Trunk-or-treating and changing Halloween traditions.

We are coming up on that time of year when people have differing views and advocate for their ideas. So I'm going to publicly announce my opinion:

I'm opposed to trunk-or-treating.

Trunk-or-treating is very popular here in Mormondom. I don't know whether it's popular in other places, since I don't live there. However, I do remember on my mission in Washington and Idaho that the branches and wards held trunk-or-treats. Frankly, I think they're a dumb idea. But they seem to be popular, and my mom disappointed a lot of people last year when, as primary president, she elected not to hold one.

Now I understand if you live in a rural area where it's impractical to go from house to house. Then it's a great idea. Or if you have disabled children or other unusual circumstances. But in general, I don't like them.

They promote greediness. With regular trick-or-treating, you have to work to get your candy, and you get exercise going around the neighborhood. With trunk-or-treat, it's just, "Give me candy!" every few feet. And my mom tells me that many unsupervised children will go in loops around the parking lot, getting more and more candy just by walking from car to car.

Some people say they're safer, because kids aren't wandering the streets where cars are driving. Well, that may be true, but they are still assembling in parking lots where people are coming and going. And if you follow the sage advice to only go to houses you know, there shouldn't be a problem with creepy people (and creepy people are rare anyway).

When trunk-or-treats are Mormon-sponsored events, they can unintentionally promote cliquishness. Now, I know some wards do use it as an opportunity to bring other members of the community together, and it works to a point, but I still think it can be a little cliquish.

But what bothers me most is that it destroys a Halloween tradition! Whatever happened to the good old days of ordinary trick-or-treating?

Now, I suppose that this isn't the strongest argument, because traditions change, and trick-or-treating as we know it is a twentieth-century innovation. I was startled to find that "trick or treat" doesn't show up in the Oxford English Dictionary until 1947! I know they had other names for it (such as "Halloween visits"), but I didn't know it was so new. At the Church History Library, I've been looking at the old editions of the Children's Friend (the predecessor of the Friend) from the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, and indeed some of the issues from the 40s and 50s downplay trick-or-treating in Halloween celebrations. (The Children's Friend was much more secular than the Friend, and the October issues feature lots of nonreligious Halloween stories and poems about witches, skeletons, and ghosts. And I found not one but two stories about black kittens aspiring to be scary Halloween cats and ride witches' brooms, and they would practice arching their back!)

I think trick-or-treating was a good innovation because it replaced pranking. I don't know of much pranking today, but maybe that's because I live in a good neighborhood. But I think in the first half of the twentieth century, it was a major problem--and not just relatively innocuous things like soaping windows, but serious things like setting up cables at gates so that people would trip and land on their face. The Children's Friend seems to think doing good deeds is the best thing on Halloween, but trick-or-treating is better than pranks. (They're right of course.)

My annual Halloween viewing includes episodes of silly 1960s sitcoms (The Beverly Hillbillies, The Addams Family, Bewitched), and by that time trick-or-treating was a well-established tradition, even though the term had only been in the lexicon for twenty years! Trick-or-treating in the 60s was pretty close to the way it is today, except that there were more home-made goodies and apples, and there were some phraseology differences (like "playing trick-or-treat" and "tricks and treats").

My experiences with the Children's Friend and 1960s shows has given me insights into the ways Halloween traditions and perceptions have changed over the years.

• Vampires, werewolves, and zombies are a major part of Halloween today, but they weren't much fifty and sixty years ago, even though monster movies (and songs!) were huge. They were much bigger on ghosts, witches, and skeletons. The one exception I can think of is a Halloween Bewitched episode where Endora turned Darrin into a werewolf. 
• Instead, they used to be much bigger on goblins and brownies (the elfish kind, not the dessert kind). I was surprised how often brownies showed up in the Children's Friend, since we almost never hear about them today. And the only goblins I can really visualize are the Gringotts goblins.
• Recently there have been Pinterest-type suggestions that instead of cutting a lid for your jack-o-lantern, you carve out the bottom. I was wondering why, if this was the superior way, we hadn't already been doing that. Well, apparently jack-o-lanterns really used to be lanterns, meaning that people would carry them with them. That sounds really dangerous to me.
• We tend to think of ghosts and jack-o-lanterns as separate things, but they used to combine them sometimes: there were spooks that consisted of a pumpkin head with a ghost body. I've heard them referred to as both ghosts and jack-o-lanterns.
• You've probably played the game where you eat a donut off a string, but they used to do that with apples. They would bob for apples from tubs of water and from strings.
• I've sometimes wondered if pumpkin pie and spices were really a Thanksgiving thing that spilled over to Halloween, but no, they've long been part of Halloween. 

