Ok what is more awesome to have on a cold Halloween night but a nice bowl of hot chili?! A couple years ago during one of the first few Halloweens that we utilized the garage to make the Haunted Cave, we also created the Haunted Cafe! We made chili, mummy dogs (hot dogs wrapped in crescent roll dough), spiderweb cream cheese brownies, witch hat cookies, and pumpkin pie. We gave it all away for free to the parents of the trick or treaters! I can't tell you how many returned for seconds and thirds!! We didn't keep it up however cause the chili combined with the beeswax candles and other scents in the garage just made the whole place smell kinda funky! Haha! Which can be a good thing or bad one on Halloween night! But the chili was just awesome!!
So for those who might be wondering about the chili recipe, I wanted to share it here with you all!
Now this is not too hot at all of a recipe, it's a good basic chili recipe that you can spring off from and add what you like to it for your own individual tastes. I prefer the basic recipe myself as I am not one for the too hot and spicey stuff. I may add a few more dark red kidney beans to it, but not a lot. I also add in half of an onion that we chop on down in the chopper real fine. For the cafe, I quadrupled this recipe, it was ALOT of chili! But for just 4 people, I usually double the recipe so that we can have leftovers a couple of times. I used to make this and then wrap up some chili burritos and then freeze them and have them for lunches. Toss in some shredded cheese before wrapping them up in the tortillas.
I wanted to give credit where credit is due however and let you all know that I got this recipe from the Phil Donahue show. I sent for the transcripts for when The Recipe Detective was on, many years ago and she had figured out the ingredients to some of the more famous fast food places' special and secret recipes. At least, as close as she could get! What we got then was a bevy of wonderful recipes!
Brown the ground beef in the vegetable oil in a nice deep, large skillet. Break the beef into tiny rice size pieces. Blenderize soup in blender and add to browning meat. Then add the rest of the ingredients and let simmer. Serves 6 Source: Gloria Pitzer, Secret Recipes Newsletter
**On another note, I don't use vegetable oil, I use olive oil instead. I also put extra chopped onions into the pan as I am browning the lean meat. Drain off the fat. I pour the blenderized soup right into the pan of meat and onions thereafter and then stir in the spices and then add the paste and the sauce and undrained cans of kidney beans (I know that part is weird eh?). Once I get it all together, I transfer it to the slow cooker and let it simmer all day long and turn it up to piping hot just before we serve it. Add some shredded mexican cheese and wha~la! YUM!
We usually add a mummy dog for Halloween. You can also add some tortilla chips, I like the blue corn. It's just amazing stuff!
Here are the last set of fun jack o'lanterns I picked up at ebay! This first one is a regular electric one and has a cute little wink look to his face. I picked it up from: louisesmith. This came very quickly and I really like this one! He'll be a great addition to the others!
The next one is very unique! It's called a Morphkin Pumpkin! Pretty bizarre eh? I picked this one up on ebay also, from: sourceplus2005. This is a fantastic seller! This jack o'lantern came well boxed and speedy delivery! I highly recommend them to anyone looking for something unique!
And one of the unique things about this particular jack o'lantern is that it has a face on either side! This one is happy and the other one is a bit more scary although this pic below doesn't seem that way but check out the video after and see what you think then!! Creepy!
And here is the vid:
The seller was most kind and wonderful to deal with!! I also have the Morphkin Skull! Check it out! Also has a face on each side! Scary:
And a bit goofy or frightened:
Aren't they really neat?! They are motion sensitive and they light up and move and make sounds, laughing and some spooky music. The motion detector is there on the one side as you can see. This is really a great, novel idea to catch the Trick or Treaters as they are coming or going! I think it will catch the kids off guard as they will not be expecting the jack o'lantern or skull to move like that! Just wild and I love it!! Awesome seller on ebay!
I got it into my head to set up a really cool looking pumpkin/jack o'lantern patch for this coming Halloween. So I began to scour ebay to see what kind of deals I might be able to get as well as searching through Amazon.com. Ebay is normally where I go looking for bargains tho' you have to be careful as people can ask for outrageous pricing for their stuff!
So I picked up a few that I found that seemed to be reasonably priced to me. A few of them have slight flaws however but that's ok!
The first here has a very hard shell and there is no opening for an electrical cord in the back so it looks like I would have to slide a pumpkin light, a small one or a battery tea-light inside it's mouth. Still, it looks really cool! I could drill a hole in it but I'd rather not do that so I do have a small flickering light, battery operated, just for jack o'lanterns that I will use. I got this one from ebay seller: want-it-back
The next one, is this one here that looks like a squash. I loved it as I have been on the lookout for odd and different looking jack o'lanterns. Tho' this one has a happy face on it, still, it looks neat. It does have one little scrape on the side but nothing really noticeable. It is electric however so that makes it nice. This one is from ebay seller: damel3
Third one I picked up is another electric one that is a skinny shaped one that looks like "Stretch", the one ghost uncle from the Caspar movie! I loved that movie! Wouldn't you just love to own Whipstaff, the mansion?! Nice! I'd love to get the other two uncles of course if I can ever find them or if they even made them? He does have a bigger flaw of a scrape on the side of him but I will probably color it in with an orange sharpie. It is from ebay seller: andyjandy
The last item I picked up from ebay is this stack of jack o'lanterns! They look really cool and are electric as well. I like how they look all smushed from each other! I wanted to give some depth and height to the pumpkin/jack o'lantern patch although these are a lot smaller than I had hoped for. Still, I thought these would do the trick as well as putting some of the others on the small hay bales I have and I do have one metal figure that you place a pumpkin on top for it's head. Aren't they cute? I got them from ebay seller: captiansparrow He packaged them up very nice and secure!
I plan to create the patch for in front of the Hallowindow but I am not sure if it might be too distracting. If it is, I will move these guys to the back yard with the Halloween Haunted blow-up train. I do want to get the patch out of the graveyard for sure tho', where I had them this past Halloween, and really creepify my graveyard this year. I'll be enclosing it more and using my xmas comet light box to have the spotlights fade from one color to the next and use lots more fog and also fill in the graveyard with more tombstones. I was also thinking of using more spooky material but we'll see how it goes. I do want to get some fake boards for the windows as well to give the house a more haunted look. I'll also be working on the Egyptian corner this summer. So lots n lots to do!
I got asked recently how do I manage to find the time or energy for it all? Well, I do start early and my mind is always going with thinking up ideas and going over & analyzing what worked and what did not work from the year before. I keep trying to improve on things and once I get it down to where things went smoothly, I'll continue that part of it every time then, for example, the black light in the cave...that is just really awesome! So I continue that each year.
I'll be utilizing that cement I have left too and make some tombstones and those Egyptian slabs and see if my daughter might like to paint hieroglyphics on the sides of it! I am still trying to see it in my mind how to make my own sarcophagus, at least the head portion of it. I may utilize the tiki man face mold and build off that.
Will be great fun to create it all!
Well I have two more pumpkins/jack o'lanterns coming yet and I'll show you them when I get them both in. They are from ebay again. I'll probably lay off the jack o'lanterns for now and start to focus on tombstones in the coming months.
Check out the new (OBOD) Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druidswebsite! Spectacular update and new look! It has a much more warm and welcoming and friendly feeling to it, very spiritual and earthy! Nice job Damh the Bard and everyone who had a hand in the facelift!
