Creating Halloween magic through food
If you’ve ever wondered where I got my zest for cooking, it’s from my mom. This time of year, in particular, reminds me of why.
Every year on Halloween day, my mom cooked our family the most special meals. Here’s what our menu typically looked like:
Our packed lunch at school included a sandwich cut with a Halloween cookie cutter, a “witch’s eyes and hair” salad of peeled green grapes and shredded carrots, and an apple carved out with a jack-o-lantern face and stuffed with a pumpkin seed and candy corn trail mix.
Pre-trick-or-treating dinner was typically “brains on the half skull”: a baked potato with tomato sauce and spaghetti piled atop.
The way in which my mom created magic for us around all holidays manifested in myriad ways, but food was, of course, often at the top of the list. She’s an incredibly creative person, and if you were to ask her, she’d say how much genuine fun she had making holiday magic for us. I hope that as we enter into the chaotic holiday months, you find lots of joy in creating special memories around food. Happy Halloween! 🎃
Creamy Chickpea Pasta With Spinach and Rosemary
The 411: I don’t often cook with heavy cream, but whenever I do, I think to myself, “Why don’t I do this more often?”. I am always in awe of the way in which heavy cream rapidly thickens to create a luscious sauce. In Alexa Weibel’s recipe, chickpeas are caramelized with rosemary, then mixed in with heavy cream, wilted spinach, and parm to create a very creamy, very decadent pasta.
Zoe’s Tips: To up the protein and fiber ante, I add in an extra half can or so of chickpeas. This might require some extra olive oil, and as always, I’m partial to extra herbs—throw the whole clamshell in there.
Taste-to-Time Ratio1: 8:7
Roasted Squash with Spicy Greens & Yogurt
The 411: The simplicity of
’s recipe for roasted squash and spicy greens is not at the expense of flavor and texture. In this recipe, thick rounds of butternut squash are roasted at a high temp, and served alongside a garlicky seasoned yogurt and dinosaur kale that’s been zhuzhed up with a seedy dressing.Zoe’s Tips: Don’t get too bogged down by the 15-minute roast, look for visual indicators like browning. Mine took some extra time to roast, about 25 minutes in total.
Taste-to-Time Ratio: 7:8
The Taste-to-Time Ratio is a ratio that evaluates flavor on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the highest) with time on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the fastest). For example, our family favorite mac and cheese that requires 2 types of cheese, toasted baguette breadcrumbs, approximately all your kitchen pans, and 2 hours of baking is a 10:3 - insanely delicious, but not a quick weeknight meal.