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Hallowed halloween

The Scottish variant of "All-Hallows-Even", better known as Halloween is celebrated in Ireland, Scotland, Canada and the United States. It is linked to the Celtic festival of Samuin (pronounced as Sow-an) which roughly eludes to "summer's end". It was believed that during Samuin, the border between this world and the other world becomes thin and hence dressing up in costumes and masks, basically disguising, helped ward off the harmful spirits.

To me, the resemblance of Trick-or-treating to something called "souling" is even more interesting. Apparently poor people used to dress up on Hallowmas, celebrated on Nov 1st, and go door to door getting food in return for the prayers for the dead. 

Source: here at wiki, here and for some really fun Hallow-trivia check here

It definitely is much more fun now- don't you think- American capitalism at its best (well one of its very best), you can dress up as anything you want- you name it, they sell it.

Anyway this year, we decided to celebrate it too- well more like "a reason to have a party, yoo hoo". Recently I have begun cooking for the parties, nothing big- usually appetizers and desserts, rarely do I engage in large scale cooking. So this time in the spirit of halloween, here goes the list of stuff I made.

Cheese cups filled with mango salsa and spicy black beans- recipe source here at Martha Stewarts's


Witches Fingers, the source for these fingers can be found here.

Mulled brown blood, recipe source here


I followed most recipes very closely, except for a few changes/ substitutions here and there. If you need to know any of my adaptations, leave me a comment. 

Judgement

Everything was a big hit- especially the cheese cups, the mulled brown blood and the witches finger :D! Try these at your next Halloween party and wow your guests! 

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