Growing up in a small town offered many opportunities for great Halloween memories. As a child, the month long costume making sessions with mom, the school Halloween parties and the eventual trick or treating around my neighborhood. Small towns offered a safe environment for accepting candy from strangers and we never had to worry about town bullies taking our candy.
As an adult, Halloween costume ideas revolved around sex or creating a funny costume. Times have changed, we’ve grown up and instead of candy, Halloween brings thoughts of eating that pumpkin and looking for recipes on how to cook with squash.
Halloween Roundup
Over the past few years, various writers have shared their thoughts on these various subjects here on the blog, so I thought I’d put together a little summary of Halloween ideas for recipes, costumes, workouts and even some environmental tips. The authors would love to hear from you, so please leave comments where applicable.
Halloween Recipe Ideas
Squash is a most excellent food. If you’ve got pumpkins laying around after the holiday, make use of it’s nutritional goodness by making one of these:
Pumpkin Butternut Squash Curry Soup – Butternut squash is one of my favorite’s. Here it’s combined with pumpkin and then spiced up with ginger and curry. Lots of Vitamin A and Beta Carotene!
Pumpkin Pancakes – great recipe for any fall morning. Spiced up for the cold months too.
Pumpkin Corn Chowder – If you like a chowder, this makes a great Halloween recipe, suitable for sharing. My wife and I are still trying to come to a conclusion about “what makes a chowder anyway?”, so please leave a comment with your thoughts and help us settle it once and for all.
Halloween Costume Ideas
When I was a kid, I distinctly remember making a robot costume out of cardboard boxes. One for the head and a bigger one for the body. I also remember parading around our school gym for a costume competition where the teachers would vote on the best costume. The only other one I remember was a pirate costume.
Regardless, things are different now. With age comes a more mature theme.
Naughty Halloween Costume Ideas
Burn Off Those Calories
Scott Tousignant, personal trainer and author of many great exercise products including Fat Loss Quickie put together a outdoor workout that makes use of any decorations you may have used.
Check out the Halloween Fat Loss Workout video and start pumping your pumpkins!
Environmentally Friendly Halloween
For years, Scott Bird wrote many excellent articles on conservation including his series on how to save water. He’s from Australia and suffice it to say, they’re way ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to water conservation.
Once the holiday is over, what do you do with all the leftover “stuff?” Here’s an idea:
Environmentally Friendly Halloween – Check out the 10 ways to make your Halloween environmentally friendly.
As far as I’m concerned, when it comes to Halloween, I’m just happy if there’s no snow. I like to think we can make it through the holiday with out the slush, snow and cold weather, but that’s not always the case.
I hope you have a great time trick-or-treating this year and every year, and encourage you to make use of one or all of the Halloween recipe ideas. They’re seriously good, and not just in October. Soup is a wonderful way to keep filled up and make use of your winter squash. Next year? I’ll be growing them myself.
