Are you hosting a Halloween celebration? How about having healthy food? Just because it is healthy doesn’t mean it has to be boring. Decorate your house and have some decorative pumpkin or Fall dishes to make the table festive.

Try these food ideas:

· Pumpkin Dip – canned pumpkin, Greek vanilla Yogurt, cinnamon, and a little orange Juice – Served with mini graham crackers

· Monster Mash – use your favorite guacamole recipe. You can always mash avocado, add lime juice, and salsa for an easy treat.

· Carrot Eyes – carrots with cream cheese and half of an olive

· Veggie Skeleton – Veggie Girl – Put your dip in a dish and then add leaf lettuce for hair, broccoli eyes, and red pepper for a mouth, for the body use cucumber slices, cauliflower for a skirt & red pepper ribs and legs, carrot sticks for arms.

· Scarecrow Veggie Tray – On top of dip add cucumber slices with olives for eyes, carrot nose and red pepper slice for mouth. Around the dip place slices of carrot, celery and peppers for the straw hair and bottom of dish. Top with rows of crackers in the shape of a hat.

· Jicama Bean Salad- black beans, orange bell pepper, and jicama with vinaigrette dressing. You can put the salad into hollowed out red or yellow pepper to serve.

· Trail mix served in Pumpkin Dish – nuts, seeds (pumpkin seeds), raisins or dried cranberries, added.

· Pumpkin Peppers – Cut the tops off bell peppers and carefully remove the center section of each pepper. Cut faces into the slices of pepper. Fill with vegetables – Kale, Asparagus, Celery, Carrots, Cauliflower, and/or Broccoli. You could also add some hummus if you want.

· Spooky Pizza – Add pizza sauce to a whole-grain crust. Top with cut outs of ghosts from mozzarella cheese. Bake and eat.

· Halloween Quesadillas – Add black beans, mashed sweet potato, chopped cilantro and some jack cheese to a flour tortilla. Heat until hot and serve.

· Cook a spaghetti squash. Put the spaghetti squash in a bowl and add some white cheese (Mozzarella, Parmesan or your choice). Put some different sauces around it and let people choose what to add.

For Dessert

· Banana Ghosts – peel a banana and cut in half crosswise. Push into the pointed top 2 mini chocolate chips to make eyes and add one regular size chocolate chip to make a mouth.

· Fruit Pops – Use a melon baller or medium cookie dough dropper to cut circles out of the apples and/or peaches. Add a stick. You can also dip them into peanut butter or chocolate and then into some crushed nuts

· Draw faces (with non-toxic ink) on clementine to make Jack-o-lanterns. These can be for decoration and eating.

· Peel oranges or clementine and stick a piece of celery in the top to make a pumpkin stem.

Drinks – Serve water, unsweetened Ice Tea, or a Halloween-themed punch – try mixing sparkling water with a little 100% orange juice and float orange slices and black grapes or blackberries in the punch bowl.

For activities:

· Pumpkin Game – Pin the Face on the Pumpkin

· Pumpkin Painting Activity

· Halloween Charades – Fill orange balloons with themed physical activities: Bat Flying (flap your arms), Frankenstein walk, spider crawl, zombie walk. Pop balloons and act out.

· Pumpkin Bob using feet

· Pumpkin Hunt – hide items such as pennies, small toys inside a pumpkin which has not been cleaned out. Let children reach in & try to find an item.

· Roll Apple

· Apple Toss

· Scarecrow Dress Up Relay

Enjoy your healthy Halloween Celebration!

Pat Brinkman is the Family and Consumer Sciences Extension Educator with Ohio State University Extension Fayette County.