Halloween!!

Halloween weekend and trick-or-treat were especially great this year, because my mom was here for all the fun. I am not one of those people who gets all crazy over Halloween, but it is definitely more fun with a little one to dress up in costume!! This year, I also decided to take an old Waters family tradition and kick it up a notch.

For reasons I can't entirely explain, before heading out to trick-or-treat, my parents fed my brothers and me hot dogs, apple cider, and doughnuts. I understand that the hot dogs were just a way to get dinner on the table quickly before it was time to head out on our candy quest... but the addition of sugary doughnuts on such an already sugar-infused evening is, in retrospect, a little troubling. Nevertheless, tradition is tradition, and eating doughnuts on Halloween just feels right.

I'd never made homemade doughnuts before. So this was the perfect opportunity. We did the doughnuts on Saturday night, since trick-or-treat was on a Monday and the doughnut making was a somewhat time consuming process. Tradition had to suffer in the name of scratch-made-yumminess, but it was so worth it!!!

This is Crisco. Oh yes.

This is the dough frying up into a lovely, shortening-inspired shade of golden brown.

The finished product - half in an apple cider glaze, half coated in cinnamon sugar. Upon tasting, the glaze emerged as the clear victor.

More doughnuts than three adults and one small child could ever eat in one sitting (the leftovers were happily consumed over the next few days). Not to worry, we also had a veggie frittata to offset some of the artery-clogging sugar high.

Click for the recipe: Apple Cider Doughnuts. My little tips - (1) go for the shortening over vegetable oil. The recipe explains that shortening results in a less greasy-tasting doughnut because, unlike oil, the shortening becomes solid again once the doughnuts cool. (2) Ensure that the dough spends enough time in the freezer before you try to cut them out, and then again before you plop the doughnuts in the hot shortening. The dough is incredibly sticky, so it'll just stick to the pan and fall apart if it's not cold enough. (3) If you do cinnamon sugar, only coat one side - coating the entire doughnut was overkill. (4) It's really not as hard as you think it'll be - the whole frying part might be a little intimidating, but it is so, so worth it - the freshest doughnuts you'll ever eat!

Alright, moving on to trick or treat night!!! Several months ago, Lily decided that she wanted to be a pirate, and, surprisingly, she stuck to that decision. Given our ample prep time, she was ready with her pirate phrases - "shiver me timbers," "arrrr, matey," "swashbuckling," and "walk the plank!" I also managed to put together/sew portions of her costume without resorting to those awful store-bought ensembles (with a little help from Grandma, who bought the white shirt, and Grammy, who provided the hat).

We decided to go trick-or-treating out in Southern Pines, where Dave lives, which is a nice town about 35 minutes away with a non-military feel. It turned out to be a great decision, because the all and we had a beautiful fall night. Dave cooked us a great dinner of homemade broccoli soup and three types of grilled cheese sandwiches (way to impress my mom, Dave!!), and then we got Lily all dressed up:

Before we hopped in the car to find a good trick-or-treat spot we snapped a few photos:

Lily was so excited!!! At the first house we went to, when the people there opened the door, she said "Trick or Treating!!" It was very cute. And she of course remembered to say "thank you."

Unfortunately, the second house we went to was wayyy too scary. They had their yard all set up with smoke machines, a kid dressed as a skeleton hiding in the bushes, and these noise machines that made loud "PSSSHHHHHHT" noises, which scared Lily to death. After we got away from all that, she said she was done trick or treating and wanted to go home. We persuaded her to keep going, but before every house she said "is this a scary one? Please don't take me to any more bad houses, mommy." But then after we got candy from a house, she said "that was a nice house." She ended up having a blast and we walked for almost the whole two hours - she didn't ask to be carried even once!

A great Halloween, all in all. Although that night as I was tucking her in, she started talking about the scary house again - she said "that scary house made a pssshhhht noise. I didn't like it." It obviously made quite an impression, as she brought it up regularly for the next week or so. Lesson learned - should have turned right back around instead of pushing on through that house!

Her "mean pirate face"