We adapted the concept as a chocolate-banana shake (peanut butter optional) with cow’s milk. You can:

Use a ripe, overripe or frozen banana. (With a frozen banana, omit the ice cubes. We stick overripe bananas in the freezer for baking or drinks.)
 
RECIPE: CHOCOLATE-BANANA MILKSHAKE

Ingredients Per Serving

 
Preparation

1. WRITE “R.I.P.” on the tombstone cookie with the marker or gel.

2. BLEND the frozen berries and water into a chunky purée. Set aside and rinse out the blender.

3. ADD the remaining ingredients to the blender and process to desired consistency. Pour the shake into a serving glass. Drip the “blood” berry purée on the surface, insert the tombstone and serve.

*We like Milano cookies because their surface is smooth, making them easy to write on. In the photo, the cookie was also brushed with diluted black food coloring to create a gray background color.
  

Chocolate Frosted Flakes joins the family, begun in 1953 with original Frosted Flakes. The line now inclues Kellogg’s Cinnamon Frosted Flakes, Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes Chocolate with Marshmallows, Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes Choco Zucaritas, and Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes with Marshmallows (all photos courtesy Kellogg’s).

“They’re grr-r-eat!” says Tony The Tiger, the cartoon character spokesman for Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes.

Now, there’s a new addition to the Frosted Flakes portfolio, one that some people may find even grr-r-eater: Kellogg’s Chocolate Frosted Flakes.

The product, which launches in November at participating retailers nationwide, coats the flakes with cocoa powder. The result: the same sweet, crunchy Frosted Flakes experience with chocolate.

Imagine what the cocoa does to the cereal milk!

Kellogg’s developed Chocolate Frosted Flakes by working with fans, testing how different types of cocoas interacted with both the cereal flakes and the milk left at the bottom of the bowl (“cereal milk”).

Keep your eye out for them; and pick up extra boxes for sharing.
 
 
THE HISTORY OF FROSTED FLAKES

Cereal flakes were invented by Dr. John Kellogg and his brother Will Kellogg in 1894, at their Battle Creek, Michigan, sanitarium. They sought to create new forms of foods that were more nutritious and more easily digestible.

They were experimenting with wheat, trying to make a more digestible substitute for bread, when they accidentally left a batch of cooked wheat in the kitchen as they attended to some pressing matters at the sanitarium.

When they returned the next day, they found that the wheat had gone become hard and solid.

Being on a strict budget, they decided to continue to process it by forcing it through rollers, hoping to obtain long sheets of the dough. To their surprise, what they found instead were flakes, which they toasted and served to their patients. A success!

After four more years of trial and effort, the Kelloggs successfully applied the process to corn.

However, they only sold their cornflakes by mail as a health food, to patients and former patients. Dr. Kellogg was a man of medicine, not interested in the greater commercial opportunities. general public.

However, one of his patients, C.W. Post, stole Kellogg’s recipes and turned them into consumer products.

 
Here’s more about the chicanery.

Will Kellogg, the business brother, finally expanded the cereal business in 1903. Kellogg’s Corn Flakes grabbed the majority share of the corn flakes market, and their product has remained the #1 corn flake ever since.

For 50 years, Kellogg’s Corn Flakes were the best-selling dry cereal in the U.S. Post Toasties, the Post version of corn flakes, were #2 (the Post product is now discontinued).

On To Frosted Flakes

In 1948, executives at Post Cereals (by then, part of General Foods, itself now part of Kraft Foods) noticed how well a sugar-coated cereal called Ranger Joe Popped Wheat Honnies was selling.

They began developing their own sugar-coated wheat puffs, but it raised a serious moral dilemma for Post.

At the time, all major cereal makers were focused on healthy food—the reason dry cereal was created in the first place. And even back then, it was known that sugar wasn’t great for children.

Proponents of pre-sweetened cereal maintained, among other arguments, that adding a controlled amount of sugar during manufacturing was preferable to kids spooning on too much sugar from the sugar bowl. That was the rationale of Popped Wheat Honnies, the first sugar-coated cereal.

