Happy [healthy] Halloween

I’ll be honest, this is not my favorite holiday. I am not a fan of candy nor of demanding candy of other people.

I don’t dig the creepy vibe and I don’t like gross. I get enough of gross parenting little kids and I don’t feel the need to celebrate gross on its own special day.

Basically, I’m a Halloween Grinch.

However, I am sensitive to the fact that my kids “miss out” on lots of the sugar-related fun so prevalent throughout the year. And I’ll admit, it can be fun to dress up. The real kicker is that having a day that’s special and different lends itself well to family traditions and I love those.

Here’s what we’re doing this year:

• Each of our kids can keep five pieces of candy to eat whenever their heart desires.
• They also get to keep the pencils, raisins, trail mix, playdough, stickers, etc. that accumulate in their bags. Consequently, they cheer at non-candy houses and give the health-conscious givers a boost. 😉
• Predictably, we are giving out playdough, stickers, and raisins ourselves. I wish we could give out apples, homemade popcorn balls or warm rolls but alas I think most parents feel safer with variations of artificially flavored and colored high fructose corn syrup that come in a wrapper. (Grinch again, sorry.)
• We made bread spiders and webs:

  
  The large spider, rising

  This turned out to be super easy and fun. I made my regular whole wheat bread recipe, let it rise once, and punched it down. I used 2 lb (1 loaf) worth of dough to make a spider, then out of the other loaf I made a web and a small spider. The web looks wonky but still delighted my kids.

  

  To make a spider, use half the dough for the body and split the other half into 9 parts. One part becomes the head, and the other 8 get rolled into legs. Dig two holes for the raisin eyes. They will pop out when the dough is rising and baking if you don’t make a good hole but the four year old was in charge of the spider shown below, so the raisins are just stuck on and there is also a nose. 🙂

  
  The smaller spider, freshly formed

  I let the dough rise and baked it for somewhere between 15-25 minutes until it was nicely browned. Actually I baked the big spider until it was too brown because I was nursing a baby and forgot about it. Still yummy, though!


The smaller spider, baked

• Dinner was going to be orange and black soups but this year we simplified and stuck with orange. I made my sweet potato and red lentil stew, and we served it with bread spiders and apple cider.

  

  Healthy, yummy, and special. I’m sold!