Halloween is for youngsters — and for patrons of senior center
For those who think Halloween is just for youngsters, I’d just point out that my sister is 89 and hands out treats from the front porch of a house in a very busy neighborhood in northern California.
This year, her Halloween shirt’s slogan is: “They didn’t get all the witches in Salem.”
When I was a child, my family handed out treats. One year we ran out and turned off the lights so no one would knock. The next year, determined to prevent any such misfortune, Dad bought a case of candy corn.
October starts a wonderful time at the Charlotte Senior Center. It used to be fudge season, when a senior center stalwart made a huge batch of fudge every year and gave it out to the world.
At the beginning of October, volunteers started preparing individual bags filled with her fudge. Word got out and this fudge extravaganza attracted lots of people who never set foot in the senior center. They came in every year to get that bag of fudge, discovering what a nice place this is. Many lingered — and returned.
Serving pumpkin cookies at Monday Munch on Oct. 14, volunteer cooks began the senior center Halloween food fest. The menu for Oct. 28 is to be announced, but they promise a Halloween theme.
On the topic of Halloween themes, the Washington Post offered, “It’s almost Halloween and ‘feetloaf’ is already giving us nightmares.”
To amuse his five children, someone used raw ground meat to sculpt very realistic feet with rounded slivers of onion supplying perfectly formed ghostly, grisly toenails. It’s definitely ghoulish. You can see those feet.
For a very informative, non-macabre investigation of the sugar content of Halloween candy. You don’t need to be a New York Times subscriber to access the article.
Since this is also the season of campaigning for the most important job in the U.S., take a look at how Republicans and Democrats eat during the campaign season at https://wapo.st/3U6bbJu.
Since January 2023, the Trump campaign has spent $31,000 at McDonald’s, with the Harris group clocking in at $4,000. Trump spent $200,000 at Chick-Fil-A, Democrats $40,000. For Democrats, Panera has been the most popular fast-casual food spot.
Forget the politics for a moment and consider pumpkin, which The New York Times rightly labels “autumn’s answer for winter.”
Nutrition experts tell us that the pumpkin is a nutrient-dense food, delivering a lot of nutrition with relatively few calories. Open a can of pumpkin (puree, not pumpkin pie filling, which has a lot of sugar), eat one cupful and you’ll get a good supply of vitamin A, vitamin K, vitamin E and vitamins B6 and C. Plus magnesium, riboflavin, iron and potassium. That one cup also delivers 25 percent of the fiber you need for the day.
Those large pumpkins sold for jack-o’-lanterns aren’t good for eating, but you can scoop out the seeds and roast them for a good snack.
For carving that jack-o’-lantern, take a look at the work of this expert pumpkin sculptor, a young woman in charge of the carving of nearly 7,000 pumpkins at the Great Jack-O’-Lantern Blaze at Van Cortland Manor in Croton-on-Hudson, New York.
The CBS News video offers practical advice as well as artistic skill, noting that it’s best to first slice off the bottom of the pumpkin.
You don’t have to travel to the vicinity of New York City for a good pumpkin display. New England Wanderlust notes that Vermont is one of the most fun New England states for hunting down the perfect pumpkin in the fall season and offers a list of the 17 best Vermont pumpkin patches and fall farm stands. From Bennington to Shelburne, the article offers a detailed list and proposes that, whether you want a pumpkin or the donuts all the sites offer, this is a trip to take.
Years ago in upstate New York, I taught a classful of 22 third graders labeled by lots of documents as “non-readers.” From the first day of the month, October was get-ready-for-Halloween month in our classroom, exploring stories, poetry and nonfiction on October-subject matter.
Outside our classroom door, a strip of adding machine tape stretched down the hallway. Kids put on interesting words they found in their reading. To be eligible to post a new word, the student first had to read all the previous words.
Classmates stood by to cheer on the performance. Kids came from around the school to watch that word list grow.
Monday Munch
Oct. 21, 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Chili, coleslaw, corn muffins and pumpkin cookies.
Oct 28
Halloween theme
TBA.
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