Lucinda Frye
Diverse and indigenous cuisine brought by the many ethnic people to St. Maarten from all over the world piques our interest. To this end, we are on a quest to find where it comes from, if it is used for celebrations, if it is exotic to some but everyday food to others. Anything to do with keeping the body and soul nourished with that which is produced from good old terra firma, is what makes the world go around.
October 31 actually begins a three-day observance and celebration of Allhallowtide, a combination of Halloween, All Saints Day and All Souls Day.
Dictionary.com tells us that the word “Halloween” is a “direct derivation of All Saints Day” with “All Hallows” in Old English meaning “the feast of the saints”. To hallow is “to make holy or sacred, to sanctify or consecrate, to venerate”. The adjective hallowed, as used in The Lord’s Prayer (Hallowed be thy name…) means holy, consecrated, sacred, or revered.
The noun hallow, as used in Hallowtide, is a synonym of the word saint. So, there are some differences between Halloween, All Saints Day and All Souls Day!
Following the Roman conquest of Britain, British Celts adopted the Julian calendar and fixed the date of Samhain’s observance to November 1. All Saints Day is also known as All Hallows Day, Hallowmas or Feast of All Saints in the Christian Church. November 1 is the day to commemorate all the saints in the church – both known and unknown – who have attained heaven.
The original roots of All Hallows Eve have been traced back to the countries of Ireland, Britain, and France. The Celts of Ireland, Britain and France divided their year in halves: the light half and the dark half – the light half (spring and summer months) and the dark half (autumn and winter months). To mark the end of summer, the Celts held a harvest festival known as Samhain steeped in superstition and fear of evil. It is celebrated on October 31, beginning at sunset and ending at sunset on November 1.
This ancient Celtic pagan harvest festival was also associated with human death. The Druids built bonfires in order for the people to make sacrifices of crops and animals. The Celts also believed that on the night before the New Year, the boundary between the worlds of the dead and living become blurred and fairies and ghosts of the dead freely return to earth. “It was believed these spirits could hide livestock, haunt the living and destroy the crops.” This is where the costumes came from – they concealed their real identities from the spirits by wearing animal skins and heads!
The holiday was Christianized as Halloween by the early church. Over time, it has evolved into a day of activities like making jack-o-lanterns from pumpkins, bobbing for apples, trick-or-treating and other festivities. In other countries as well as in Catholicism, one attends church services. Some Christians also abstain from eating meat – they eat vegetarian foods.
All Souls Day commemorates the faithful departed. This day is observed in the Catholic Church as well as the Eastern Orthodox churches. All Saints Day/All Hallows Day is when Christians came together to ask for God’s blessings as well as protection from evil in the world. Patrons would dress up in costumes of evil spirits or saints in order to depict the battle between good and evil.
Most of us know that October 31 and the days leading up to it mean party time, dress-up time and fun in a spooky way. For us, Halloween gives us an amazing opportunity to throw the coolest themed parties.
RECIPES
Meatloaf Baby – this is possibly the worst looking edible meatloaf ever, but it appears to be a popular centrepiece on Halloween tables these days.
Ingredients
Use your most favourite recipe to make meatloaf and double up the ingredients
Two black olives, seedless
Hardboiled egg white
Tomato ketchup
A pack of bacon
Method
Preheat oven 350° F.
Mix the meatloaf ingredients well then shape into a body with a head, arms and legs on a baking sheet (you can shape the feet if you like).
Wrap the bacon in the form of a diaper in the appropriate place.
Bake this at 350° F until it is cooked to your liking.
Squidge tomato ketchup over it in appropriate places.
Use the end of a boiled egg as eye sockets and place olives for eyes.
Add parsley leaves around your shrivelled up meatloaf baby.
Edible Fake Blood Recipe
Use chocolate syrup, coco powder or hot chocolate powder.
Cheap liquid food-colouring is easy to find. The gel colour stains very easily, while the regular red liquid food colouring washes off more easily.
