a friend’s house with a group of kids and they all carved pumpkins together. Hers got too moldy to make it to Halloween, but she enjoyed the carving with her people anyway.
Coach grilled tonight. We have a pile of leftovers in the fridge. I had an issue crop up over the weekend so food is not on my radar at the moment. Details to follow.
Oh no! I hope all is okay! And yes, that would definitely be an issue with the smallest kid. I am sure you made it up to her in other ways!
I love the cat pumpkins!!
The grocery prices keep surprising me: I will suddenly notice that something I buy all the time is much more expensive than it used to be, and I will wonder how long I have been automatically buying it without noticing.
YES! Like sour cream: It used to go on sale for $1.29 for a… normal sized container. Then it would go on sale for $3.00 for two. And now! NOW it is $2.39 for a container! It’s madness!
I didn’t know the drug/candy debate was alive and well again? I do remember there being stories of needles or razor blades slipped inside chocolate bars when I was a kid and being worried about it, but I’ve never mentioned anything about this to my kids, don’t check their candy at all (though we only go to places where we know the people)…and haven’t heard a whisper about anything related to this in our neighbourhood. But…yikes. And what a throwback to my own childhood when I DO remember this being widely discussed.
I love the yellow pumpkins and don’t think I’ve ever seen ones so yellow? I am not a fan of carving pumpkins and made my husband oversee it this year. We also ended up with a cat!
Hope Carla had a fabulous time and now…it’s November. What the what indeed…
So I am the weirdo who actually enjoys cleaning out pumpkins! I gladly cleaned out ours and do every year. I offered to clean out others’ pumpkins at the carving party but no one took me up on it. They probably thought I was kidding when I said I kind of enjoy it, but I do. We have a good scooping tool that makes it easier, though. And it’s just so satisfying to see the cleaned out pumpkin. I am certainly an outlier in liking this. But I am known to like other messy tasks, like picking chicken from the bones of a rotisserie chicken.
I had not heard about this drug/candy thing! But I definitely do not have any concerns about that happening in our neighborhood either. But I looked through all of Paul’s candy last night and made sure we sorted it so we could figure out what we got the most/least of. Phil was like – are you doing this for yourself or Paul because it seems like you are realllly enjoying sorting candy. See note above about my anal-ness/appreciation of order/tidyness. In case you were interested, our top candies were PB cups (yay!) followed kit kats and snickers. We barely got any m&ms which is odd. We got entirely too many suckers. Who likes suckers? As a parent of small children, I loathe them since they are so messy and the kids rarely finish a sucker and then set it down somewhere.
Love the pumpkins, especially the use of cut out pieces. She did a really nice job.
We had fairly low traffic for Halloween this year which is unusual for us.
Mushrooms and swiss on sourdough???? Yum! Note to self: I need to do this. I’d take it extra easy and have it with tomato soup.
Just wanted to ease your mind about the yogurt…you can eat it a week past the date!
https://www.msnbc.com/know-your-value/6-expiration-dates-you-can-ignore-1-you-can-t-n936011
Thank you!
Ohhh, the mask-like feeling of pumpkin on the hands, even after washing! I just mentioned this to Mike the other day when we carved our pumpkins and he looked at me like I was crazy, but it is totally a thing! VINDICATION!!
Carla did a fantastic job on her Jack O’ Lanterns! Congratulations, you have a very capable nine-year-old who is tackling those things you don’t care to do. That’s a win-win!
I hope you guys had a great Halloween; I love that you know all your neighbors, that makes it all the more fun.
Aww, those jack o’ lanterns are so cute! I love them, and even better that you didn’t have to do the dirty work with them. I, too, hate pulling out all the guts. No thanks!
I can’t believe the whole “drugs in candy” thing is still going around. WHAT.
i’m with the others who are astonished at the persistence of the drugs/terrifying other things in candy myth. Huh. And that people are still buying into it, no less. Very, very weird.
I love your pumpkins! And also – my theory – backed up by someone smarter than me who shared a link – is that yogurt is spoiled milk anyway. I throw caution to the wind and will eat it even up to a couple of weeks past the expiration date. I know, playing with fire. Or yogurt. 😉 LOVE Carla’s pumpkins and so glad she did nearly everything!