I’m told parents are worried about Swine Flu, aka Hamthrax, and didn’t let the kids go…
Sad.
But now we are launching back on Atkins, before we gain more weight over the holidays! It’s Italian roast chicken tonight.
Sigh. We ate too much Halloween candy, having not ONE trick-or-treater.
by CJ | Nov 1, 2009 | Journal | 22 comments
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Our county of oklahoma has been hit hard by the h1n1 virus,all of the counties supply of vaccine went to the two schools,but that did not stop trick or treaters. I had bought 4 large bags of mixed hard candy,but had to go buy 4 more bags before the night was up. We closed the door and blew out our porch candels at about 8:30pm. Kids were still going door to door then!
We had a fair number of kids here in NE Oklahoma. We ran out of the new candy we bought (bags of crackerjacks, bought in bulk) and had to fall back on last year’s tootsie rolls that I keep out of sight and so out of mind.
We gave out bags of candy at a trunk-er-treat then came home and gave out 3 more from the door. We also spent time with the family carving pumpkins. It was an enjoyable time.
We normally go out to eat with friends on Halloween Eve, but more than half of the usual gang canceled on us. We ended up going to our normal Saturday night gaming meet, which was down the aforementioned half, ate steaks and passed out candy, and made it an early evening. I don’t think we had more than 30 or so trick-or-treaters between dusk and 10:00, when we called it a night.
The hazard I met was potluck lunch at work. Too many desserts, lots of pasta and bread.
I took veggie salad (start with basic three-bean, and improvise from there: bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, baby corn, olives, mushrooms).
The cake went really well with the freshly-made applesauce (apples, cinnamon, crockpot).
Oh Rats! I thought about you guys as I was putting on my witch attire that I wear to answer the door in. I had planned to have my pirate coat instead–that’s why you guys came to mind.
It will have to be my winter project, and more fitting I suppose. As it turns colder I always find myself thinking of visiting home(Florida). I’ve never been to the sea in a place where it snows and has rocks for a shore. I always think of her as the place I grew up. Warm water, white sand, blue skies.
We had a good amount of of kids come by, sadly there weren’t many in our neighghborhood giving out candy this year. That makes me sad.
I’m home…and Chip* didn’t have single one either.
*Jane’s brother — a most gracious host, as always!
I took my little sister out trick-or-treating (she as a black cat with a fleece kitty hat mum and I made her that day, me as a Clockwork Droid from Doctor Who, Series 2), and when we returned my parents had had three—count ’em, THREE—trick-or-treaters. Apparently it was a slow night for the whole neighborhood! Granted, it was also a home homecoming game for the university, so that might have been part of the reason, but still, it wasn’t even raining or anything! I ate my junior mints and some peanut m&ms, but I guess I’m not as in to candy as I once was… 😉 Which is all to the good, of course!
I bought two different bags of sweets, and managed to get rid of one of each to a ghostie from two doors down and his dad. Guess I won’t buy anything else until 2010…
The chicken turned out well: recipe: one whole chicken, brown ‘n bag: rub chicken inside and out with olive oil: coat with black pepper, salt, oregano and basil. Bake at 350 for about 1 1/2 to 2 hours. We added salt-baked potatoes. Rub whole baking potatoes with olive oil, coat with salt, set on rack in oven, bake 1 hour.
Menu for the day: 2 softboiled eggs, 1/2 toast, forgot lunch, but it would have been another egg, half the chicken and a small baked potato. It’s very high protein, so you don’t tend to get hungry.
Tomorrow: another chicken, south of the border style, rubbed down with chipotle pepper and spices I’ll figure out as I go. Or I could go Thai or Chinese.
Day after: making a pot of stew: that’s beef, a bag of carrots, head of celery, several potatoes, a bay leaf (remove before serving), basil, salt, black pepper, and thyme. That’ll hold us 2-3 days, and it’s good on cold evenings.
The idea is to concentrate on protein, and potato at 21 grams carb is not bad so long as that’s all the carb you have for the day. Considering your typical pasta dinner is 42 grams for what the government considers an adequate serving (most people end up with 84 grams) it’s pretty clear we sort of regularly overdo in the carb department.
Everybody’s different: we actually gain weight on low-fat diets. Sugars (carbs) are killer for both of us. So if we go high protein we’re (a) warmer in the winter (b) have more energy and (c)lower in cholesterol, actually (fat without carb doesn’t seem to present a problem to us.) Plus we drop weight.
