by Anna Nelson – It’s almost Halloween! And while we don’t have carving pumpkins at OtterBee’s, I did briefly float the idea of squash carving as a substitute. Jury’s still out on whether that’s genius or a terrible way to ruin a good squash.
So instead of dwelling on what we don’t have, let’s get into what we do for this spooky season. This time of year our shelves are full of apples, pears, potatoes in colors that look like they were dyed for the occasion, beets, carrots, and the start of our winter squash. None of it says pumpkin. All of it says fall. Here’s what I’m planning for my own Halloween table this year, built entirely out of what’s already in the OtterBee’s shop.
Caramel apples, the easy way
Valley Flora Farms and Smith River Organic Farm have been sending us apples that are crisp enough to survive a melted coating without turning to mush, which matters more than people realize. Picking the wrong apple under caramel and it just gets sadder with every bite. You want firmness over sweetness. A soft, mealy apple turns to mush the second hot caramel hits it, and you lose that satisfying crack when you bite in. I press a thumb into the skin before I commit them to caramel. If it gives easily, that one’s going in a pie instead. If it pushes back, it’s going on a stick. Most of the ones we have in stock will hold their snap.
For the caramel itself, I don’t make it from scratch anymore. OtterBee’s carries a box of salty caramels from Jacobsen Salt Co up in Tillamook, and they melt down beautifully with a splash of cream in a saucepan over low heat. Stir until smooth, dunk your apple on a stick, let the extra drip off, and set it on parchment to set up. The sea salt in them does something nice against the sweetness, so you don’t end up with that flat, cloying taste you sometimes get from the grocery store kind.
If you want to dress them up a little, a bowl of chopped Oregon hazelnuts pressed into the caramel while it’s still tacky gives you crunch and a toasty flavor that plays well with apple. It’s not a complicated project. It’s the kind of thing you can do on a Thursday afternoon with the radio on, and the smell alone is worth it.
A vegetable platter in costume
Here’s a small thing that’s made me laugh every year since I noticed it. Valley Flora Farm up in Langlois grows a potato they call Masquerade, purple skinned with a pale inside that turns almost lavender when it’s roasted, and a purple fingerling called Fiesta that’s purple clean through. They weren’t bred for Halloween. They’re just potatoes that happen to look like they dressed up. But toss a few pounds of them in olive oil with some orange Nantes carrots and a bunch of Valley Flora’s red and gold beets, roast the whole tray at 400 degrees until everything’s caramelized at the edges, and you end up with a dish that looks genuinely festive without a single plastic decoration involved.
I usually cut everything into roughly the same size so it cooks evenly, give it forty minutes or so, and flip it once halfway through. A little rosemary and flaky salt at the end is all it needs. Kids who won’t touch a vegetable on a normal Tuesday will sometimes eat the purple ones just because they’re purple. I’m not above using that.
It’s also a good reminder that fall produce already comes in a Halloween palette. Orange, deep red, almost black purple. You don’t need a single pumpkin to set a table that looks like the season.
Something to hand out besides candy
I’ll always buy candy for the trick-or-treaters, let’s be honest, kids want candy and that’s fine. But I like having something else on the counter for the adults who come to the door too, or for the hours before twilight when we are just milling around the kitchen waiting for it to get dark enough for the kids to come by. We carry raw pumpkin seeds from Wilderness Poets, and roasting a batch with a little oil and salt takes about ten minutes in a 350 degree oven. Mix those with a bag of their dried cranberries and some of the roasted hazelnuts from Laurel Foods, maybe break up a square of Dick Taylor dark chocolate into the bowl, and you’ve got a trail mix that tastes like fall without costing you a trip to three different stores.
While you’re in the shop, it’s worth poking around for the trick side of trick or treat too. Laurel Foods makes a roasted hazelnut with cayenne pepper that looks completely innocent in the bag and then absolutely is not. I’ve handed those to my husband more than once expecting a reaction, and it never gets old. A little heat mixed into an otherwise sweet spread is its own kind of Halloween fun.
That’s really the thing I keep coming back to with this holiday. None of what I’ve described here is complicated or expensive. It’s apples and potatoes and seeds, things that were already sitting in our shop because they’re what’s actually in season right now. The pumpkin patch photo op is fun if that’s your thing, but the kitchen part of Halloween, the smell of caramel and the roasted nuts cooling on a sheet pan, doesn’t need a jack o’lantern to work.
If you want to put any of this together, remember our schedule runs on a Tuesday or Wednesday order for Saturday delivery, so this is the week to get your cart going if you want apples and caramels in hand before the end of the month. It’s one more small way of stocking a kitchen a little at a time instead of all at once, which is honestly how most good kitchens get built anyway.
