Halloween with Valerie, age 2.8

We threw a Halloween party at our house this year on Friday night the 30th, and between Valerie's Halloween parade at her school Friday morning, our party Friday night, trick or treat in downtown Mountain View on Saturday afternoon and trick or treat on our street Saturday night, I'd say we definitely maxed out Halloween this year. We never did make it to a farm to pick out pumpkins, which I wish we had found time for. Valerie kept asking to... but oh well.... next year.

I went all out decorating the house for Halloween; we had cotton spiderwebs inside and outside, red "bloody" handprints on the front door, pumpkin/spider/skeleton lanterns, a black streamer spiderweb on the kitchen ceiling, candy corn lights and a costume gallery from years past on the fireplace, purple string lights along the kitchen counter, and some caution tape-style signs outside.

I loved Halloween decorations as a kid and then stopped caring about them as an adult, but now that Valerie is old enough to start enjoying them, I'm summoning the return of my enthusiasm. I even bought balloons after I realized they are pretty much the best toy ever at her Halloween parade/party at school Friday morning. She had a ball throwing a balloon in the air and catching it for like 20 minutes.

Since Valerie wore two princess costumes this year, Rapunzel on Friday and Sleeping Beauty on Saturday, Rich and I decided to coordinate with her and be the king and queen. We ordered costumes from Amazon at the last minute (standard operations in this family) and they turned out pretty well. The party was a good time; a lot of our friends from biodesign came, and Valerie's BFF Kalinda (dressed as the fairy godmother from Cinderella) and newborn baby Cole (in scrubs to match his dad the doctor) held down the baby-and-child front.  I mixed pitchers of sangria and lighthouse lemonade but most everyone just drank beer.

I got the lighthouse lemonade recipe from my friend Sarah - it is:

Ice
Deep Eddy lemon infused vodka  (1 oz)
St Germaine (1/2 oz)
Sour mix (splash)
Fill the rest with soda water (60%)

 It was as tasty as I expected and I ended up drinking probably most of the pitcher by the end of the night and was not feeling amazing Saturday morning. Whoops.

I chopped up shallots and garlic and cilantro in the guacamole; we had chips, salsa, and caramel apple nachos which looked fancy and were easy to assemble; monster munch popcorn with peanuts, Reeses pieces and candy corn coated with candy coating; Porcini and pumpkin ale mac and cheese for the entree, and banana "ghosts" (peeled bananas with three chocolate chips stuck on them as eyes and mouth) as well as s'moreo bars for dessert. I was also going to have clementine "pumpkins" but could not find clementines at the store so I got three navel oranges instead, which did not peel easily enough for me to make them look like pumpkins. Everything came out great, although I tried to melt white chocolate chips in the microwave for the white "drizzle" on the apple nachos and that was a total fail. It melted kind of clear and you couldn't see it on the apples. I'll have to get white candy coating for that next time. And also not make monster munch again because I ate far too much of that after there was a ton left over.

Halloween Saturday night was a HUGE success. We weren't sure what to expect because I couldn't find any official trick or treat times online, but our street was packed with trick or treaters between 6:30 and 7:30, and a lot of the houses on our street decorated and got really into it. I unfortunately wasn't prepared with enough candy - I had bought popcorn packs and ring pops to hand out, and we had a bunch of lollipops so I thought we'd be okay, but it was crazy.

 Our next door neighbor is an older woman, and her daughter Pam, who is probably in her 40s, came down for Halloween and decked out their yard with all sorts of crazy stuff (flying bat, talking skeletons, moving ghosts, etc) and dressed up as a witch in full green face paint. We went over there first, and Valerie talked to her for a while (and was terrified of all the moving/talking decorations) and the witch gave her a huge handful of candy. Then Valerie was officially obsessed with her. She wanted to stay at her house all night. We made her walk down the rest of the street trick or treating, and after each house she asked, "can I go back to the witch's house now? " So funny. I think she enjoyed trick or treating, but she mostly wanted to hang out at the witch's house all night.

getting candy from the witch

She still asks if the witch is there every time we walk by the house next door. This lady made quite an impression on her.

She was soooo cute trick or treating. She was a little shy, and couldn't remember in what order to say "trick or treat" and "thank you." At one house I said, "what do you say?" and she said "trick-or-treat-thank-you." Several times she said "thank you" when they opened the door, and then "trick or treat" at the end. Then around 7-7:15 she wanted to go home because her candy bag was getting too heavy for her to carry. She wasn't as intent to get as much candy as possible like I expected. So sweet.

