Halloween Food, an insight by Hercule

Greetings. I am the Great Hercule Poirot, cockroach extraordinaire. And I'm taking over this insipid blog just in time to share with you some perfect foodstuffs for the upcoming holiday you call Halloween.

Over the many years that Americans have celebrated the holiday the sole culinary focus has been on the sugar stuffs retrieved by your children. Food has had little place in the celebration beyond that. Oh, sure, people give silly names to food to make them sound scary (“please, have another helping of my Ghoulish Goulash”) or you have to be blindfolded to be scared of the food (“what you are feeling are eyeballs, certainly not peeled grapes!”).

But I'm so happy to see chefs truly embrace the foodstuffs of Halloween with much more creativity than ever before! Not only with the names silly but with wonderful visuals and textures.

Let us start with breakfast. Why not start scaring the young ones right from the start, eh? Behold these lovely Zombie Pancakes, the secret of which is to apply batter you want darker first to the hot pan so it browns more than the rest. True, this technique could be made to any picture, but it is Halloween!

Moving onto lunch you don't want to stuff your children too much; we must save room for the candy! So may I recommend these tasty Stuffed Pizza Skulls! Yes, you will need the special Wilton Skull 3D pan, but think of all the other wonderful things you could do with it! It will be the best $30 you ever spent.

Next is the dinner, and I'm sad to say that my recommendation is still not yet available here in the states, which is sad because 1) it is available at Burger King and there seems to be no shortage of those and b) it is disgusting to look at and Americans seem to love that. It is the famous Black Burger (or Darth Vader Burger).

Now for the best part, the sweets! You cannot have enough of these, even after the kiddles have brought home buckets of the chocolate. Besides, you'll want something different, something wonderful... something spoooooooky.

These chocolate skulls are life sized and anatomically correct. Go ahead and envision your nemesis groveling before you begging for mercy! Buwahaha!

Ahem. A smaller version may be these. I so love the walnut brain. Reminds me of someone...

So you don't want ALL sweets at your party, and who could blame you -- besides me, of course. Look at these lovely appetizers to kick things off. You can see it now, can you not? Instead of blindfolding your guests to trick them into thinking a hotdog is a finger they will scream, "For the love of all things holy, the hotdog is a finger!"

Looking for something you can make at home? Perhaps these Spider Cookies appease, or this Panna Cotta Brain with Raspberry Sauce.

I for one am glad to see the holiday take an intriguing culinary turn. To find more such delights please paw through my own website, bugsmind.com. It's vastly more educational that this one you read now!