Make-Ahead Halloween Dinners + Spiced Pepitas

Hello dear ones, and Happy Halloween! In today’s bonus post I’m sharing a recipe for savory, smoky and slightly sweet—in other words, totally addicting—spiced pepitas. We love to eat them by the handful as a nutritious snack (last week I made a batch and left them on the counter for grazing—we ended up demolishing the bowl in three days), but they’re also an easy way to elevate fall salads, soups, tacos, cheese boards, and more. Before we get to the recipe, however, since today is Halloween I thought I’d also share our go-to Halloween dinners.

When the kids were little we didn’t have a strong Halloween dinner plan. We’d arrive home well after dark (there’s no trick-or-treating on our steep mountain road, so we drive down to our village), exhausted and hungry, unsatisfied with just eating candy but too tired to cook—in other words, we’d be grumpy.

At some point I decided that even though dinner isn’t the focal point of Halloween (is that why it’s not my favorite holiday?), we needed to make it a priority. We developed a strategy of whipping up a slow cooker meal or pot of soup early in the day. We eat a smallish bowl (or plate) before we go trick-or-treating, then we eat again when we get home. Having a warm meal waiting for us on the other side of the Halloween chaos has definitely become a savior (I actually now really enjoy Halloween, mostly thanks to our amazing community, but I think a good dinner also helps). Here are our go-to meals: