Harvest Chews

You know what's amazing?  These guys:  Caramel Apple, Candy Corn, Pumpkin Spice, and Cinnamon.

That Cheese Plate

Cheese is a glorious thing in this house (and the Universe).

Really neat seasonal pairings below:

Blue + Twix

Brie + Candy Corn

Manchego + Reese’s

Aged Gouda + Caramel Popcorn

Triple Crème Brie + KitKats

Goat Brie + Crunch Bars

Sharp Cheddar + Butterfingers

Gruyère + Snickers

Chèvre + Twizzlers

Click here for her IG.

Brach's Mellowcreme Autumn Leaves

We found these over the weekend and I'm happy to report they're really great and packed with flavor (Caramel Apple, Pumpkin Spice, Sweet Maple, Salted Butterscotch, and Spiced Cider).  A nice addition to the annual Brach's candy corn and mellowcreme pumpkins candy.

Give Me Something Good To Eat

We found these at Michael’s today.  Huge fan of Mike and Ike’s, so it was great to see a seasonal sour version in the colors of Halloween.

Looking SOOOO Forward To These

Williams Sonoma Halloween 2024

Some really nice stuff this year (not really looking at the prices... just window shopping).

More items here.

Free

Image source.

Halloween III Candy Pails

Praying I see some kids carrying these around next Halloween.

Very cool designs from Trick or Treat Studios.

Click below...

Memorial Cards

Handing out candy and memorial cards on Halloween felt like a weird social experiment.  I had heard so much about those religious tracts being secretly slipped into trick-or-treaters bags and now here I was doing something similar.  And dressed as Michael Myers no less.  

I would scoop up some [world class] candy and pluck a card from the inner bowl and try to do all of this inconspicuously.  Kids are smart.  They knew something out of the ordinary was happening.  And the ones without masks absolutely looked confused and on alert.  One kid even asked "WHAT'S THAT?!"  Thankfully Michael Myers is a quiet man.  

Since Halloween, I have occasionally found myself wondering where those cards are. We easily had over a hundred kids come for candy, but I never count, and I had ordered 150 cards, and they all went.  Initially I was giving out one per child, but then started to spread them out as my supply dwindled.  I really hope as those bags and plastic pails got poured out at home or sifted through in the days that followed, that those kids, and their parents, got a kick out of seeing our weird funeral cards for our dear uncle Morris.  

Dark Parlour Drop-Off

Had a great day in Lancaster county yesterday, dropping off the scarecrow for the upcoming art show at the Dark Parlour and hitting up some favorite hangouts.

Also got to try the rather barbaric-looking and very Halloween-dinner-appropriate Bone Marrow appetizer at the Conway Social Club (this place had better never close).

We started accumulating pumpkins for the Haunt too.  Fingers cross none of them go soft on us.

Feels like Autumn is really here.  Weather's been great too, and we even got a good photo shoot in on this first day of October (photos coming soon).  

Weekend photos below...

Clove and Black Licorice!

Elixir Of Long Life

The sky is purple, the flare of a match behind a cupped hand is gold; the liquor is green, bright green, made from a thousand herbs, made from altars. Those who know enough to drink Chartreuse at Mardi Gras are lucky, because the distilled essence of the town burns in their bellies. Chartreuse glows in the dark, and if you drink enough of it, your eyes will turn bright green.

Poppy Z. Brite, Lost Souls

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I always associated the anise liquors like Absinthe and Sambuca with the cooler months of Autumn.  Anything in that flavor range seems pretty appropriate for the dark cocktails of the Halloween season.  Chartreuse might not have anise in its mix of mysterious spices and herbs, but it's definitely in the same family with its flavors of citrus, clove, cinnamon, rosemary, and thyme.  Definitely a Halloween varietal.

Back when we visited Lambertville the week before Halloween, we stopped into a candy shop and picked up some liquor-filled chocolates.  One of them sported an absinthe filling we were dying to try.

It was in that green swirly one in the middle of the back row.  The absinthe wasn't as pronounced as it should have been, but it definitely tasted dark and seasonal.

We found a recipe for Boozy No Bake Fudge Squares and this time you can taste the liquor.  The recipe called for absinthe, but we used cool green Chartreuse that we had on hand.  Turns out fudge is a perfect conduit for strange liquors.  

Chartreuse fudge will definitely be a regular in the Fall lineup.

Recipe here.