What was I talking about? Oh yes. Trunk-or-treats. Don't do them.

On a Halloween-related note, I won a race yesterday! It was North Salt Lake's Halloween 3k, and I won. Never mind that it was mostly children and parents with strollers. But it was free. All I won was a flashing ghost necklace and a pumpkin, because I didn't want any of the candy they were giving out. Also, my Vector costume ("not pajamas!") was more conducive to running than other costumes would have been.

***

Time for Pumpkinundation Roundup! This week I kind of got overwhelmed and tried to tone it down a bit. I didn't tone it down as much as I probably should have, but I did a little bit.

 I got a Kneaders pumpkin spice steamer, which is basically warm milk with pumpkin spice flavoring. There are pumpkin spice marshmallows that taste strongly of ginger, and this is like the liquid version of those--meaning it tastes like marshmallow and ginger. I didn't taste the pumpkin.

 I got a cinnamon caramel apple. It was pretty good. I thought it was expensive at $4, but some grocery stores sell inferior caramel apples at higher prices, so it's not too bad.

 My mom brought these Lofthouse candy corn cookies from a school activity. I haven't had many candy corn-flavored things this season. They're like the regular sugar cookies, but with a bit of a buttery note--even though candy corn doesn't taste like butter. They weren't too different from the regular ones.

 I had some leftover cooked pumpkin from last week, so I threw the rest of it in a pumpkin pizza dough I found online. Since it wasn't pumpkin puree, it didn't mix too well.

 It was a little too doughy, and you couldn't really taste the pumpkin.

 This Caramel Apple Caramel Cob is an interesting item, since popcorn balls are a traditional Halloween thing, and then caramel apple is a Halloween flavor. It was weird, because there was a fake apple flavor mixed in with the caramel. You'd think all the popcorn would make it somewhat healthy, but it's not--it has more than 200 calories and about 37 grams of sugar.

 Then I got these Nestle Toll House Pumpkin Spice Chips, which are disappointing if you expect something good, but good if you expect something disappointing.

 I put them in Kodiak Cakes batter, along with the last of the cooked pumpkin. Since the chips are mostly palm oil, they got a little weird when cooked, but not necessarily in a bad way.

 My niece asked why it had yellow and orange stuff in it. The orange was the chips; the yellow was the pumpkin. You could actually taste the pumpkin, unlike the pizza crust.

A satisfying October week.

One of my callings right now is that I'm a stake family history director. (My other calling is assistant ward clerk. They released me from being a family history consultant, but that was my smallest calling and overlaps with my stake calling anyway.) This week we had our third, and final, FHE in the stake where we helped people find names. This third one was at our own ward building (with the other three YSA wards that meet there), and it was our most successful yet. I conducted the meeting and controlled the teacher's computer while he explained what to do. We had sheep to give to everyone representing the names they found. The original pasture "murals" we put up fell off the walls, but we put a much simpler one up and stuck all the sheep on. We were pleased with the success.

My dad had a heart ablation surgery this week. He had a pacemaker put in last year, and then this surgery was done to regulate his heart rhythm. I'm hoping my heart takes after my mom, rather than after my dad.

