Healthy Halloween Snacks: Bell Pepper Pumpkins and Krakens

There are lots and lots of sweet halloween treats and decorations available, but we recently hosted a halloweeny brunch and we needed some savory options.  These bell pepper creations were super quick and easy to make, but had a big visual impact.  They are pretty much as easy as they look!

For the pumpkins, carve the pumpkin faces before you cut open the pepper; if you cut it open first it will be less structurally sound and a little harder to carve.  Once you have the faces complete, cut the top off and empty the insides.  You can also put dip inside the pumpkins if you feel the urge.

The Kraken eye is a circle with an ellipse on either side.  Again, carve the eye, then cut the top off and flip it upside down.  It's hard to see from the picture but the Kraken is sitting in blue ranch dip (I just used a few drops of blue food coloring). 

There you go; all ready for a spoooky brunch!

Rhubarb Punch

Every summer the large patch of Rhubarb at my house goes bananas (oddly it does not go rhubarbs) and grows like crazy, leaving me with far more rhubarb than I can usually use.  So this year I decided to make Rhubarb Punch, which is a great refreshing beverage for the first hot days of summer.

Ingredients (very flexible):
4 cups rhubarb
4 cups water
1 cup white sugar (or less, 1 cup makes it very sweet)
1 can frozen lemonade concentrate
2 Liters Sprite/Sierra Mist/7-Up/fizzy citrus soda


                                           Directions:

Chop rhubarb into inch or so pieces and  put in water.

Bring to a boil then let simmer for 20-30 minutes.

Strain out the rhubarb flesh, keeping only the delicious pink rhubarb juice.

Add sugar and stir until dissolved.

Add frozen lemonade concentrate and mix.
Add citrus-flavored pop of your choosing and mix.

Drink!  I like to also add crushed ice for extra refreshing-ness.

Food: Bruschetta and Black Olive Crostini

Bruschetta and Black Olive Crostini are two of my favorite appetizers, so I thought I would add them to the blog.  Bruschetta is basically toast with a tomato topping, and Black Olive Crostini is basically toast with a cooked black olive topping. Since they are so similar (and easy to make), I usually make them at the same time.  Both of these taste best as soon as they're made. Note that the Crostini uses garlic powder while the Bruschetta uses garlic salt.   

How to make Bruschetta: 

Ingredients: 
Loaf of Italian bread or French Bread (baguette style)
Tomatoes
Fresh Basil
Olive Oil
Garlic Salt

Preheat oven to 425F
 
Directions:

The Bread:
-Take a loaf of Italian or French bread, and slice it up.
-Drizzle or brush olive oil onto the bread, and toast in the oven at 425 degrees (or just use a toaster oven).
-Toast until the bread starts to turn golden brown.

The Topping:
-Take tomatoes (I used five baseball sized tomatoes for one loaf of french bread), and cut them up into cubes
-Drain off as much liquid as you can from the chopped tomatoes 
-Add olive oil (a few tablespoons)
-Finely chop up a few leaves of fresh basil and mix them in
-Finally, add garlic salt to taste
-Put the topping on the bread (a spoonful per slice) and serve!   

How to make Black Olive Crostini 

(don't be fooled, it's as easy as it looks!)

Ingredients: 
Loaf of Italian or French bread (baguette style)
6oz jar of Black Olives
Olive Oil
Garlic Powder

Preheat oven to 425F

Directions:
-Drain the liquid from the olive can, and finely chop the olives (I use an olive chopper).
-Mix in a few tablespoons of olive oil, and garlic powder to taste.
-Slice up the bread and put a spoonful of topping on each slice.
-Bake until the bread becomes crispy.  Serve and enjoy!    

How to make Maple Sugar Candy

This came from an original plan to make maple syrup candy (the kind where you heat up maple syrup and pour it on snow), but then Amy and I got more ambitious and we decided to make maple sugar candy instead.  The main difference is that while maple syrup candy is sticky and kind of like really really hard taffy, maple sugar candy is more crumbly and granulated.  The sugar candy is just what it sounds like; the liquid from the syrup has been removed and only the sugar remains.  The whole process took us about half an hour, including set up. 


