Blog Posts by Epicurious.com

Pumpkins, scary suppers, and sugary treats are de rigueur on October 31. Whether you're cooking for children or grown-ups, here are some frighteningly good cooking suggestions.

Halloween Tricks and Treats: have a scary-good holiday with our guide to the best candy, cocktails, and homemade sweets

Creepy Cool

Fill your ice bucket with creepy cubes: Freeze cubes with tiny plastic spiders inside. (Note: Not appropriate for small children.) If you're serving punch: Fill sterile plastic gloves with water, freeze, then peel off the gloves, and you have "ice hands" to add to your punch bowl.

Low Lighting

Use hollowed-out mini pumpkins as candle holders (small votive candles work best inside).

Suture the Stem

Don't pick up a pumpkin by its stem; it might break off. If it does, try reconnecting the stem to the pumpkin with toothpicks.

The Food of the Beast

Deviled Eggs

Louisiana Deviled Crab Cakes

Deviled Fried Chicken

Roasted Deviled Potatoes

Illustrations by Matthew Brennan, photo by CIA/Keith FerrisIn our ongoing video series Chef Thomas W. Griffiths, from The Culinary Institute of America, demonstrates how to make a classic Hungarian goulash.

In these videos, The Culinary Institute of America's Associate Dean for Curriculum and Instruction for Culinary Arts, Thomas W. Griffiths, shows how to make a quintessential dish from Hungary: Veal, Mushroom, and Red Pepper Goulash. One of the key ingredients in this goulash and many other Hungarian dishes is paprika. The spice is made from a dried ground mild pepper often called pimento. According to Alan Davidson's Oxford Companion to Food, the peppers used to make paprika originated in the New World and were introduced to Hungary via Turkey in the 1820s and became immediately popular -- in fact, the Hungarian name for goulash is derived from the spice. "What is known all over the world as 'Hungarian goulash' is called in Hungary pökölt or paprikás," Davidson writes (pökölt becomes paprikás with the addition of sour cream).

A few

Photos: Elissa WiehnHalloween is often dismissed as a children's holiday, but it gives adults a Vegas-like license to be someone -- or something -- else for one magical evening. "Halloween is my absolute favorite time to entertain. It really stirs the imagination," says Douglas Little, a self-described modern alchemist and purveyor of curious goods at D.L. & Co., a home furnishings line available at Barneys New York. "It is a delightful opportunity to live out fantasies and connect to your inner child." But, for Little, instant-messaging some friends to come over, throwing some plastic pumpkins about, and offering pizza and dime-store candy doesn't quite cut it.

Halloween Tricks and Treats: have a scary-good holiday with our guide to the best candy, cocktails, and homemade sweets

Because of its association with the magical and mysterious, Little believes that Halloween, above any other holiday, allows hosts to "take chances and entertain on a theatrical scale." Never fear, though, hosting a

Yesterday I went to a lunch to celebrate the launch of a new cookbook called Cooking with the Seasons at Rancho La Puerta: Recipes from the World-Famous Spa. While there, I asked the cookbook's author and spa founder, 87-year-old Deborah Szekely, how people can eat healthy on a budget.

Spa Menus: slideshows and recipes from some of the world's most exclusive spas.

"You can feed your family for a third of the price by going local, seasonal, and unprocessed," said Szekely, adding that each of those things has the added bonus of boosting the nutritional value of food, as well as lowering its environmental impact. Why local and seasonal? "Exotics out of season cost so much," she explained. Why unprocessed? "Every time somebody touches the food, it costs more," she said. Processing, packaging, transportation, and marketing all add to the cost, so Szekely suggests counting the number of steps food goes through to get to the table. Even sorting produce such as apples or tomatoes by

That's right, that Ivanka Trump, daughter of loud-mouthed real-estate mogul and obnoxious television personality Donald Trump, who has vowed to build a lavish, 1 billion-pound golf course on environmentally sensitive land near Aberdeen.

"With gas and food prices on the rise, more and more people are skipping the deli line and bringing lunch to work to save money," she writes on her new blog at ALunchTrade. "This is great, but all I hear is how boring a brown bag lunch can get and how people want something different, especially when they are stuck at their desks... something I completely relate to."

Budget Boosters: 35 Easy Ways to Stretch Your Food Dollars

Trump says she's got the solution. She doesn't quite make clear what it is, only that it's going to happen tomorrow.

"On October 21, I am going to start a national Lunch Trade that will leave you looking forward to savoring your mid-day meal and lunch time minutes (however few they may be)."

And the previous

Cachaca ("ka-sha-sa"), the national spirit of Brazil, resembles rum but is made from the first pressing of fresh sugarcane juice instead of molasses. As such, cachaca has a rustic earthiness that makes for a wonderful base in many modern cocktails, the most famous of which is the Caipirinha.

Caipirinha de Uva
The Caipirinha ("kye-pur-een-yah") is Brazil's legendary cocktail and it's enjoyed all over the country. Uva is Portuguese for grape. Making this variation on the classic drink is even easier than saying the name: It's a simple mix of crushed lime, sugar, cachaca, ice, and semisweet wine (I prefer Gewürztraminer or Riesling), which adds a lovely grapey-ness and should appeal to wine lovers.

Poultry Pairing:

Chicken with Fresh Herbs and Sherry Wine Vinegar
Cachaca is BFF with fresh herbs, and the citrus acids hold up against the sharp sherry wine vinegar.

Salad Pairing:

Chopped Veggie Salad with Watermelon and Feta
This was once a popular breakfast

Whole Foods is notoriously known as Whole Paycheck (I prefer Holy Foods because of its insistence on its organic/natural/sustainable superiority when the world has been evolving healthily, thank you very much). But when the going gets tough, the tough really want you to go shopping.

For all the skepticism of how widespread online couponing is, this is a pretty clear signal that the big pricey chains are nervous with the economy tanking. And 20 percent off on a purchase over $25 is a deal not to be discounted. No wonder the computers at the public library near me are constantly in use -- internet savings for free.

I'm a total cynic who can comparison-shop in the best food city in America, but my Bay Area-based brother just emailed to say how awed he was by the Whole Foods he wandered into while visiting relatives in Scottsdale, Ariz. And so I'm passing this along. It's good till October 22. Might even cover a bag of chips.

Not even apples make our mouths water for pie like this native North American nut. Yet the luscious pecan (pronounced pih-KAHN or PEE-kan, depending on where you're from) has many uses beyond this stickily sweet dessert.

Use our interactive ingredient map to see what's fresh in your area!

Tips:

Choose Wisely

Look for pecans with clean, unblemished, uncracked shells. Shake the pecan -- it shouldn't rattle.

Store Properly

Pecans have a higher fat content (mostly monounsaturated fats) than other nuts and are therefore more perishable. To keep them from spoiling, double-bag and store them in the refrigerator for up to three months or in the freezer up to six.

Toast Carefully

Toasting pecans brings out their flavor, plus it's easy to do: Bake nuts at 350°F for about ten minutes, stirring occasionally.

Recipes:

Salads

Celery-Root and Pecan Salad

Hearts Of Romaine with Roquefort and Toasted Pecans

Red and Napa Cabbage Salad with Braeburn