There have now been six times when I've been to North Canyon in Bountiful, and two of them were this week (and all of them were within the last six months). I suspected North Canyon would have the best fall colors, and I was not disappointed. To get to the North Canyon trailhead, you have to go up a steep, rough dirt road that my little car certainly could not handle. I was quite pleased this week, because I ran up the entire road, even the steep parts, which I haven't done before. As far as scenery goes, North Canyon is probably my favorite trail, but it's steep, muddy, and further away from my house, so I don't go there as often. I'll let you look at cellphone pictures taken at dusk (meaning they're not going to win any photo contests).

The aspens were apparently unhealthy this year, sadly...

...but other trees provided yellow leaves.

North Canyon has a few bridges to cross streams.

The place where they cleared the land for the gas pipeline is so weird, because you feel like you're in a forest, and then you're almost in a desert, and then you're in a forest again.

I only have a few weeks left of evening daylight, so I have to squeeze in weekday trail running while I still can.

***

A few people erroneously believe that I'm a healthy eater, but this week's Pumpkinundation Roundup will prove that wrong.

 These Fiber One Pumpkin Bars are fairly good.

 These Thomas Pumpkin Spice Bagels are pretty good. I'm not always the biggest store-bought bagel fan, but these are good. They have little bits of pumpkin and spices in them. (Sorry my knee's in the picture.)

 This Stephen's Caramel Apple Cider is something I would never buy. We just happened to have some in the house. I've never liked powdered apple cider, and I've hated it even more since I've had the real stuff. It's so fake tasting. Now, I think this apple flavor is even more fake than usual, and then add a fake caramel flavor, and it's entirely unappealing.

 I continue to go to Kneaders, this time for their pumpkin chocolate chip cake. You'll notice that it's in a to-go container. Two years ago I got this cake, and it was so fantastic I was determined to finish it. I got two-thirds of the way through, and I just couldn't do it. I had to save some of it for later, and even then I felt too sick. I've had similar experiences with their carrot cake at Easter. This time, I didn't eat it in one sitting, but I did finish it a few hours later, and I didn't feel sick. I don't know whether that's because I ate smaller breakfast and lunch, or because I'm getting more tolerant of sugar (which would be a bad thing). This cake has chocolate chips and cream cheese frosting. I highly recommend it, but I don't recommend eating it by yourself in one sitting.

 You know the slogan "Nobody Doesn't Like Sara Lee"? I thought these Sara Lee Iced Pumpkin Cakes were a good illustration of that: I didn't like them, but I didn't not like them. They're a little dry and could have benefited from some Hostess-style filling. They certainly aren't worth the 200 calories in each.

 These Little Bites Pumpkin Muffins, on the other hand, were quite  tasty, with an enjoyable texture. But the packaging seems a little wasteful; each big bag holds four small muffins.

 Who would have guessed that Taco Time had pumpkin pie smoothies? I'm glad they do, because it was very good, probably even better than the Jamba Juice version.

 Taco Time also has pumpkin empanadas. Honestly, whenever I have these, I feel like the inside is so hot you can't really taste it. I think most of the flavoring of these comes from the cinnamon coating. They seem like a random pumpkin item, but they've been around since at least 2009 (the first time I heard of them, and they've probably been around longer).

 My mom picked up this Great Harvest Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread, which was about average for pumpkin bread. Now, pumpkin bread is a very good thing, but I didn't think this was particularly noteworthy pumpkin bread.

 Lest you think I get all my pumpkin stuff from prepackaged "foods," Saturday I was quite ambitious and spent a long time in the kitchen cooking with pumpkin. And not the canned variety--no, I used fresh pie pumpkins. One of them I cut up and put in the oven to harvest its flesh.

 For the other pumpkin, I cut off its rind (a bit of a hassle) in order to make a recipe from my new vegetarian cookbook, panfried pumpkin with tomato sauce. First I fried the pumpkin.

 Then I combined it with other ingredients--tomatoes, garlic, onion, chili pepper--to make a sauce, then put it on rice and topped with parsley. My dad and I didn't really care for it, but my mom did, so at least my efforts weren't entirely futile. It was too garlicky and too canned-tomato-ey. Also, parsley is much more bitter than I expected. It was very time consuming.