In the end, they company was certain that that the sugar-coated cereal would be a big revenue generator; and the cereal was launched.

This time, Kellogg’s followed Post. Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes, sugar-coated corn flakes, was launched in 1952 as Sugar Frosted Flakes. The word “sugar” was dropped from the name in 1983, as Americans began to become more aware of the downside of all that added sugar.

Tony The Tiger was not a shoe-in.

The advertising team recommended four animals that could appeal to children: an elephant, a gnu, a kangaroo and a tiger. The tiger was included because it was a symbol of energy, according to an art director who worked on the project.

A TV commercial writer then named them all: Elmo the Elephant, Newt the Gnu, Katy the Kangaroo and Tony the Tiger. Jingle writers created a jingle for each animal. Tony’s four-line jingle ended with “They’re Grr-r-eat!”

Elmo and Newt were dropped from production, but Tony and Katy appeared on separate boxes on the store shelves. Tony’s packages flew off the shelves. Alas, Kay’s just sat there…and was quickly retired.

The company focused its energies exclusively on Tony, and the rest is history.

(Source)

You might not think of cranberries as a category for innovation. After all, it’s a superfruit that should be eaten often.

Decas Cranberry Products, a third-generation family business located in the heart of Massachusetts’ cranberry country, wants to help. Its products are available at retail under the Paradise Meadow brand: a line of all natural, non-GMO, sustainably-farmed cranberries.

The line includes:

 
In the latter category are the new Julienne Cranberry-Orange Cooking & Baking Cranberries (photo #1), available at grocers nationwide. They’re julienned—chopped—to better distribute the flavor when you cook or garnish with cranberries.

All Paradise Meadow products can be added to oatmeal and other breakfast cereal, green salads, protein salads (chicken, egg, etc.), trail mix, stuffing, and meat and poultry dishes.

They can be baked into breads, muffins, cookies, and pies like cranberry-raisin pie and pecan-cranberry pie. Just add them to your favorite recipe. Use them as garnishes on sweet and savory dishes.

Add them to rum raisin ice cream (recipe). Combine them with the raisins, or eliminate the raisins entirely.

Here’s the history of cranberries, which had been harvested wild for some 12,000 years by Native Americans, from the Wampanoag People of what is now Massachusetts, south to the Leni-Lenape of New Jersey and west to the Algonquins of Wisconsin.

The first cultivation of cranberries took place in Dennis, on Cape Cod, around 1816.
 
 
THE BEST COOKIES

One heavenly cookie, made with Paradise Meadow Julienne Cranberry-Orange Cooking & Baking Cranberries and white chocolate chips. Photos courtesy Paradise Meadow.

You will be a cookie hero, or the best guest, when you bring a batch to work or to a party or get-together. Many thanks to Paradise Meadow for the recipe.

RECIPE: CRANBERRY-ORANGE WHITE CHOCOLATE CHEWS

Ingredients For 2 Dozen Cookies

 
Preparation

1. PREHEAT the oven to 375°F. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper and set aside.

2. BLEND the flour, salt and baking soda together and set aside.

3. CREAM the butter with an electric mixer. Add the sugars and beat until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla and egg and beat well.

4. SLOWLY ADD the flour to the sugar mixture and blend. Stir in the cranberries and white chocolate chips.

5. DROP by rounded teaspoon onto prepared cookie sheets. Leave space between each cookie as they will spread while baking. Bake 8-10 minutes and cool on cookie sheets.

Try to pace yourself!

How can you make breakfast more Halloweeny? Turn toaster waffles into bats (photo Good Food Made Simple | Facebook).

[3] Mozzarella eyeball snaks, made with bocconcini (bite-size balls) and olives (photo courtesy Bel Gioioso):.

[4] Vampire ice cream sundae, with strawberry topping, mini marshmallows and chocolate chip eyes (photo Hannah Kaminsky | Bittersweet Blog).

Halloween, short for All Hallows’ Evening, is celebrated on the evening of October 31st. It evolved from the festival of Samhain (sah-WEEN), celebrated by ancient Celts at the end of the harvest, a time to prepare for winter.