Ingredients and supplies: Maple Syrup (12oz), butter (1/4 tablespoon), deep pan, wooden spoon, candy thermometer, molds to pour the syrup into to make candy!

Notes before starting: 
-We used a 12oz bottle of syrup, and it made a whole bunch of candy (a little of this goes a long way, it's pretty much pure sugar).  You have to use real maple syrup for this, so we got the cheapest real syrup possible in case it ended in disaster.  I'm pretty sure the quality of the syrup doesn't matter, since you are essentially destroying the syrup and just taking the sugar from it. 
-The pan should be deep, because the syrup will bubble up. In the event you overcook it, there is widespread internet rumor that maple syrup at a rolling boil will pretty much explode all over and be a disaster.
-After looking at many recipes online, I chose 240 degrees F as the average heat to achieve.  If you go too far over this, you will get the maple syrup boiling chaos described above.
-The butter is optional, but is supposed to keep the bubbling down while heating the maple syrup
-Do Not Stir While Heating!!  Maple sugar likes to crystallize when agitated (especially when hot), and you don't want this to occur before you've boiled out as much liquid as possible. 
-A candy thermometer is like a regular thermometer that goes to 300+ degrees F
-We put aluminum foil around cookie cutters to make molds the first time we did this, and it worked alright. The second time I used an actual maple leaf mold.
-Wooden spoons, according to Amy, help keep flavors good.  This might be superstition or witchcraft.
-'Witchcraft' has five consecutive consonants in it; pretty awesome. 

Directions:

1) Pour the maple syrup into a deep pan.  Melt and add a small bit of butter (we used 12 oz of syrup and about 1/4 tablespoon of butter), and gently mix the butter in.  Put your molds somewhere accessible.     

2) Put the candy thermometer into the syrup, and begin heating (slowly!).  The thermometer should not touch the bottom of the pan.  Once heating, do not mix/stir/bug the syrup.   

3) While cooking, you will run into multiple heating plateaus, when the syrups starts bubbling a lot but does not get any hotter.  Be patient, and when the bubbles start to go away, you'll see the heat increasing again. (this is because maple syrup is not an azeotrope ).

4) Once you hit 240 degrees, turn off the heat and move the pan so it can cool.  Let cool for 3-5 minutes, then start stirring vigorously with the wooden spoon.  As you stir, the syrup will become opaque and lighten in color.  After a few minutes it will start getting very thick and viscous, and you will want to pour it into molds (the candy solidifies quicker than you might expect; we started pouring into the molds but had to finish by scraping the sugar out and globing it into the remaining molds).  Let the candy cool, then pull it out of the molds.  Hooray! Candy!

Fruit Salad: How to make it rockin'

What is good? Fruit salad.  What is awesome? Rockin Fruit Salad inside a Watermelon.  This is a simple trick that my friend showed me (and, I have on good authority, most of the world already knows) to make fruit salad much more awesome.

Step 1) Buy a watermelon and other fruit.  Aesthetically, the watermelon will give you green and red color, so if you buy blue and yellow fruit you will be covering quite a range of colors with fairly little effort.

Step 2) Chop off top third of watermelon with a big ol' knife.  Do this in a serrated pattern (just stab it and alternate the angle of the blade), and be sure to keep the top.

Step 3) Hollow out watermelon and replace insides with other fruit (and put some of the watermelon back in).  You will also need to scrape the watermelon off the lid piece.  One watermelon holds exactly one watermelon worth of fruit inside, so you will end up with as much leftover watermelon as you put in non-watermelon fruit. 

Step 4) Label appropriately.  It is very embarrassing to bring the wrong rockin' watermelon to a gathering.  I used a small knife and made very shallow 'v' shaped cuts into the melon to make the letters.  

Step 5) When arrived at your event, you may further decorate your rockin' watermelon with toothpicks and whatever pattern of fruit you fancy, such as these pineapple tiki torches.