This was Halloween.

Ah, the last week of October.

I was able to get in what will likely be the last evening trail runs of the year, but not as much as I would have liked. Wednesday was particularly satisfying. I ran continuously up steep hills (knowing that it was getting dark and I had to turn around soon) among the colorful leaves. It was twilight, and I kept hearing an owl hoot. It was a little gloriously spooky. But a little dangerous, because it was cloudy and dark so I couldn't really see all the hazards of the trail.

There were a few frustrating things. I got a new laptop back in April, and after only a month or two it quit closing properly. If I simply closed it, it would remain open between a centimeter and an inch. Only by pressing down on the hinges would it close properly. Just recently I decided I'd had enough of that and contacted Toshiba to get it fixed. So they sent me a box in which to ship it to them.

They decided to send it FedEx. And they required a signature. Unfortunately, FedEx working hours are my working hours, so I wasn't home to get it. And they wouldn't leave it without a signature, and they wouldn't let me leave a signature on the door.

The little slip they provided said, "Guess what! You can go online and schedule a pickup!" (Well, it didn't literally say that.) I thought this was the best option. So I go online to try to do that. Turns out I have to make an account, which is annoying. So I make the account. And then I have to provide a credit card number, even though I'm not buying anything. And once the account is created, I still have to do more steps to schedule a pickup, including verifying information they creepily found about me (which I did not provide and which included erroneous information about my dad's address). And once I got through all that, it said, "Well, your package isn't eligible to schedule a pickup." (Well, it didn't literally say that. The options were just grayed out.) I was very annoyed. So I had to spend my Friday night driving out to West Valley to pick up an empty box, because that was the only way I could get it at that point.

Halloween was satisfying. My parents went to Hawaii with my grandparents and didn't take me, so my niece had to spend Halloween with me, since her mom worked. We carved pumpkins.

I did the ugly one on the left; that's the pumpkin I won at a race. Allie designed the one on the right but I carved it because she was trick-or-treating. I did the little one, put I didn't put a candle in it because I later roasted it to use the flesh.

I was really startled with the amount of trick-or-treaters. We usually get around ten. This year we had 32, 33 counting my niece. I wasn't prepared for so many, and I gave out way more than I expected. In addition to candy, my mom had bought some tiny Play-Doh cans. The kids loved those! Then they were all gone, so I tried to figure out what else I could give out in case I ran out of candy. I went to my Halloween box and found some spider rings and a glow-in-the-dark bat that I don't use, so I gave those out. I had to put something in the freezer and saw Otter Pops--and I thought that was a good thing to give out, especially since it was a warm Halloween.

Right before I went to bed, I looked outside and found a rat on the ground. Our cat, Jenny, likes to bring us dead rodents, but this was the biggest one I've ever seen (the rest have been probably large mice, maybe small rats). We had been out there not long before, so it was a fresh kill. When Jenny came in, it looked like she was limping slightly, so I hope she's OK. I've been trying to keep my eye on her.

 Today I took a shovel and took it to the garbage. There were flies on it, but it still looked quite fresh--its eyes glaring at me, its teeth poking out of its gaping mouth, its whiskers reflecting the light, its six-inch tail stuck in a permanent curve.

The other black thing on the brown bag is an older dead mouse.

Last week I found three in a row.

Halloween is over for another year, but now it's my favorite month.

***

My Pumpkinundation Roundup has included flavors of caramel apple, pumpkin, and candy corn. I consider pumpkin spice to be suitable for both Halloween and Thanksgiving but more appropriate for Thanksgiving. I consider candy corn to be appropriate for both holidays but more appropriate for Halloween. And I consider caramel apple to be suitable only for Halloween. So this is the last time you'll see caramel apple on this.

 I went to a Harry Potter-themed Halloween party, and they had this thing which looked like pumpkin bread, but I'm not sure if it was, because all I could taste was cinnamon.

 I bought these Entenmann's Pumpkin Donuts. They were pretty good, and they used real pumpkin (but caramel coloring). I used them for the classic Halloween game with my niece.

 Hershey's Candy Corn bars come in both small and large sizes. They're basically white chocolate with little yellow and orange sprinkles. I'm actually surprised they exist. They're good but not great. I gave out an entire bag to trick-or-treaters, but I had another bag, so there are still leftovers.

 At work they had a pie-eating social, so I snagged a piece of pumpkin pie before heading back to work.

 I went to Kneaders and had pumpkin cheesecake. It tastes just like what it is, pumpkin (and spices) and cheesecake. I'm not a huge cheesecake fan, so it was just OK. I think cheesecake is better in small doses.

 I bought one of these cheap Happy Apples caramel apples. The caramel and nuts were fine, but there was something off about the apple. I didn't want to get listeria, so I ate the caramel and threw the apple away.

 I had to get these Caramel Apple Sugar Babies to give to trick-or-treaters because I couldn't bear the thought of going another year without them. (I did successfully give the rest to the trick-or-treaters.) I'm not a big fan of Sugar Babies, but the caramel apple variety are one of the best Halloween candies ever invented. I know in the past they've also sold them in theater boxes, but I didn't see those this year. They are extremely satisfying; you can feel satisfied after only a few, but you can also keep eating them because they're so good.

 I think these Jet-Puffed Candy Corn Marshmallows are new this year. They make lots of holiday marshmallows, but a lot of them (ghosts, stars, bunnies) are just vanilla flavored. These didn't say vanilla, so I assumed they'd be candy corn-flavored. If they are, you can't taste it. They just taste like regular marshmallows. And they only have two colors (yellow and orange, no white)--so they don't taste like candy corn and don't entirely look like it either.

I roasted some of them on a little firepit we have and put them on a s'more with some candy corn Hershey's. But they're too small to trap much heat or provide a good ratio in a s'more. I also don't think s'mores were meant to have white chocolate.

 The Jet-Puffed Pumpkin Spice Mallows actually taste like something. Too bad it's not pumpkin. All I can taste is ginger, whereas usually you taste cinnamon or nutmeg. They're OK. I often use them in hot chocolate this time of year, but it hasn't been cold enough for that yet.

These Pecan Pie M&Ms don't technically belong here, but they're interesting enough for me to include. They were a Walmart exclusive this year (but I think the Candy Corn M&Ms started out as a Walmart exclusive and now they're everywhere). I consider pecan pie to be only for Thanksgiving, not Halloween, yet I suspect they'll end up in the clearance bins along with the Halloween candy this week. Pecan pie is one of my favorite Thanksgiving things--I like it better than pumpkin and apple--so I had to try these. They definitely have a unique flavor, but I'm not sure it's pecan pie, since half of the thrill of pecan pie is the texture--the chewy pecans in the sticky goodness over the crust. Whether these taste like pecan pie or not, they're still quite good--probably better than plain M&Ms.

And since caramel apple season is over, I'm going to list all the caramel apple things I had and give them a rating on a five-star scale.
Caramel Apple Jolly Rancher Lollipops***
Caramel Apple Peeps***
caramel apple salt water taffys***
Kneaders Oreo caramel apple*****
Stephen's Caramel Apple Cider*
Caramel Apple Caramel Cob***
Kneaders cinnamon caramel apple*****
Happy Apples caramel apple: disqualified
Caramel Apple Sugar Babies*****      

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?