We ended up giving out almost all of Valerie's candy to the later trick or treaters after she tapped out early. Luckily she didn't notice, so that actually worked out pretty well. She has a reasonable amount of candy left rather than a whole bag full. We let her have skittles, nerds and M&M's, and she was definitely on a sugar high. I've been trying to limit her to about 1-2 pieces of candy per day since then. She wakes up every morning and asks for a lollipop so I have to hold her off until after dinner. Lollipops are still her favorite candy, although she is yet to meet a candy she doesn't like.

I was surprised when I asked her what her favorite part of Halloween is, and she did not say candy - she said pumpkins. Then I asked what her second favorite part is? and she said spiderwebs. Then third favorite was spiders. So here I thought she would say candy or costumes, but she apparently likes pumpkins and spiderwebs. Haha.

Out of all the great memories, my favorite part about Halloween this year was the amazing warm California weather! We didn't even need jackets to trick or treat! 80 degrees on Halloween! I'll always remember it fondly.

Festive Fall Dinner Party

We had such a fun weekend last weekend! It got off to a great start on Friday night with our newly married friends Angela and Tushar, who came over for dinner. Rich went to grad school at MIT with Angela and we have loved living close by her this year! They have had a busy few months getting married, moving in together and traveling to Seattle and Taipei so we look forward to seeing more of them when their travel schedule lightens.
I planned a festive fall themed menu for our dinner and it came out quite delicious if I say so myself! I made drunken pumpkin chili, pumpkin cornbread with honey pecan butter, salad with apple, pecans and blue cheese, and honeycrisp apple sangria, and we had mini cupcakes from Sprinkles Cupcakes for dessert.

I was going to have shredded cheese and cut-up avocado as sides for the chili, but that day I discovered the cheese was moldy and the avocado wasn't ripe yet, so no dice on those. We did have sour cream on the side at least.

I made the chili on Thursday so it had a whole day for the flavors to meld in the fridge and I thought it came out quite good. I threw in all kinds of ingredients; I'm not sure if I can remember everything that went into it!  Chili is always a smorgasbord of all the fresh vegetables, grains and legumes I have handy. I chopped an onion, a bell pepper, a tomato, three carrots, and half a large sweet potato, and started sauteing those. I added two cans of chickpeas, two cans of black beans, the remainder of a bag of quinoa, some oat bran, a can of pumpkin puree, an Oktoberfest beer, a jar of tomato sauce, some Tofurky kielbasa, and some water for the quinoa and oat bran to soak up. For spices I added chili powder, cumin, coriander, oregano, garlic powder, salt and pepper. I'm sure there were more ingredients but that's all I remember now! After a few hours simmering on the stove it smelled warm and inviting.

I failed to take a picture of the chili - this one is from Sweet Pea's Kitchen. It looked kind of like this.

While the chili simmered I also made the honey pecan butter (which is just honey, butter, and pecans blended together in a blender or food processor) and the salad dressing, which was inspired by the best salad I shared a while back.

¼ cup vinegar (any type) - I used apple cider vinegar
½ cup chopped parsley  - I used half parsley and half basil
¼ cup red onion/shallot, chopped
2 cloves garlic
1/3 cup sugar - I used some agave nectar, less than 1/3 cup
½ cup oil
½ tsp. oregano
Salt & pepper to taste

It's also just all thrown in the blender. My blender got a workout on Thursday. 

On Friday, I made the pumpkin cornbread. I don't bake very often and I hate the mess of flour, so I decided to try grinding oats in the blender to make oat flour instead of using all-purpose flour for a healthier twist. It was a success!  I can't wait to try making all kinds of whole grain flours this way. It was super easy, and I didn't have to buy flour! I used this recipe from sweet pea's kitchen and I would definitely make it again. It was easy to throw together, pretty healthy and TASTY with the honey pecan butter. Although, to be totally honest, that honey pecan butter makes EVERYTHING you put it on taste amazing. My friend Lindsey introduced me to that idea a few years ago and I have been keeping it in my back pocket ever since. 

honey pecan butter

pumpkin cornbread - picture by Sweet Pea's Kitchen

I also made the sangria, and rimmed the glasses with cinnamon and sugar. My favorite party trick! Rimming glasses is so easy and really takes the fancy factor up a notch. I used this recipe from Sally's Baking Addiction and of course modified it to match what I had since I did not have brandy. Instead I added some triple sec and cranberry vodka. 

We had a blast catching up with Angela and Tushar, and hearing stories about boarding school days and learning Chinese growing up. Always a great time! 

We had the red velvet and caramel apple mini cupcakes... mmmm