October 31, 2020

Halloween is finally here. As a child, Halloween was one of my favorite holidays. I always looked forward to the one day during the year where I could dress up as whatever character I wanted and go trick-or-treating once the sun begins to set. Some years, I went with my brothers. Other years, I went with friends. We would come up with a game plan on which houses around our neighborhood to swing by during the days leading up to Halloween. The more festive the décor were, the more eager we were to stop by. Once the sun has set, our adventures began. For the next few hours, we would go house by house to collect our treats. If we were lucky, we would get full-sized treats. The best part about Halloween were the days following Halloween. We had all of these Halloween candy to eat for the next month to come. The trick-or-treating tradition continued for many years until I got to college. Trick-or-treating was replaced with Halloween parties and gatherings. I still continued dressing up for the next four years of college. My costume of choice year after year during my college years was a fairy. I dressed in all white and wore the same fairy wings. I’m pretty sure the wings were made for children, but I still loved those fairy wings. Thinking back to all of the fun I’ve had celebrating the holiday still brings a smile to my face. Halloween as an adult means gathering with friends over good food (usually a good pizza) and handing out candy to children. Halloween this year will be different though. With everything going on around the world, Kevin and I decided not to celebrate with friends. Instead, we stayed home and celebrated Halloween amongst ourselves. In anticipation of Halloween, I’ve been dreaming up new creepy, ghoulish treats to whip up in the kitchen. I’ve been testing out some creepy treats over the last couple of weeks. The two treats I came up with for this year were pesto eyeball pizza and strom-bone-i. I started by preparing a double batch of my pizza dough to use for my latest creepy creations. My Halloween pizza features a fluffy pizza dough topped with pesto, mozzarella cheese cut into the shapes of eyeballs, cherry tomato pupils, and more greenery in the form of fresh arugula right before serving. Half of the pesto was reserved to make sun dried tomato pesto and the other half of the dough was set aside to form the base for my Strom-bone-i. My Strom-bone-i is essentially a Stromboli stuffed with sundried tomato pesto, pepperoni, and the leftover pieces of mozzarella cheese from cutting out circular eyeball shapes. These two carb-y delights became the perfect treats for a small Halloween celebration. The drink of choice to serve alongside the creepy treats was a matcha green tea latte. The latte turns out the perfect shade of green for a festive Halloween drink. To help complete the Halloween meal, I played episodes of The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror in the background. My perfect Halloween was finally complete. Kevin and I prepared a large bowl filled with Halloween treats in case trick-or-treaters came knocking on our doors.