Fridays are great! I say Friday is the best day of the week for Halloween to fall on, and next week is it! Something about the color of Friday and the depth of Halloween go together...Friday was always the second holiest day of the week because of that fish decision made by the Council of Trent, being brought up Catholic, that is. My poor mother had no clue how to cook without meat, and the family would end up with fried eggs, mashed potatoes, and a thawed-out block of Bird's Eye orange squash for dinner. Or fishsticks, which were a safe way to cook fish at home without turning the kitchen into a mess.
I would plan routes estimated to produce the best trick or treat loot, with houses known to hand out apples as a waste of scavenging time. We would go from street to suburban street, delighted with the generosity of neighbors. Never dreamt of going past boundaries out of our territory, we were happy with the royal treatment our own neighborhoods provided.
Folks would pop and butter corn, handed out in waxed paper sacks. Homemade caramel apples, cookies, handfuls of change for the desperate houses that ran out of candy but didn't want to disappoint filled the paper grocery bags. One house was famous for cupcakes decorated with orange frosting and candy corn, another for orange juice popsicles, one for cups of cider. Another had a father who played the concertina and made you listen before handing out the goods.
On inspecting the swag, you would find candy that you had never heard of, strange tastes manufactured in New York City, home of foreigners. Chinese bubblegum sticks, wax shapes filled with syrups, god forbid something weird that was maybe black liquorice maybe not, and jawbreakers with a seed of fennel in the center. Pleah.
You sorted the piles into the full size candy bars such as Snickers, Mars Bars, Sky Bars, or Three Musketeers, which for some reason was very popular in our neighborhood. The money went in another pile, smaller exotic bars went in a third, apples went to the fruit bowl in the kitchen, and the weird stuff was pirated away for emergency candy raids, or offered to Dad who would eat anything.
Yesterday, I cooked an acorn squash in class for my students to taste, today I did a buttercup squash. Some loved it. Next week I'll do butternut and maybe a Hubbard. Squash-O-Rama. A few haven't a clue as to what I'm feeding them, but they need to know what produce is compared with the processed fast food some of them subsist on.
Plan your routes for the next week, imagine the loot you will find. Sleep and rest peacefully, New York City, your strange candies are bewitched and enchanting. Good night.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Friday Wanderer
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