 Using the cooked pumpkin flesh from the other pumpkin, I made pumpkin chocolate chip cookies using the first recipe I found on the internet. I was worried, because the cooked pumpkin's texture was nothing like canned pumpkin; it was grainier. Putting it in the blender sounded like too much of a hassle. However, the texture turned out all right; you couldn't tell there was fresh pumpkin in it.

Straight out of the oven, these cookies were very good. However, after they cooled, they weren't as flavorful. I made them for a ward activity, and someone else brought pumpkin cookies as well. Mine is the one on the left (or I should say on the top, since the picture is sideways). Mine were less pretty and less tasty.

Now I have to figure out what I'm going to make with all the leftover cooked pumpkin flesh.

And then we have Hostess Pumpkin Spice Cup Cakes. I was hoping for the little curly frosting design, but the leaf sprinkles are fun. These are very good, better than most Hostess products, in my opinion. They have a strong spice flavor--almost to the point of cinnamon bears, which isn't what you'd expect, but it's surprisingly good. They do use pumpkin, but probably not much of it. They have a disconcertingly long list of ingredients. Who would have guessed that cupcakes had beef tallow?

This probably won't be as popular as last week's.

Hmm...I don't really have a lot to say about this past week. It's been an enjoyable October so far, but I wish it felt a little more like fall.

In the last few weeks, there's been a strange thing when I go running, in that the sweat drips down from my forehead into my eyes, to the point that I have to take my glasses off and rub my forehead and eyes with my shirt, because I can't see with the sweat in my eyes. (I didn't realize how long that sentence was turning out.) I've frequently had that happen once I arrive home, but it's never been an issue when I've still been out, and it's happened several times recently. It's kind of annoying.

I was quite startled last week with all the "likes" I got on my blog on Facebook. I didn't think it was a great blog, and I've done blogs about my birthday before, so I don't know what changed that time. Maybe it was the thumbnail image of my teenage face.

I wonder if I would have gotten fewer likes last week if I had expressed an unpopular opinion. I find it troubling that when there's a national tragedy, people use it as an opportunity to say how much they like guns. That's all I'm going to say about that at this time.

I neglected to blog about another interesting occurrence from the day after my birthday. There are some situations that I don't like to encounter because I feel guilty no matter how I respond--if I find a spider in the house, I feel bad whether I kill it or let it go; at a yellow stoplight, I feel bad if I slam on the brakes or if I coast on through. It's the same with beggars on the street. If I give money to them, am I feeding an addiction or giving money to a fraud? But if I don't give to them, am I being uncompassionate or judgmental? But on the day after my birthday, as I was walking up to work, a guy told me that they (he and a wife or girlfriend or something) were looking to get some food. I whipped out my lunch and told him I couldn't give him money but he could have my lunch. He said, almost defensively, "Dude, I don't want your lunch! That's your lunch!" Oh, I thought, so you don't mind taking my money, but you won't take my lunch? I would have willingly given it to him, but I found it unlikely he would take it; in fact, moments before I had seen him decline a man's sandwich. I think I encountered this same guy before; on that occasion, I offered him an apple, and he said, "No, we want JB's all-you-can-eat breakfast," and as I walked off he said, "You're sure there's nothing you can spare?" even though I just told him I was willing to spare an apple. Offering him my lunch was an occasion where I didn't feel guilty.

I've had a long Sunday.

***

Time to move on to Pumpkinundation Roundup! This week has a bit more caramel apple in it. This week also features a lot of going out to eat. I'm much more likely to go out to eat (especially to fast-food places) when I know they have seasonal desserts. McDonald's is pretty much the worst restaurant there is, but I make sure to go there when they have Shamrock Shakes; Kneaders is overpriced, but they have the best dessert selections. I'm less inclined to go out during times of the year when I don't eat desserts.

 Arctic Circle pumpkin pie shakes have been around longer than it's been cool. In fact, besides pumpkin pie and pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, they're the earliest pumpkin thing I can remember eating. They're good, but sometimes a little too spicy, especially if they haven't been mixed well. This one was mixed well, though, but I forgot to take a picture of it until I'd already eaten it.

