A Berry Scary Halloween

Is there any holiday as hip as Halloween? That’s a rhetorical question for when else do you get to put on someone else’s clothes and decorate your front yard with spare body parts? (Well, besides every other Tuesday of course.)

For us, free time in October is rarer than a vegan werewolf. (See last week’s post if you somehow don’t understand why.) But we have a few Halloween traditions that aren’t negotiable, regardless of their convenience.

I remember school buses being a little roomier.
I remember school buses being a little roomier.

This October, we again found agricultural refinement at Cornbelly’s. I valiantly led our group of longtime friends through the corn maze in record time. I may have taken us on a few sneaky shortcuts but Jason was the only conscientious objector to my maze cutting.

Cornbelly's had a Minion theme this year.
Cornbelly’s had a Minion theme this year.

Once a year, Jason and I mold fingers, gobble toes, carve faces, and roast bones. It’s a gruesome cooking experience that we greatly look forward to. This time we settled on making curried pumpkin soup, confetti corn quesadillas, and almond witch finger cookies dipped in red velvet hot chocolate. I never knew there was a limit to how many fingers one could consume in a sitting without getting a tummy ache. It’s three, for those of you that would rather not learn that lesson the hard way.

Making a spooky dinner is a favorite October tradition of ours.
Making a spooky dinner is a favorite October tradition of ours.

We love to pass out sweets to the throngs of trick-or-treaters that bombard our house on Halloween. The full-size candy we distribute definitely draws in the kiddies. Our decorations, on the other hand, both attract youngsters and repel them, depending on the tykes’ delicacies regarding the daunting. Despite the kids that found our porch too frightening to risk, we had about 250 costumed customers knock on our door this year.

For us, Halloween is a bringer of madness, and I’m not just talking about that plate of fingers. Yet, notwithstanding the work entailed in our seasonal productions, Halloween remains my favorite spell and still elicits that candy-costume high. Those unforgettable evenings of pushing through cutting air and cackling leaves in the urgent pursuit of treats while constantly scanning the shadows for a hint of a creep are lodged in my psyche. They, along with so many more-recent recollections, will keep Halloween my top twisted holiday forevermore.

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