Holiday & Party Recipes marga@lacabe.com

For the first time since we've been at our San Leandro house Halloween fell on a Friday. I had wanted to have a Halloween party for several years, and this seemed to be the perfect opportunity. Planning the party wasn't too difficult, thanks to the library and the internet, but getting everything ready proved to be a challenge. Just as soon as I cleaned the house, Michaela went and messed it up again. I couldn't decorate it until the last moment because I feared she would tear down all the decorations. I left much of the shopping until the last week and by then it was hard to find many of the props that I wanted: a rubber rat to put in the "rat stew", a medium-size spider and caviar to make "spider eggs", nice plastic eyes for the "eyeball ragout", next year I'll do my shopping earlier and probably by mail. I did much of the cooking on Thursday, but I woke up Friday with a messy, undecorated house, several dishes to prepare, and a costume to assemble. Fortunately, everything ended up turning out well. I wanted a very Halloweenish sort of menu. First I thought about making disgusting-looking food, unfortunately I failed to come up with recipes for such and I'm not creative enough to make them up. Most of the recipes I found at Halloween websites seemed a bit childish or goofy. I wanted good, grown-up food but with a Halloween twist. So what I ended up doing was making regular food and giving it Halloweenish sort of names. I think this worked out quite well, the food was great and so was the atmosphere. My final menu consisted of: Chips with Slime Mousse. aka Tortilla chips with Guacamole. Sliced bread with Bug Spread. aka Gorgonzola spread, truly delicious Eyes of Newt aka Deviled eggs Melted worm empanadas aka Cheese and Ham and Cheese empanadas Eyeball Ragout aka Roasted Vegetable Ragout Rat stewed in blood aka Coq au Vin Witches Fingers aka Cookies To drink I served: Fermented Blood aka Sangria Unfermented Blood aka Cramberry-Apple Cocktail Pure blood aka Cabernet Sauvignon And for dessert we had plain Cosco apple pie with Dreyer's cinnamon ice cream. I was all in all quite happy with the menu and how it turned out, even though it was a bit heavy on the "blood" and the "eyeballs". I'll probably try something different next year, just for the sake of change, but I'd recommend this menu for those looking for ideas.