Pour about a cup of corn syrup into a jar.
Squeeze in some chocolate syrup or add a teaspoon or two of coco powder and then stir in red food colouring until the mixture is a deep red that is still a bit transparent like blood.
Carry it around in a squeeze bottle so you can “bleed” from your mouth when needed.
Drizzle it over cakes, cookies or the body parts (neck, face, hands) you want to make look mash-up! This is quite sweet so use just a little.
Skeleton Cupcakes
Ingredients
18 cupcakes (use box mix or make your own)
Decorations
18 marshmallows
4-inch lollipop sticks
Black food colour
Decorating pen
Black writing gel
72 yogurt-covered mini-pretzels
2 cans vanilla frosting (icing) or homemade buttercream
Halloween sprinkles
Method
Ice cupcakes with icing.
Sprinkle Halloween sprinkles over the frosting.
Slightly flatten marshmallows with palm of your hand.
Insert a lollipop stick into each marshmallow.
With black decorating pen, draw skeleton mouth along bottom of each marshmallow.
Draw two nostrils above the middle of the mouth.
Make eyes with dabs of black writing gel.
For each skeleton, carefully thread the stick end of the marshmallow head through the small hole of a pretzel.
Secure the pretzel in position with a dab of frosting.
Add two more pretzels, lining them up – these will be the rib cage.
Stick the skeleton into the top of a cupcake.
To make the arms, carefully cut a pretzel in half with a serrated knife and attach to the top rib with frosting.
Ghost Cupcakes and Ghost Marie Biscuits
Ingredients
Pre-made cupcakes (use a box mix or homemade)
Packet Marie Biscuits
White fondant
Black marker pen
Black icing gel
Method
Cut circles of fondant out the same size as the biscuit or the cupcake top.
Draw the ghost face using the black pen and gel.
Fix the ghost face to the biscuit or the cupcake with buttercream icing.
Eyeball Soup with Bugs
Ingredients – For Soup
2TBL butter
1 medium onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
½ cup dry white wine
Two 28-ounce cans crushed tomatoes
1 quart chicken broth
3 sprigs oregano
½ cup cream
Coarse salt, freshly ground black pepper
Ingredients – For Bugs
6 pitted black Kalamata olives
2 sprigs fresh rosemary
4 fresh chives, cut into 1-inch pieces
30 bocconcini (bite-sized fresh mozzarella balls)
1 jar small pimiento-stuffed olives
Method
Melt butter.
Add onion and garlic; cook until onion is translucent.
Add wine; cook until most liquid has evaporated.
Add tomatoes, stock oregano, bring to boil.
Reduce heat, simmer 45 minutes.
Using slotted spoon, remove herbs.
Purée soup until smooth.
Return to pan, slowly pour in cream, stirring constantly.
Season with salt and pepper.
To make the bugs:
Use a toothpick to pierce each Kalamata olive 3 times (all the way through to the other side).
Insert a rosemary leaf into each hole to make six legs.
Insert two pieces of chive into the small hole at the end of the olive to make antennae.
To make the eyeballs:
Using a small melon-baller, scoop out a hole from each mozzarella ball.
Halve each pimiento-stuffed olive crosswise.
Place a half, cut-side-out, in the hole in each mozzarella ball to make eyeballs.
Ladle hot soup into shallow bowls.
Float 4 or 5 eyeballs in soup; place a bug on the rim of each bowl.
Candy corn infused vodka – an adult Halloween beverage!
Candy corn is available all year long, 35 million pounds of it is produced in a year!
Once the infusion process is done, pour the vodka through a fine mesh or cheese-cloth strainer twice to get rid of the residual wax.
Ingredients
½ cup candy corn
Vodka
Pint Mason jar
Method
Pop candy corn into the Mason jar.
Fill with vodka and put the lid on the jar.
Give the jar a shake every 30 minutes and watch the candy dissolve (this will take 3 to 4 hours).
Strain.
Store vodka in a glass jar.
