Top 7 Best Bets At The Halloween Buffet

Let’s take a look at the role food plays in Halloween and which of the many foodstuffs associated with this holiday that we recommend.

Halloween, based as it is on a feast at the end of trade and warfare season in the land of the Celts, has much in its rich tapestry that stems from eating and drinking to excess. It might seem like a conspiracy twixt confectioners and dentists that one’s children need to eat their own body weight in candy to celebrate this ritual holiday, but given the origins lie in drinking till one will believe your dead relatives are about to visit for the evening, the candy seems almost benign.

The Food Of The Dead

• Is candy corn a work of Satan?
• Pumpkin seeds roasted and eaten
• Christian vegetarianism popular theme at Halloween

The celebration of the completion of a harvest, or perhaps more likely in the case of Halloween, the end of the summer herding season, has always revolved around a large meal be it for the superstitious reasons of the re-visiting dead, or the far more likely reason of everyone enjoying a good party once the main work of the year is done and dusted. The traditions that have sprung up around both the meal and the foods served have woven themselves into the Halloween we know.

The bonfires lit to emulate the sun, perhaps gambling news of this fiery return will evoke spirits of good fortune, or lit to scare away the prowling witches of the season by giving them a vision of the burning hell that awaits them or, just perhaps, lit because it’s a tad cold in Ireland in late October and no one wants to freeze their shamrocks off in the process of being respectful of Uncle Shamus’ memory, and it’s awfully handing for cooking.

Thus it is that many of the traditional foods we find associated with this holiday have a distinctly festival feel to them in that they seem primarily designed to be eaten mobile betting, perhaps, that most of them will be eaten on the move, or at the very least by someone stood up, outside in October desperately shuffling to keep their extremities from going numb in the breeze everyone else assures them is refreshing but just feels bloody cold. Lets take a look at some of them.

Top Seven Halloween Foods

1. Roasted Pumpkin Seeds – A handy by-product of the Jack-‘o-Lantern you carved earlier in the day these can easily be put on the fire to cook quickly and be a warm nourishing snack that makes a rather delightful alternative to the candy and potato chips that seem so prevailant today. Often seen as part of the vegetarian emphasis laid upon the holiday by the Christian influence of western religion, pumpkin and pumpkin seeds are Halloween’s most iconic flavor.

2. Soul Cakes, or in some places Harcakes – These small cakes were given out to “Soulers” who some say are the fore-runners of the trick-or-treaters we have assail our doors today. At that time most often the poor children would be given a soulcake in return for verse or song on the doorstep as they went door to door on Halloween, with each cake eaten said to represent a soul being freed from purgatory. They’re simple to prepare and awfully tasty.

3. Bonfire Toffee – This dark brittle slab-like confection tastes a little like butterscotch but there the comparison ends with the sometimes bitter molasses edge that bonfire toffee carries with it being described as a “unique taste”. The veracity of this is not to be questioned. Very popular in the Northern parts of the UK this traditionally homemade confectionery is definitely worth a try if you fancy a different sort of sweet this Halloween’s.

4. Candy Apples/Toffee Apples – Whichever you were raised with, and that does rather depend upon where one spent one’s childhood, these fabulous treats are precisely the sort of mixed message that Halloween is all about. Celebrating the dead coming back might confuse children a little, but not nearly as much as a healthy apple covered with a layer of distinctly unhealthy candy or toffee does. This self-defeating snack remains a firm favorite, and so it should.

5. Colcannon – One from the Irish this and guaranteed to fill your stomach solidly enough to handle any amount of dead-relative-greeting drink that may need to be consumed later. A dish of mash potato and kale, or sometimes cabbage, this hearty food is entirely in keeping with the vegetarian nature of the post-Christian influenced era, although it is traditionally served with small prizes or tokens of the coin/thimble/ring variety hidden within.

6. Barmbrack – Another of the old staples this one, a fruit bread that like Colcannon in some ways, was often served with various tokens within. A pea, a stick, a piece of cloth, a small coin and a ring would be placed inside, and those finding each could expect varying fortunes ahead. Rag and coin represented poverty and riches, the pea for no wedding this year, the stick for a bad marriage and the ring for a happy ever after sort of ending. The bread itself is wonderfully textured and tastes great.

7. Candy Corn – Not myself being American I’ve not had the misfortune to actually taste this well known abomination. From what I’ve gleaned via popular culture it is a cunning ruse whereby corn is made to seem as candy or, perhaps, vice versa, but in whichever case the result is a bowl of something everyone instinctively tries only to discover it tastes like the waste product of the petro-chemical industry, just as it did the year before. Candy Corn is the Halloween prank you play on yourself apparently.

So there we have it our top seven foods to feast upon this Halloween, and whether you’ll be roasting pumpkin over an open fire or just sitting at home gorging on candy out of the selfless desire to save your children’s dental health and enjoying some internet betting in the UK as you try out the Halloweenies on All Jackpots Casino, we wish you bon-appetite and a safe night from the spooks and ghouls abroad.

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