Monday, October 31, 2011 at 07:07 AM
Happy Halloween everybody! Are you ready for tonight’s festivities? I am! This is one of my favorite holidays. Here are a few things that I do to keep it healthy – and make it memorable. And now my kids tell me, these little things have become a tradition.
Halloween Dinner: Venus Soup
We are lucky in that my parents live only 30 minutes away and they join us every Halloween. A few years ago, I started making one of our favorite family recipes for dinner on this night: Venus Soup.
Why Venus Soup? Well, I can make it in about 15 minutes flat and it only needs to simmer for about 45 minutes. You could even put this in the crock pot before leaving for work. It’s relatively healthy. I make it with lean ground turkey (NuVal score of 33), red kidney beans (NuVal score of 82 for low-sodium red kidney beans), and no salt added stewed tomatoes (NuVal score of 69 for Big Y No Salt Added Stewed tomatoes). And it warms everyone up before heading out for trick-or-treating. Better than take-out pizza, right?
Candy
I do buy my candy ahead of time. But I do not open it until Halloween night. So, no one is eating it until 10/31. That means that until Halloween, our Halloween bowl…
is filled with oranges.
Oranges, by the way, get a NuVal score of 100.
And then at 6 pm on Halloween, I fill it with candy.
This year, we’re giving away the following:
Snickers: NuVal score of 2
Skittles: NuVal score of 1
Three Musketeers: NuVal score of 2
Milky Way: NuVal score of 1
Reeses Peanut Butter Cups: NuVal score of 3
I know that a lot of people bring their leftover Halloween candy into the workplace, but I try not to do that to my co-workers! Instead, when the last trick-or-treater rings our doorbell at 8 pm, I unload what is left in the bowl right into their bag. Yup! That Trick-or-Treater hits the jackpot. By the way - my kids love this tradition. They always want to see who the Jackpot Trick-or-Treater is and the look on that child’s face when I dump the whole bowl in! This year, we may run out of candy before 8 pm, however. The town next door to us is out of power thanks to this past weekend’s snowstorm. And so trick-or-treating was cancelled in that neighboring town. So, I suspect there will be an influx of trick-or-treaters from the town next door and we will welcome them with open arms!
Making Memories
My kids are always asking me to tell them what costumes they wore for Halloween from birth to now. That was easy for me to remember when they were four or five years old. But now that they are six and eight, it’s hard for me to remember it all. So this year, both of my kids made a little scrapbook to remember their costumes each year, beginning when they were infants.
My Son's Halloween Scrapbook
- My Daughter’s Halloween Scrapbook
By the way, I really can’t take credit for this idea. My kids both attended a Halloween Art Class given by my friend and neighbor on Columbus Day. She teaches art at our elementary school and she gives some wonderful art classes at her home too!
They made all the scrapbook pages at the art class. And then we filled them with one photo from each year, beginning when they were infants.
- My Son, the Chili Pepper
My daughter, as a pig - with Grandma
And as toddlers…
My son, as a scarecrow
As pre-schoolers…
My son as James the Red Engine
My daughter as the scarecrow and my son as Woody
This was the best idea. We had so much fun putting it together. I’m so glad we did, because before you know it, the kids look like this:
My son as Obi Wan Kenobi and my daughter as Supergirl
If you haven’t made a little Halloween costume scrapbook with your kids, you really should! It was so much fun and now all we need to do is add one photo every year. I will treasure them always.
Well, we’re off to make some more Halloween memories tonight. As for me, I’ll indulge in my once-a-year Reeses Peanut Butter cup. NuVal score of 3!
Enjoy!
Question of the Day
What will you do to make it a healthy or memorable Halloween?
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Halloween
Tags: candy, Halloween, Venus Soup
Friday, October 15, 2010 at 07:13 AM
Good Morning Blog Friends! It’s October 15th. There’s still a good 16 days to go until Halloween. So what’s in your candy bowl?
OK, not to get all preachy here, but I hope it’s not candy.
The NuVal scores for non-chocolate candy range from 1 – 23 and the average score is a 2. And, sorry chocolate lovers, but chocolate only does marginally better. Chocolate candy ranges from 1 – 25 and the average score is a 5.
