Halloween: A Savory Approach (Plus a Blog-Exclusive Invite!)

Come Halloween time, forget nutrition, or eating a square meal, or “vegetables,” because by the second half of October, candy and cocktails rule the realm! Right? Well, perhaps. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t round out your all-candy diet with a real meal here or there. An honest-to-goodness meal will do you good, especially before some trick-or-treating, costume-partying, or sitting-on-your-couch-with-a-bowl-of-Twix-ing. Find our savory ideas below.

Or, if you’d prefer to let someone else do the cooking, lucky you! No tricks here – we are opening up 50 Kitchit invitations in honor of this “holiday” weekend! Find the special invite code at the bottom of this blog post – and instead of donning your apron this Halloween, spend some time getting totally decked out and let one of our amazing chefs take care of the food!

The Pre-Trick-or-Treat Feast

Welcome to Operation Feed the Kids. Your objective: fill them up with something relatively healthy in order to avoid blood sugar extremes. Your challenge: Humble dinner will be competing with candy. And costumes. And candy.

The strategy: Go for something fun, filling, and nutritious. If possible, make ahead so that you have time for last-minute costume repairs and getting an early start on the candy collecting. Our suggestion? Go Mexican with black bean enchiladas. Recipes around the web abound, but the New York Times version, pictured below, looked pretty good to us. If you’d like, make this dish the night before, and spunk up the recipe with orange cheddar cheese to make it festive. Serve with rice to ensure that your kids will be sufficiently carbo-loaded for their trick-or-treating marathon.

Black Bean Enchiladas from the New York Times (Photo credit: New York Times)

 

The Stay-at-Home Hunker Down Dinner

No Halloween parties on the agenda? Stuck at home with candy-dispensing duty? Might as well own it and make something to facilitate curling up on the couch and watching horror movies. Objective: Make something warm, comforting, and somewhat festive – this may be the extent of your Halloween celebration. Might we suggest a big pot of pumpkin curry? As far as we’re concerned, something warm and spicy always fits the bill for a chilly autumn evening, and let’s be honest – you totally have the time to let something simmer away on the stove. For an extra jolt of Halloween inspiration, serve your curry over forbidden black rice.

Pumpkin Curry with Red Chilies from Chow (Photo credit: Chow.com)

 

The Costume Party Psych-up Meal

The party doesn’t start until 9pm, so why not do your future self a solid and build your carb base now? Objective: Make something quick, full of booze-absorbing power, and festive enough to psych you up for imminent debauchery. If there was ever an excuse to make this black-and-orange pasta dish from Gourmet, this is it. In addition to its amazing visual appeal (courtesy of squid-ink pasta, butternut squash, orange peppers, and olives), this dish is easily customizable (it’s pasta, after all) and hits the balance between filling and light.

Black and Orange Halloween Pasta from Gourmet (Photo credit: Gourmet Live)

 

Blog Exclusive: Kitchit Invite Code!

And, as promised, we are giving 50 readers the option of having Kitchit do all of the work this Halloween. Visit kitchit.com and use the special invite code: KITCHITBLOG for a free invite to the site, and then start looking for chefs to take your Halloween to the next level.

As of this writing, there are a couple of chefs who are still available for October 31 – so hurry up and Kitchit!