This year we tried having a Harvest Feast to celebrate Halloween, instead of the more recent traditional commercial holiday. We skipped the heavily packaged and bad for us candy, cheap plastic (polyester) costumes, and the plastic decorations. It turned out fairly great, but it was very hard with two little girls.
UG1, UG3, and me spent the day cooking and watching Halloween movies. We saw Berserk and The Blob on our antenna onetime "cable" purchase and watched It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown; Hocus Pocus; and Ghostbusters we own. We made Butterbeer with Kombucha Cream soda, pumpkin pie, roasted pumpkin with butter, a barely meat-loaf with leftover lentils and rice, and pumpkin mini-muffins. See Recipes for more ideas and these. I used my first batch of Kombucha that I made from a SCOBY a FNB acquaintance gave me!
Overall, everything was delicious and I seem to have won Mr. Greenie over to skipping the trick-or-treating. It helps that no one seems interested in trick-or-treating in our neighborhood. I will definitely cook more ahead next year though, as it was incredibly hard to cook everything with UG1 and UG3. Pumpkin pie, whipped cream, and muffins could all be made the day before, with the pie crust started two days earlier for proper soaking.
Just having uncut pumpkins on the porch to smash open on Halloween day, homemade egg carton bats (Tightwad Gazette), and a Venus flytrap for indoors worked great for Halloween decorations. We spent very little on the food, about $10 extra including one pumpkin we got at a pumpkin patch. Big budget saving this holiday!
Here's to a zero-waste, plastic-free, healthy Halloween!
No comments:
Post a Comment