5 Ways to Have a Healthy Halloween

Guest blogger Melissa Graham blogs at Little Locavores.

Late October is a scary time. Both the crisp autumn air and the falling leaves whisper the promise of ghosts, ghouls and goblins soon to arrive. These days also bring other frightful things. While I know I’m going sound like a fuddy-duddy, I have to ask: when did Halloween become the holiday of excess?

When I was growing up, people didn’t seem so nutso about Halloween. We decorated – a pumpkin or two would sit on our stoop, waiting to be carved. We might add a few small touches, like cardboard black cat cutouts, perhaps even a small broom, implying the presence of a witch inside. Yes, there were always the outliers – the dramatically creative who would create bigger and bigger scary displays each year that we would visit and ooh and ah about, but most people seemed rather sensible in their decorating.

These days, you can’t drive a street on the north side of Chicago without your eyes being bombarded with Styrofoam gravestones, life size mummies, gigantic light displays, and of course, the ubiquitous spider webbing wrapped along fence after fence in neon Halloween colors. Seemingly, every empty store front (of which in this economy are many), is filled with spooky supply shops full of an endless supply of cheap Halloween goods, manufactured who knows where. While some of these adornments are used year after year, most, I suspect, are destined for the trash heap – more garbage for our brimming landfills. Given our wont to overdo, Halloween has become a very scary holiday for those of use care about the environment.

Halloween has also become a very scary day for us health conscious parents as the excess is certainly not limited to the decorations. As I mentioned in my first post, I’m no candy hater. When we crafted the mission statement of my non-profit, Purple Asparagus, we intentionally left out any reference to the word “healthy,” but instead talked about good eating. Good eating we feel is a diet high in vegetables and whole grains, which leaves room for sometime foods, candy included. I certainly remember loving Halloween especially post trick-or-treating when I inspected my loot, organizing it, and rationing it out. For me, it’s a matter of degree. When I was my son’s age, I would travel 3 to 4 blocks in my suburban neighborhood and come home with the same amount of candy that my son gathers in one small 1/2 city block. Back then, I got one piece a house. Nowadays, people throw handfuls of the stuff like beads off Mardi Gras floats.

Perhaps, it wouldn’t be so bad, if it were limited to trick-or-treating, but these days, there are the parties, school and otherwise, with goodie bags stocked full of candy. It’s all too much.

Because we’ve still got some time before the sugar blob arrives, I wanted to give my top five tips for making Halloween a little less scary this year. There’s a bonus: none of them will get your house egged!

1. Limit the trick or treating and organize a neighborhood potluck instead. On our street, we visit a handful of houses and then head to a party organized by a friend and neighbor. All the neighbors bring a little something, soups, salads, and other potluck fare. If we’re lucky, the weather is decent and we sit outside on our stoops, eating and sipping adult beverages while we watch the kids run around releasing the sugar rush generated from their Halloween loot. The recipe below, Spiced Pumpkin Muffins, would be a nice addition to a potluck table.
2. Help your little ones triage their candy. This is a particularly effective strategy for little ones who like to sort things. The morning after Halloween, my son and I dump out his goody bags the not-so-bad such as Hershey bars, Snickers, Reese’s (the candy that at least resembles real food). The not-so-bad pile is further sorted to include three categories: 1. Eat now, 2. Give away to Daddy’s office (they’ll eat anything), and 3. Save for his advent calendar (a treat each day of December before Christmas).
3. Work with your child’s teacher or the school administration to encourage healthy school celebrations that don’t focus on sweets, but instead activities. There’s so much you can do, including good old-fashioned fun like bobbing for apples or decorating pumpkins.
4. When decorating your house, look to use natural and recycled materials. For example, cheesecloth, used and washed, makes terrific spider webs. Soak it with leftover coffee grinds to give it a little color and then shred it. It holds up a lot better than the webbing sold at junky Halloween stores that turns in to spider blobs after a few rain storms. I’ve always wanted to transform my front yard into a set piece from The Blair Witch Project. Anyone remember the stick and cloth figures suspended from the trees? Oooh, what a terrifying movie moment and easy to recreate with items around the house.
5. Be a good role model. It’s easy just to pick up a bag of Halloween branded candy from the megamart. But there are some great online stores that sell a better product. For example, Natural Candy Store has a section of Fair Trade Halloween candy Given that it’s National Fair Trade month, it would be an appropriate choice. It’s a little more expensive, but if you’re not giving out handfuls of candy, the cost will likely even out and you’ll have done your part to make the day a little less scary. Let the ghosts, ghouls, and goblins take care of that.

Spiced Pumpkin Muffins

I used to make this recipe with golden raisins instead of chocolate chips. My little locavore suggested the switch and we’ve never gone back. For these pictures, I used my adorable Williams-Sonoma acorn cake pan – they’re just as good in a regular or mini-muffin tin.

Makes 18 muffins

2 large eggs
½ cup canola oil
1 cup unsweetened pumpkin puree
2 cups all-purpose flour
¾ cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon mace
½ teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350°. Fill 2 standard muffin tins with 18 paper or silicone cups. Whisk together the eggs, oil, pumpkin puree, and ¼ cup water. Mix together the dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Stir the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients. Stir in the chocolate chips. Scoop batter into the prepared muffin tins equally. Bake for approximately 30 minutes or until a tester comes out with only a few crumbs.

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