Halloween Food that Won’t Make You Want to Puke — Maybe

So yesterday, after we got back from the right-winger pumpkin patch (which I’ll write about tomorrow because I just don’t have the stomach for it tonight), we had lots of plans. Lots and lots of big plans. Put up the Halloween decorations. Carve pumpkins. Blog. Get ready for our neighbor’s party.

Instead, Tenzin and I laid down and all but died.

When we did come to, we started down the horrible road of coming up with a grand idea for a Halloween-themed appetizer for our neighbor’s party. With no food in the house. And no time. And no energy. And did I mention neither of us had showered?

You see, we’d made the mistake of asking our neighbor, as we cruised by him on the way home, what we could bring. He said, “Oh, just an appetizer. . . something spooky.” I’m sure he couldn’t really give a crap if we really brought something “spooky,” but for Tenzin, the gauntlet had now been thrown down.

Thus began the mad search to create something out of nothing. Tenzin, who can’t google to save his life, said there was nothing online and started demoing his own “eyeballs” made out of Costco meatballs wrapped in Pillsbury biscuit dough and decorated with red food coloring.

To his credit, it was rather ingenious on a moment’s notice. And I didn’t see anything like it when I hit the internets and of course was able to find Halloween appetizers. My grand plan was to make spider deviled eggs — easy, right?

So great. We had our food ideas. The problem now, was making something. You see, we may seem sort of smart on the outside, but we’re basically idiots. So we decided to do both.

After driving to the store for extra dough and olives, enlisting two very reluctant kids to decorate eyeballs (because they felt like they were going to puke the entire time), and making quite a few trials with errors, we got our hors d’oeuvres.

By the way, it turns out organic eggs from vegetarian-fed chickens peel like shit. And how the hell do people keep the yolk in the middle? All of mine were on one end, so half my eggs barely held their “stuff” in after I de-yolked them.

Anyway, the eyeball meatballs came out out pretty bland — which is sort of what we expected — but we assumed the kids would be into that (being kids and hating anything flavorful). The problem was, kids aren’t stupid, and they don’t want to eat something that looks totally disgusting. So who ended up eating them? The adults.

My conclusion is that Halloween food is a tough genre. There’s a fine line to walk because it has to be “festive,” but it can’t be so gross that people lose their appetites when they see it. Truth be told, I didn’t eat much at the party due to a pumpkin on the table that was throwing up guacamole.

But that could just be me. I didn’t eat an eyeball either.