Well, what did you expect? Like fruit and vegetable scores?
So, while I don’t like to fill my Halloween candy bowl until the very last minute (really, I don’t even buy the stuff until the very, very last minute), I do like to decorate early. Thankfully, as we moved into our house on October 1st, I spied our Halloween decoration boxes coming into the house and I grabbed them.
My friends who have come to visit have said, “Wow! You already have your Halloween decorations up.” Really, it was not a big deal. It was my way of making the kids feel at home. They love seeing the decorations come out year after year.
And then, of course, if you can’t find your Halloween decorations you can always just buy some gourds. I always put some colorful gourds on our mantel.
So, yes, I’ve decorated for Halloween. And I have put out the Candy Bowl. But what did I put in my Candy Bowl?
Oranges of course! They matched! And they get a fantastic NuVal score of 100!
Happy Weekend Everyone!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Halloween
Tags: candy, Halloween
Wednesday, November 25, 2009 at 07:30 AM
Yesterday, I had a meeting with Caryn at NuVal. I headed into her office only to see her candy dish chock full of candy. “This is the last of my kids’ Halloween candy,” she exclaimed with glee.
I’m not quite sure how Caryn manages to sneak the candy out of the house, past her pre-teen daughter and first-grade son. It used to be so easy. When the kids were really little, I could easily dump most of their halloween stash into a big ziploc baggie the day after Halloween and bring it into work for my hungry colleagues faced with a 3 pm slump. No more. Not only do my kids seem to have a mental calculation of just exactly how many Nestle Crunch Bars and Twizzlers they got, but their loot has expanded as they’re grown and their Trick-or-Treat stamina has increased. We made it to a lot of houses this year, particularly since Halloween was on a beautiful, balmy Saturday night.
Check out my little Spider-Girl and her take!
Not surprisingly, candy does not score so well on the NuVal score. OK, that is an understatement. Candy scores abysmally low on the NuVal scale. It is hard to find any candy that scores above a 1 (remember, 100 is highest).
- Twizzlers 1
- Tootsie Roll 1
- AirHeads (one of my kids’ favorites) 1
- Heath Bar 1
- Kit Kat 2
- Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups 3
- Snickers 5
- Hershey’s Special Dark 6 (Woo hoo – I’m a dark chocolate fan!)
- Hershey’s Mr. Goodbar 7
So, slowly and deliberately, my kids ate their Halloween candy. My son has only 1 piece left. My daughter, who does not like chocolate, just has her chocolate left. I’ve read about different ways parents handle the tsunami of candy that enters the home on October 31. Some parents let their kids eat all they can on Halloween night and throw out the rest. Others let their children keep a certain percentage and require them to donate the rest. I must admit I did somehow manage to sneak out a portion of their candy. After that, I made them each a ziploc bag with their names on them, filled them with their candy and placed the bags on top of the refrigerator. I did not make a rule about candy-eating. I waited for them to ask when they wanted a piece. And they did – generally for “dessert” and I did require them to stop at one piece. I wanted them to learn how to live with “treats”. After all, they will grow up and live in this world where there are “treats” everywhere. I am known to say that we live in a big field with poor nutritional landmines everywhere. Think about it, we go from having Halloween candy in our offices right into the over-indulgent Holiday season. There’s a brief respite at New Year’s and then we’re right back at it with Superbowl Parties, Valentine’s Candy, Easter Candy, and all those Summer Cookouts. Before you know it, you’re back in the office staring at a big bowl of Halloween candy during your meeting. So, I believe in teaching my children how to live in that world, with some boundaries of course.
Question of the Day:
How do you keep on track with all the “treats” that surround us?
Yesterday’s Winner:
Congratulations to Carol, Commenter #4 on yesterday’s Trade-Up Tuesday. Carol has won a fabulous red colander, five boxes of Barilla Plus Pasta in various shapes, and a NuVal aluminum water bottle.
Thanks to all of you who shared your trade-up stories! Happy Thanksgiving!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Halloween
Tags: candy, chocolate, Halloween