Samhain marked the end of the “lighter half” of the year and beginning of the “darker half.” The Halloween colors of orange and black represent the lighter side and the darker side.

The Celts believed that on October 31st, the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead overlapped and the deceased would come back to life and cause havoc, including sickness and damaged crops.

To avoid the spirits and ghosts that roamed the countryside on October 31st, people began to wear masks and costumes—to mimic the spirits and avoid being recognized as human. To keep spirits and ghosts from their home, they placed candles in their windows, using hollowed-out turnips and other vegetables as the holder, or jack o’ lantern.

The festival of Samhain would frequently include celebratory bonfires. The fires attracted insects, which attracted bats. Thus, bats became integrated into the holiday.

Around 600 C.E., Christian missionaries replaced the pagan festival of Samhain with All Saints Day, also called All Hallows Even (even means evening).

The name Halloween (or Hallowe’en) first appears in 16th-century Scotland, evolving from All Hallows’ Eve.
 
 
BUT MUCH OF THE MODERN CELEBRATION CAME FROM AMERICA

Carving pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns, trick-or-treating, costume parties and visiting “haunted houses”—not to mention pranking—evolved in the U.S. Pumpkins, a hardier, new world fruit (yes, a fruit), replaced the smaller turnips used in the Old Country.

It began with 19th-century Irish and Scottish immigrants who brought the tradition over. In the late 20th century, the “holiday spirit” spread to other western countries, including Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, Puerto Rico and the U.K.
 
 
LEADING UP TO THE BIG DAY

No matter how you plan to celebrate Halloween, you can serve little touches of the holiday for the week prior to the event.

Halloween is too much fun to wait for one day of celebration. You don’t have to be a kid to want an entire Halloween Week.

 
Simply look at everything you’re planning to serve, and see how you can tweak it for seasonal fun.

If you need inspiration, check online sites like Pinterest or Google Images to see what others have done.

[1] Halloween sangria substitutes beer for wine (photo © Sid Wainer).

[2] What’s the difference between apple juice and apple cider? See the answer below (photo © Red Jacket Orchards).

[3] Orange bitters are sold next to the Angostura bitters in most supermarkets. Or, make your own with this recipe from (photo © Red Jacket Orchards).

Here’s something different for Halloween: orange sangria. In this recipe, apple cider substitutes for the wine, and wheat beer substitutes for the club soda or sparkling water.

What’s the difference between apple cider and apple juice? The answer is below.
 
 
RECIPE: HALLOWEEN / FALL SANGRIA

Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. COMBINE the first four ingredients in a pitcher and refrigerate. When ready to serve…

2. MAKE the rim on the glasses. Fill a shallow bowl with water, and another with the smoked sugar. Dip the rim of the glass 1/4 inch into the water, then twist in the sugar until coated.

3. POUR the beer into the pitcher right before serving and stir once, gently, to combine. Add ice to the rimmed glasses, pour in the sangria and serve.
 
 
APPLE CIDER VERSUS APPLE JUICE: THE DIFFERENCE

Since Prohibition, which began in the U.S. (1920 – 1933), “cider” has referred to the unfermented, unpasteurized apple juice. If cider is made from another fruit, it must be called, e.g., pear cider.

“Hard cider” is used to indicate the alcoholic beverage.

In the U.K. it is the opposite, with “cider” indicating the alcoholic drink, for which special cider apples are used. Pear cider is called perry.

*Don’t hesitate to buy a bottle of orange bitters. It perks up every drink, including mocktails, iced tea, soft drinks and club soda. If a drink is too sweet or needs something extra, a drop or two of orange bitters does the trick. The bitters provide an extra note of complexity: deep, citrusy, spicy flavor. Here’s a recipe to make your own.

†You can buy smoked sugar on Amazon, or make your own by blending hickory smoke powder with coarse sugar (decorator’s sugar, sanding sugar). Other options include orange decorator’s sugar, in many stores for the Halloween season.

‡Alcohol by volume: the percent of alcohol in the bottled spirit, wine or beer.