I want to be the kind of mom who always signs up for everything and participates in everything, so I put our names down for an activity at Klara’s school called “Trunk-or-treat” where people compete in whose family decorates the best trunk.
The way I imagined it was that people would decorate actual trunks. Like the ones where pirates hide treasure, you know? But it turns out that the activity is a sort of a tailgating (which I also have never done) for toddlers. People park their cars next to the school, open the trunks of their cars – weird, right?- and decorate them from the inside. And put candied apples (wtf is that?) in them.
I have no idea what any of this means and I have until Friday to find out. These school activities are always fun, and this time we have 4 adults there to decorate our trunk, so how bad can it be, right?
Halloween is like the most important holiday around here. We have a Halloween-related social engagement almost every day for over a week.
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“candied apples (wtf is that?) in them.”
They’re a traditional halloween treat, you stick a wood stick in an apple and then dunk the apple in a hot syrup (sugar, water, cinammon, red food dye) and then let it cool. For some dumb reason the wikipedia has one with peanuts on it (something I’ve never seen in real life). Any recipe site should have instructions (and youtube videos exist as well).
They used to be a special thing to get while trick or treating but urban legends about people putting pins and razor blades in them stopped that.
I’ve never seen candy apples in Poland but once at a Christmas market in Berlin they not only had candy apples but every other possible candy fruit (bananas, kiwis, grapes(!) you name it they candied it….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candy_apples
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I have never gotten a candy apple ever in my life when trick or treating. Of course, as a result of this story, when I went trick or treating, my parents always instructed me to let them inspect the candy before I ate any of it. Every other kids’ parents did this.
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Another traditional halloween treat are popcorn balls (cooked popcorn held together by dried syrup).
Don’t bother trying to do a jack o lantern unless you have a pro on hand(they are really hard to do and not fun at all).
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If you keep it simple (triangle eyes, simple mouth, optional triangle nose), I think they’re not that hard and pretty fun. Scraping out the innards is a bit of a pain, but once that is done, my 5 year old was able to do the rest with only minimal help and really enjoyed it. We did spend a couple of $ on a special kit from the supermarket that contained scrapers and small saws: it would have been more difficult (and dangerous) with regular kitchen knives.
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” We did spend a couple of $ on a special kit from the supermarket …..would have been more difficult (and dangerous) with regular kitchen knives.”
Yeah I tried it with regular kitchen knives…. it’s a miracle I didn’t cut any digits off or puncture some vital organ and when I finished the simple eyes and mouth the whole thing looked like a herd of armed gorillas on crystal meth had attacked the poor pumpkin…. with god as my witness…. I will never carve a pumkpkin again!
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It sounds a bit like the Jewish festival of Sukkot, where you decorate the inside of a Sukkah, or booth. It is common in Judaism to eat, sleep and generally spend a lot of time in the Sukkah for the week of Sukkot.
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