Sad news funereal friends! I’m afraid it’s true what they say, that all ghoul things must come to an end. Though I’ve had much fun sharing my Halloween menu and its recipes for clown braaaaains!, hobgoblin hamburgers and pumpkin parts, it’s time to put this four-part series to eternal rest. In this final installment I’ll share the remaining two recipes.

Dessert and drink can be a dangerous business. Typically laden with sugars and lacking in nutrition, these foods are too-quickly consumed at a monster’s party where everyone’s a-goblin. Favorite desserts like booberry pie and ice scream sundaes may delight the spooks, but they’re hardly healthful. And don’t even get me started on junk drinks like ghoul-aid and lemon slime soda; your thirst may be quenched but you’re not doing your body—dismembered or not—any favors.

This year trick your guests by serving healthier treats. Free of processed fats and sugars, the delicious recipes below are so super-natural, even mummy and deadie would approve.

EVIL STEPMOTHER’S POISON APPLES (Crunchy baked apples)
Adapted from The Great American Detox Diet by Alex Jamison

4 medium tart apples
2 tablespoons fresh squeezed lemon juice
¼ cup dried cranberries
4 dried Medjool dates, pitted and quartered
½ cup pecans, coarsely chopped
1 tablespoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon nutmeg
2 teaspoons real vanilla extract
1/3 cup raw honey (vegans can substitute ½ cup brown rice syrup)

Pre-heat oven to 325F.

Cut ½ inch off the top of the apples. Reserve tops. Using a paring knife or apple corer, remove cores and some flesh immediately surrounding the core. Rub cored apples with lemon juice to stop them from turning brown.

In a medium-size bowl, mix together the cranberries, dates, pecans, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla and honey. Spoon mixture into apples and then replace the apple tops.

Bake for 30 minutes. Makes 4 servings.

WITCHES BREW (Iced tea just as you like it with spooky cubes)
Adapted from Perfect Brewed Iced Tea recipe

Sugar-free iced tea:
4 regular tea bags (orange pekoe, green tea or combination)*
1 flavored tea bag such as ginger, peach, apple or berry (optional)
2 cups cold water
Additional water as needed
Stevia to sweeten

Spider ice cubes:
Ice cube tray
Plastic spiders, washed with dish soap and rinsed thoroughly
Water

To make tea: Unwrap tea bags (if necessary) and carefully slide off any paper attached to the strings. Tie strings together and place tea bags in a heat-proof 2-quart pitcher. Set aside.

In stovetop saucepan, bring 2 cups cold water to a rapid boil. Remove from heat and immediately pour into pitcher over the tea bags. Allow tea to steep for 20 minutes or more.

Once steeped, remove tea bags from pitcher, squeezing out excess liquid. Discard tea bags. Fill pitcher with enough water to equal 2 quarts. Cover and refrigerate until well chilled before serving.

To serve, pour tea over spider cubes. Stir in stevia, as desired for sweetness.

*Variation: Instead of bothering with combinations of regular and fruit-flavored teas, try 5 tea bags of Yogi Tea Mexican Sweet Chili. The ochre-colored, slightly spicy tea with hints of exotic cardamom and ginger will strike just the right chord for your Halloween entertaining.

To make spider cubes: fill empty ice cube trays with cold water. Drop one plastic spider into each cube mold. Freeze and enjoy.

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This concludes our four-part spooky supper series. Did you enjoy it? Do you have other recipes/ideas for Halloween entertaining? Leave them in comments!

There’s not much more to say except fangs for the memories and—as our friend the skeleton says—BONE APPETITE!

Post from: Hannihaus

Halloween Dinner Menu Part IV: Evil Stepmother’s Poison Apples & Witches Brew With Spider Cubes

Hello again ghoulfriends and enemies, broommates and bogeymen. When first we made acquaintance, I shared my murderous menu. Next, I told you about Clown Braaaaains!, a dish that is, like revenge, best served cold. Today we heat things up. No, I won’t be talking about what Satan’s packing in his pants (which is, of course, great balls of fire), but rather I’ll share two recipes—one for barbarous burgers, the other for freaky fries.

In contemplating a main course, I initially considered something more exotic. Sacrificial Lamb, or Fettuccini Afraid-O for example. But I’m a busy ghoul, and you probably are too, so for simplicity’s sake, I advocate an easy homemade offering. Sure, you could just dine out at a casketeria, but that can be costly … especially if you are a vampire, and dinner’s a stake sandwich.