 When I got this Kneaders Oreo caramel apple, they asked if I wanted it cut. That takes the fun out of it, but I understand why they asked; it took me a couple of bites to penetrate the apple. It was pretty good. One of the good things about caramel apples is that they're sweet and satisfying, yet most of it is healthy. Kneaders apples, however, are less healthy than most, because they put a lot more than caramel on them.

 I went to Nielsen's Frozen Custard and got a pumpkin concrete. Despite having lived in North Salt Lake almost my whole life, this is only the second time I've had one of their concretes. It was good, but I didn't think it was better than ice cream. It tasted really pumpkiny at first, but then I kind of grew numb to the taste. Nielsen's was established in 1981, according to their marquee, but they're stuck in the 1960s, down to the fact that they don't accept credit and debit cards.

 These Dark Chocolate Pumpkin Seed barkThins don't really count, as they're made year round, but I only eat them this time of the year. I've often thought they should utilize pumpkin seeds more in candy. (In 2013 and 2014 they had pumpkin spice M&Ms, before switching to pumpkin spice latté this year, but I've thought it would have been more inventive if their autumn variety included an actual pumpkin seed in it instead of just flavoring.) These were very simple, just dark chocolate with pumpkin seeds. They were good, but nothing where you're like, "This is the greatest combination ever!" It was more chocolate than seed.

Pizza Pie Cafe is a restaurant that I've only paid attention to because they have seasonal desserts; I first went in July for their patriotic one. They do a different pizza of the month every month, and sometimes it's a dessert pizza. This month it's pumpkin dessert pizza. It was good, like cookie meets pumpkin pie.

These caramel apple salt water taffys have been around for years. They're pretty good, although you get tired of them pretty quickly if you eat too many. I don't know for sure, but I suspect they were made by Sweet's in Salt Lake City, then shipped to Oregon to be distributed by Western Family, only to be shipped back again to Utah to be sold. Maybe it doesn't work that way. The caramel apple ones are more flavorful than the candy corn ones (which I haven't had this year...yet). Sometimes I've seen Halloween taffy variety bags, where they have caramel apple, candy corn, licorice-flavored pumpkin faces, and vanilla-flavored ghost faces. The ghost ones are the only ones I've never seen for sale by themselves, even though I thought they were the best.

27

The end of September means the end of another year of my life. As of this past Tuesday, I'm no longer 26.

I've gotten to the point that birthdays aren't that meaningful. I feel like I already have too much stuff, so gifts aren't that exciting. I got a mushroom-shaped desktop vacuum and a vegetarian cookbook. I'm not a vegetarian, but I do think we (including me) eat too much meat. Fortunately, this cookbook is written by a non-vegetarian, so it doesn't have the holier-than-thou attitude of many vegetarians and especially vegans.

I've been getting ahead on my work for the Women's Discourses project, so my current boss gave me permission to keep working on things for my previous boss, Assistant Church Historian Reid Neilson. This week I was researching things to write an epilogue for an upcoming book. Having studied linguistics, editing, and geology, I never expected to become a historian (or "an historian"), but that's what I've become, at least somewhat.

Anyway, Reid Neilson was nice enough to put my birthday in his calendar, so he made cookies for me! I was quite flattered that the Assistant Church Historian was so thoughtful of me. I got in an elevator with him on my birthday, and he told another passenger that it was my birthday. He asked how old I was, and when I told him 27, the passenger said I looked 17. This is what I actually looked like at 17:

Last Wednesday I had to put up a "mural" in another building in my stake; we put it up the previous week but it disappeared. We were pleased with our work this time:

But the next day I went into my own church building and found that the one we had done in our building fell down.

I'm not sure what to do anymore, if these keep falling.

I enjoyed conference weekend, since I didn't have any responsibilities to do. I must say I was disappointed the speakers didn't speak in their native language this time. "Made clay with the spittle" sounded like "Made clay with the speedo." I'm excited to hear from new Apostles; Elder Rasband came to my mission with Elder Bednar.

