TIP OF THE DAY: Low Calorie Halloween Food (Creepy Crudités!)
If you don’t want to make a shape, ForkAndBeans.com created a Creepy Crudités platter by Halloween-ing the vegetables themselves: carrot witch’s fingers, cauliflower brains, cucumber eyeballs, tortilla chip tombstones. These ideas and more come from a simple Pinterest search. This cheese dip mummy was created by Phyllis Hoffman at Celebrate magazine, as posted on Blog.HWTM.com. It’s not kid stuff: with goat cheese, capers and two different types of olives, it’s sophisticated fare. 1. BEAT 1 package cream cheese and the goat cheese in a medium bowl with an electric mixer. Beat at medium speed until smooth. 2. ADD the olives, capers, garlic and pepper, beating until combined. Refrigerate the mixture for a least 1 hour; then place the firmed dip on a serving plate and form it into a mummy shape. 3. BEAT the remaining cream cheese at medium speed until smooth. Place the cream cheese in a pastry bag fitted with a flat leaf tip. Pipe the mummy “bandages” onto the mummy figure. Refrigerate until ready to serve with the vegetables and the optional crackers. What to serve with the creepy crudités? Orange or red dip, of course! Carrot-ginger hummus and sundried tomato hummus also provide a harvest shade of orange; beet hummus makes “blood dip.” If you’re not a hummus fan, there are options like this carrot and white bean dip. Alternatively, you can add the pureed beets to hummus. With either technique, if it isn’t “bloody” enough for you, add a drop of red food color. Because Halloween is a busy time, we used canned beets. We’ll roast our own for Thanksgiving. |
![]()
|
|
Preparation 1. DRAIN the beets. You can reserve the beet juice for beverages, red mashed potatoes, and other uses. 2. BLEND all ingredients in a food processor until smooth (or chunky, as you prefer). If the dip isn’t thin enough, you can add some water, one tablespoon at a time as needed (we’ve also used orange juice). 3. TASTE and adjust seasonings. The canned beets juice is typically salted, so you may not need more salt. |