Spooky Season

Nuts to think Halloween is almost a month in the past already.  But what a Season it's been.  I swore I'd savor it, and I did.  This October was truly the best ever.  Usually, autumn feels like it's a million miles away.  And the heat lingers unseasonably and uncomfortably close for far too long.  Then, suddenly, you see some trees changing colors and pumpkins in a bin at a local supermarket.  The air gets crisp and it's a mad dash to get it all in before it slips through your fingers.  And then it's Haunt-prep time.  Lists within lists.  Nervous energy as you pray the weather holds out.  Like preparing for an elaborate, one-night-only theater in the park performance, with no covering to keep your stage props (or your audience) dry from any potential rain (I'm pretty uptight [and theatrical]).  

I mentioned this a bunch of blog posts ago, but this year was the first year I was able to break from the "Tradition" of worrying too much and replace it with some actual fun in the days leading up to the High Holiday.  My good friend Wren was in town, and we crammed in as much Halloween-adjacent activities as we could.  Haunted attractions, prop photo shoots, horror films, Halloween candy shops, Peddler's Village scarecrows, seasonal cocktails and autumnal dinner menus, flights of wine and bourbon, a bar that could have been the bar in Halloween III, and the Lambertville Halloween House.  

The Builders...

This year's Haunt was a challenging one.  My biggest to date, with more props than I've ever built in one season.  It was going to be a ton of work, and I was extremely grateful to have Wren as a collaborator throughout the year and as a co-Haunter on the big night.  We talked a lot about what The Builders were up to.  Why would they be building so many scarecrows, and what would they look like?  What would three creatures use to build their totems?  Were old boards and rusted cans logical?  Were human skulls?  For me, collaboration is a rare event.  It happened back in 2018 when Theo and I worked together to build 2018's CHURCH display (still the most magical and insane memory).  Aside from then, my Haunt concepts and execution have always been a solitary thing.  2022 was a wonderful and welcome change.  

The Haunt became something entirely different than my original idea.  That never happened before.  The glowing red sepulchers within each scarecrow's abdomen - Wren's idea.  The torn and tattered funeral-black cloth hanging above and around The Builders on the porch - her idea and execution.  I could tell that this Haunt was going to be a hit with the trick-or-treaters.  It had a depth to it that made it feel huge.  And the scarecrows, despite being 13 in number, felt like they stretched out into the darkness and across the street and into the endless night.  The spacing and height are something I also need to thank Wren for, as my initial plans were to have them all at the same height and much closer to the porch.  

As we slowly built the Haunt on October 30th, we knew we had something unusually special by the time the sun was setting.  We were exhausted from a full day of building our Dark Theater in the Park, and neighbors and passersby were stopping.  And they were staring - with huge grins.  I gave short tours of the fully lit and fog-filled display.  The photos and video I've posted oddly do not do it justice.  My one neighbor from up the street pulled his car over and hopped out.  He kept saying "Oh my GOD!" and he asked excitedly "Do people KNOW about this?!  We have to tell them!  We have to call the news!" (I had PTSD flashbacks of my mom and her fame-driven motivations and threats to call the local news despite me informing her I would boycott and skip town if I saw a news van pulling up).  

The annual open house Halloween party for friends and family was the best to date.  At one point the house was pretty packed, with people laughing, drinking spirits, and eating some incredibly fun and amazing food (going to thank Wren again for that).  It felt like a Halloween party from a TV special.  I felt a ton of gratitude all night long.  Tons.

Enter Michael Myers...

He was there. Handing out candy.  Head tilts and slow hand movements.  Occasionally he would walk onto the porch anticipating that the last group of kids would look back over their shoulders.  When they did, and when they saw him, standing emotionless and cold (and close), they would shriek and run off.  It worked perfectly all night long.  

Earlier in the day, as the afternoon school buses were passing through this street on Halloween, one of the buses slowly pulled by the display.  A few of the windows were down and one of the bigger kids saw me moving about finessing some props.  I wasn't in costume (Michael Myers had yet to escape the sanitarium you see).  The boy yelled out quite politely "Excuse me, sir?  Sir?!  Are you Michael Myers?!"

I yelled back "Yes!  Yes, I AM Michael Myers!"

And I think I might be.

Below are a bunch of photos from this magical October (I'll be blogging later about some of these)...

Rain drops on Mr. Myers' cheek.  It was lightly raining at the end of the night on Halloween.  A very fitting image.