***

Pumpkinundation roundup!

 Have you ever had the cereal Puffins? It's very much a hippie cereal, and it tastes like it. I think people only buy them because they are associated with the most awesome bird. (That's certainly the only reason I've ever paid attention to them. I have met one person who loved them, but only that one person.) As far as Puffins go, these Pumpkin Puffins Cereal might be better than most varieties. They do have real pumpkin and cinnamon. What I liked about these was the leftover milk--it tasted like pumpkin and cinnamon. The milk was better than the cereal (which is true about a lot of sugary chocolate cereals, too).

 Hershey's Pumpkin Spice Kisses have been around for a few years, but I don't quite understand why--years ago they made candy corn Kisses, and those were better than these. I don't hate them, but I know some people do. They're waxy and artificial. But I still eat them.

 This year, the Pumpkin Pie Blizzard is Dairy Queen's Blizzard of the Month for both September and October. It's fantastic, although it's hard to go wrong with pumpkin shakes. I think they're one of the things that popularized the pumpkin flavor.

 These belVita Pumpkin Spice Breakfast biscuits use pumpkin and spices. They're like graham crackers in that they're best with milk. They're pretty good. They're not as good as Nature Valley Breakfast Biscuits, but I don't know what belVita usually tastes like. I was struck by the packaging--a lot of pumpkin spice products have cinnamon sticks on the packaging, but this is the first one I've seen with ginger root (at least, that's what I think it is).

 These Archer Farms Pumpkin Corn Tortilla Chips have pumpkin powder--I don't know if that means it's in the chip's flour or if it's in the chip's seasoning. They taste pumpkiny, with enough sweetness that you can eat them plain, but they're still savory enough to use with salsa.

 

 This Kodiak Cakes Pumpkin Dark Chocolate Minute Muffin was pretty good for how convenient it was. Just put in some water and throw it in the microwave for a minute. But I didn't pay attention to how much it cost, because I randomly found it on a shelf at the grocery store.

 

 For the first time in my life, I bought a fresh pie pumpkin to cook with. I cut it up and put it in a recipe from my new cookbook, Argentinian pumpkin soup. It has pumpkin, vegetable stock, dried apricots, red peppers, potatoes, onions, cream, and corn. It was pretty good considering it was mostly vegetables.

I made seeds from the pumpkin, using various spices. I know that jack-o-lantern seeds aren't meant to be used for eating, but I think jack-o-lantern seeds are better than pie seeds. None of them were in one piece once you took the shell off.

 I also made pumpkin waffles, but I just used canned pumpkin. These didn't call for any spices, but I later added some, although I couldn't taste it. This was the first time I've ever made waffles from scratch, and I was quite pleased with how they turned out--although it's certainly more work than using waffle mix. The recipe called for a maple cream cheese syrup.

 Put a little Easter in Halloween, and you end up with Caramel Apple, Candy Corn, and Pumpkin Spice Peeps. Now, first off, I really dislike the idea of the Peeps shape for holidays other than Easter. No matter what color or flavor they are, chicks are still an Easter thing. Why not use one of their existing Halloween shapes? Furthermore, these aren't even regular Peeps shapes, because they're not stuck together. They're also really wrinkly and look shriveled. And when you use the chick shape, you diminish the Halloween (or other holiday) feel, but you also diminish the Easter feel at Easter, because they're no longer unique to Easter. Shapes aside, they're decent but a little weird. The caramel apple ones have a caramel-flavored fudge on the bottom, and it's kind of salty. The others have a white fudge which is kind of buttery. The candy corn ones are a little ironic--both candy corn and Peeps are basically pure sugar, and people love them or hate them, so it's weird to have them flavored after each other. (What if they make Peeps-flavored candy corn? I don't hate Peeps or candy corn, but I mostly like them because of their seasonal status.) The pumpkin spice ones were the best of them. If these were different shapes (and sold in bigger packages than three), I would be much more likely to get them again. This shows me that the flavors are fine, but the shapes are the biggest drawback for me. Weird, I know.