HOBGOBLIN HAMBURGERS ATOP GRAVEYARD GREENS

1½ pounds ground beef
4 slices cheddar or Colby jack cheese, cut out in pumpkin shapes
Salt and pepper to taste
2 cups freshly washed baby spinach (cooked frozen spinach is OK too)
Pumpkin shaped cookie cutter

Prepare your grill or skillet for medium-high heat.

Lightly shape ground beef into 4 patties. Season both sides of each patty with salt and pepper.

Place burgers on a lightly oiled grill or nonstick skillet, and cook on one side until juices begin to seep to the surface. Flip over and grill on the other side until juice flows through. During the last minute or so of cooking, top each patty with a slice of pumpkin-shaped cheese, so that it can melt slightly before serving.

Serve atop bed of spinach greens, lettuce, or mixed greens. Enjoy Pumpkin Parts (sweet potato fries) alongside. Makes 4 servings.

PUMPKIN PARTS (Sweet potato fries)

3 smallish-medium sweet potatoes (about 2 ½ pounds)
1-2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste (maybe 1 teaspoon each)

Preheat oven to 450F.

Scrub and peel sweet potatoes, and then cut into long, thin strips (about ¼ inch thick and 2 inches long).

Place sweet potatoes in a bowl and drizzle with extra virgin olive oil; toss gently to coat. Add salt and pepper and toss again.

Arrange sweet potato fries in a single layer on large baking sheets and cook for 10-12 minutes each side, flipping halfway through baking. Makes 4 servings.

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Who is enjoying this series? If you believe in telekinesis, please raise my hand. And also, come back for the next post wherein we bring this meal to its ultimate, but not untimely, dead end. Up next: Evil Step Mother’s Poison Apples and Witches Brew With Spider Cubes. Spooky!

Post from: Hannihaus

Halloween Dinner Menu Part III: Hobgoblin Hamburgers & Pumpkin Parts

Welcome guests, both living and undead, to the second installment of a four-part Halloween dinner series. Last time I shared with you the menu for our macabre meal. Today I’m frightfully delighted to provide the first recipe—one for a spine-chilling starter.

Originally I thought to start the feast with a simple soup. I selected a recipe from a Transylvanian tome, but found it quite literally too difficult to digest, what with all the clotting.

Instead we take inspiration from the living dead and enjoy a colorful carrot salad—teaming with good-for-ghouls root vegetables, raisins, and crucifers—that looks an awful lot like braaaaains! Clown braaaaains! Oh and by the way, it’s a common misconception that zombies eat this salad with their fingers. Fingers are eaten separately.

CLOWN BRAAAAAINS! (A spooky carrot slaw minus the mayo)

3 cups peeled, grated carrots (about 3-4 medium carrots)
1 cup thinly sliced red cabbage
1 large Granny Smith apple, cored and grated
1/2 cup raisins (organic of course)
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil or grapeseed oil

Combine all ingredients in a medium sized bowl. Toss lightly. Chill before serving. Makes 4-5 heaping 1 cup servings.

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Enjoying the series? Dying for more? Check back for our marvelously morbid main course: hobgoblin hamburgers served atop graveyard greens with putrid pumpkin parts on the side. Why hamburgers, you ask? Well they say that meat is murder. We think that’s wonderful.

Post from: Hannihaus

Halloween Dinner Menu Part II: Clown Braaaaains!

Hello ghouls and boys. Pull up a corpse—er chair and settle in. I’m going to tell you a scary story. Of course if you are a mummy, please do not make yourself comfortable, as relaxation may cause you to unwind. For everyone else, let’s sit a spell … or two … or three.

Long ago, one Hallows Eve my friends M & M Misadventure invited me to dine at their annual spooky supper. On the menu: moldy old ladies fingers (cut fresh daily) and dog food dip, yummy mummy calzones, and coffin cake for dessert. After a dinner like that, it’s lucky I made it out alive. The food was, quite simply, to die for.

Now that I’ve relocated to the spooky ooky ooky state of Texas, it’s impossible for me to dine at the Misadventures’ embalming table. But like the ancient Egyptian’s harvesting of organs and intestines of their hallowed dead, I too like to preserve … tradition, that is. In this, the first of a four part series, I will share with you my (printable) menu for a simple Halloween dinner. And oh yes, don’t be frightened, but—free of refined grains and processed sugars—my specter’s spread is also quite healthy. Mwa ha ha ha ha!

SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO JOIN ME AT MY VICTIM’S TABLE, (AND I SINCERELY HOPE YOU DO), HERE’S WHAT I’LL BE SERVING ON HALLOWEEN:

Do you desire a copy of this monstrous menu for your very own? Crafty corpse brides and headless huntsmen playing along at home, this menu is available for print! — CLICK HERE FOR .PDF — It’ll be a scream!

FYI fonts used (and available for free download) include: Bloody, Bones and Ill October.

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Next in the Halloween Dinner Menu series? Join me as I dive right in … into the cranium of some poor clown, that is. Clown Braaaaains!, a shuddersome carrot salad—if you’re my guest, well, it’s what’s for dinner. And trust me, there is nothing funny about that.

Post from: Hannihaus

So Good, It’s Scary: Halloween Dinner Menu Part I

… And then, when all this fails to bring responsiveness, I will take a sabbatical from obsessively watching House on DVD to implement the following:

Concise Posts
My favorite blogs rarely employ more than a few paragraphs per story. These posts are short, like my attention span. I’d elaborate further but I forgot what we’re talking about.

Topic-Based Writing
In blogging, as it is with the aged, it used to be that blathering on about the mundane of everyday life was de rigueur. Now, it’s de rigmarole. Hot blogs today focus on select topics like parenting, cooking, finances, or fashion. Keeping with this New Blog Order, I too will write about those things with which I am expert … things like the mundane of everyday life.

Pretty Pictures
The best blogs include pictures in their posts. I’m going to improve this junk right now.

Look here is a picture of me smooching Sphynx who is, decidedly, disgusted.

And here’s a picture of my niece eating spaghetti.

And here’s a unicorn.

I think you will agree, these pics are all very magical.

And regarding my last post, it’s a good thing I don’t smoke–I’m not much of a quitter.

Post from: Hannihaus

If I Am To Revive This Blog, There’s A Few Things I Must Do

THE THIRD (AND FINAL) THING I WANT TO TELL YOU ABOUT RUNNING IS, it’s so much better when you’re doing it to Kanye.
…

That’s what she said!

Make a kick-ass mix.
Best part of running? Looking better? Nope. Feeling Better? Nope. Making a fitness mix for your pretty little mp3 player? Oooh yeah.

The only rule of fitness mix is: there is no rule. Whether you’re into hip hop, death metal, disco, or all three, if it gets your blood pumping and your feet moving, it goes in the mix.

I have a couple mixes on my iPod. The 27-song master playlist is great to shuffle through when I’m feeling random; with the master mix I never know what will play next—could be Technotronic telling me to pump up the jam, Jay-Z saying I should brush the dirt off my shoulder, or Black Eyed Peas singing about my humps, my humps, my lovely lady lumps.

Sometimes—when I want to run for minutes and not distance—I put a towel over the treadmill computer and turn on my 30-minute mix, which looks something like this:

Let’s Get It Started—Black Eyed Peas
The New Workout Plan–Kanye West
Glass Danse–The Faint
Stronger–Kanye West
Firestarter–Prodigy
Volcano Girls–Veruca Salt
Hips Don’t Lie–Shakira
Welcome To The Black Parade–My Chemical Romance (for the cool down)

Want to give it a listen? Click on my mixtape!

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Need some inspiration to create your playlist? Hänni recommends you:

• Rock out like an Olympian with the US Summer Olympics Athletes Playlist
• Check out this huge and awesome list of workout songs from peertainer.com
• Skim through the official workout playlists thread at bodybuilding.com
• Get stoked on the Art of Manliness 52 songs to help you get bigger, stronger, and faster
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Hey hannihaus readers, what are your favorite tunes to rock your run to? Leave them in comments.

And with that, our How To Run Your Ass Off (Literally!) series concludes. I hope you are inspired to dust off your sneaks or kick up your routine. With a little motivation, a plan, and a good mix, you’ll be harder, better, faster, stronger in no time.

May your next run be your best run,

xoxoh

Post from: Hannihaus

How To Run Your Ass Off (Literally!) Part III

THE SECOND THING I WANT TO TELL YOU ABOUT RUNNING IS, it’s best to be a boy scout; be prepared.

Set a goal.
A goal-whether to walk the neighborhood or train for a 10K-will give you something to work toward. Long-term goals are great, but it’s a focus on the short-term that will get you where you want to be. In October I plan to run my first 5K and I want to finish in less than 30 minutes. To achieve this long-term goal I have been working on a series of short-term challenges; every four weeks I re-evaluate my progress and decide whether, in the next four weeks, I need to bump up my speed on the treadmill, add in an extra day of running, or incorporate inclines or sprinting into my routine. It’s these small victories that keep me going.