So it’s going to be a high protein holiday for us. Concentrate on hams and chicken and keep away from flour and sugar..even sugar substitute, since it seems to trigger some of the same reactions as sugar itself. But we are motivated. A skating outfit only stretches so far.
I find I do best on Weight Watchers online. DH is having trouble maintaining weight and with WW we can eat the same meals with extra carbs for him. He also has Braums Ice Cream, chocolate protein shakes and anything else with chocolate on or in it.
Fortunately we are not chocoholics. 😉 We did do Nutrisystem. After 6 months and really being very good, Jane had gained 5 pounds and I had lost 10. We decided that wasn’t worth the cost (for us: it must work well for some people.) Jane gained on Weightwatchers. We both gained on South Beach. There’s the Fat Loss for Dummies program: we hold about even on that, while skating 10 hours a week, and it’s too easy to drift into a bad direction. So far the only plan where we both lose and lose consistently is Atkins.
I tried Nutrisystem but it was too much bother and I didn’t care for the meals at all apart from being expensive. I like Atkins, and it works, but it just doesn’t fit into our life style.
I dressed up with friends who were taking their daughter trick or treating in a very small town a few miles from their house. (Their town is apparently very lame, and they had friends at the other one.) There were little goblins all over the place, in spite of the occasional rain, but the absolutely coolest thing about the night was that at 7pm everyone met at the cemetary and then all the big and little ghoulies joined the parade, with torches and drums and whistles and cymbals and went tromping around the town, stopping what little traffic there was. I wish my town had done something like that when I was growing up. Oh, and the fire dept was giving away smoke detector batteries. Also very cool.
We had far fewer little goblins and ghosts than usual, maybe 30 or 40. Some years we have 200 or more.
Took all the extra candy to work and it was gone before lunch :locust hordes:
It has been years since I had any Halloween callers. I used to put the unused candy into the freezer for the next year. After about five years I decided that the choc. was vintage enough!
Haven’t had trick-or-treaters for years. In the previous place, out in the hinterlands on the Rogue River, my place was a quarter mile from the nearest road (and not visible from there). More likely to have coyotes and deer than kids…
Now I’m back in Portland, but live in an apartment building with a front door that locks. Only one trick-or-treating age kid lives in it (and he didn’t come by). I really miss them; I used to go to a fair bit of effort with costume and decorations for them.
And I could (usually) be persuaded not to give out cigarettes and ammunition…
Here’s a question for the group: When I was growing up, the kids in my neighborhood had to work for our Hallowe’en candy. It wasn’t enough to just dress up in cute outfits… we had to tell a joke or sing a song or do some sort of trick. I was shocked the first year I was giving out candy and kids came by and just took the candy (politely, I grant you, but no jokes or anything like that). Everyone I tell this to looks at me like I came from Mars. Is this something that was just very unique to my neighborhood, or did anyone else have to earn their treats?
And they were good treats… home-made popcorn balls, brownies, cookies, and then all the usual candy.
Around here, it’s not Halloween that gets celebrated (though the shops are trying to get it established as an extra opportunity to sell merchandise), but Saint Maarten on 11 november. Then the kids all make special decorated lanterns at school, and learn a little song or limerick, and they all come by, sing a song and show off their lantern to get some candy. The songs are different depending on the class the kids are in (each group choosing a new song to learn every year), there are some new songs each year and some old favourites get recycled a lot. The lanterns don’t have candles anymore because of the fire-hazard, but they have sticks with a battery in that a little bicycle-light hangs from, that they build their lanterns around. They don’t wear costumes.
It’s not celebrated everywhere in the Netherlands, not like Saint Nicholas on 5 december.
Apparently it depends on whether the region used to be predominantly catholic or protestant. Where I grew up we didn’t have it, but the town I moved to when I went to work does. My first year here I had to sit quietly with all the lights off like ‘nobody’s home’ from 6 till 8, so as not to keep having to disappoint singing kids at the door because I hadn’t got in any candy. I haven’t been unprepared since – got to start stocking up again soon!
Philosopher,
when I went trickertreating in the 60’s we didn’t sing or tell jokes; we just took the candy. But the older people asked us to tell a joke, and we couldn’t get away unless we did. But, most people just gave the candy. In my area, that custom must have died out in the 50’s. It sounds like Halloween might have been influenced by the Dutch Saint Maarten celebration.
Hamthrax! Awesome moniker! Over here (in the UK) we call it Bacon Lung. 🙂