I’m currently working on increasing my speed, so my goal for these four weeks is to run two miles non-stop at a high speed, two to three times / week.

Examples of short-term goals to get *you* started include:

• Walking around your neighborhood x # of minutes, x days / week
• Walking on an incline at the gym x # of minutes (or miles), x days / week
• Jogging for x # of minutes (or miles), x days / week

The caveat to all this planning is: it’s ok to improvise!
If you find your routine, even in the short-term, is getting stale, go ahead and free-ball it. Let’s face it: working out sucks. If you’re going to sweat your ass off it’d better be less than lame, right?

My favorite way to mix things up is to add intervals. Intervals are short-term, high-intensity exercises (for example sprints) I sandwich into my regular runs. By increasing my intensity in short bursts I fend off boredom, and guess what? I also get a better workout-running intervals burns fat faster than running at a steady pace. My boyfriend, a personal trainer who lost 100 pounds through diet and exercise, likes to jog five minutes and sprint two.

A twist on the intervals described above, my friend the marathoner uses run/walk intervals as a way to mentally break up mileage and recuperate sore muscles during long-distance runs. On marathon days she runs nine minutes, walks one the entire 26 miles. For more info on walk breaks, check this out.

Other ways to improvise during your run include:

• Incorporating an incline, either periodically or for the workout duration
• Sprinting your last few minutes to the finish

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OK so I’ve hooked you up with some solid info, but if you still don’t know where to start with goal setting, check out these time-tested programs:

Couch-To-5K Running Program | Punk Rock Running Program

Got other suggestions? Leave them in comments.

And check back at the haus for our next (and final) installment where I mux it up. Yes we’re going to talk about the workout mp3 mixtape. Wanna know what I run to? I’ll give you a listen next week.

Post from: Hannihaus

How To Run Your Ass Off (Literally!) Part II

Want to drop weight fast? Marry a man who—after moving you to a strange city where you have no support system–leaves you for his mistress. Worked for me.

In discovering my husband’s humiliating infidelity, I also stumbled upon something else: the post-traumatic stress diet. Of course when I say “diet” this implies a conscientious change in eating. In actuality, mired in a grief so heavy it overrode my physical needs, eating was not an issue … I simply didn’t do it.

Within months I’d dropped more than 10% of my body weight, which frankly I didn’t have to lose. And so it was a relief when—as I started my emotional recovery—my physical self got better too.

The weight I put on was happy weight, but it was also flabby weight. My stomach made muffins over the tops of the designer denim I’d bought when I was smaller, sad. In my newfound wellness, I started biking, then added weights to the mix. Most recently I’ve been running.

I have a friend who runs marathons. She told me I should write this post—let people know I’m not who I was. Thanks to my post-divorce fitness routine my body is harder, better, faster, stronger. She recommended I share my tips for running. I think that’s a great idea. This is the first post in a series. Enjoy.

THE FIRST THING I WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT RUNNING IS, it rocks!

If you’re looking for a reason to run here’s a few:

• It’s free—yes dear hannihaus readers, running is recession proof. Unless you’re training for a marathon you don’t need any fancy gear; a pair of feet, a place to run, and some well-fitting sneaks will do you just fine.

• It makes you happy—my chemical romance is not just a kick-ass band of boys who wear makeup (squee!) it’s also a state of mind; when you run your body produces happy chemicals called endorphins that make you feel euphoric. A runner’s high is totally addictive and it’s not the kind of thing that will get you sent to rehab.

• It makes all your fantasies come true (or at least the revenge ones)—pissed at your boyfriend? Stomp on his head. Mad at your mother-in-law? Give her the shoe. When I’m feeling particularly stressed/angsty nothing gets me back to good like a nice cathartic tromp on the treadmill.

• It makes you sexy—in addition to losing inches on your legs, running also tightens up your glutes, quads, and calves. And as a bonus, because you’re using your core, your abs will get firmer too. Oh and your lungs and heart will also be strengthened, but of course when your sassy runner’s milkshake brings all the boys to the yard, your lungs will be the least of their interest.

Oh and running also helps you to sleep better, think better, and sex better. How’s that for incentive?

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Got more ideas for why running rocks? Leave them in comments. And stay tuned for the next installment where I recommend free-balling your running routine while keeping your gym shorts firmly affixed.

Post from: Hannihaus

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger: How To Run Your Ass Off (Literally!)