My Favorite Halloween Post

Good treats for the tricksters this year. I hope I don’t eat them all before Saturday night!

Favorite Post from the Past

I originally wrote about devil’s food and devil’s night in 2014, and I”ve reposted the material for Halloween several times. Here it is again with a few added images and updated facts:

Devil's Food

From the 1970s: Devil's Food Twinkies. 

Devil's Food Cake. Deviled Ham. Deviled Eggs. Deviled Crab. A menu for Halloween? Sounds good to me! Never mind all those pumpkin and pumpkin spice dishes! Give me chocolate, mustard, and hot pepper! I wrote these words in 2014, when posting about Halloween, and I've re-posted it several times to celebrate Halloween. Here it is again…

I wondered if devil-themed foods might have anything to do with Devil's Night. Looking into it, I learned that most of my information about Halloween customs and Devil's Night was inaccurate. Urban legends and speculations, I found: just what you might expect about a holiday celebrating myths and ghosts.

American Jack-o-Lantern, 1867 (IBTaurisblog)

The Halloween Devil reflects fears of ghosts and hauntings: Halloween is at its root a festival celebrating the dead. Catholics for centuries honored saints and deceased members of their families for the first two days of November, solemnly visiting graveyards and attending religious services. They prayed that their loved ones were with the saints and not with the Devil -- but feared the worst, especially when visiting graveyards at dusk.

In Ireland, a variety of customs arose as a sort of opposite to the solemnities, including dressing up in costume, carving lanterns out of large vegetables, doing mischief of various kinds, and begging for food (which was a custom on other holidays as well, including Valentine's Day and the Wassail part of Christmas). Irish immigrants brought those customs to America in the mid-19th century.

These traditions appeared to have their roots in ancient Celtic customs. Many writers, beginning in the 19th century and continuing with current believers in Paganism claim that ancient Celtic rites were the basis for the Irish celebrations that eventually came to America. If you read anything about Samhain, the Celtic holiday (sometimes attributed to Druids, in even less historically accurate speculations) you'll see all kinds of parallels presented -- this Halloween origin story is still widely believed. However, the supposed evidence for the Celtic connection was often circular: where scholars couldn't find good descriptions of early customs, they filled in with information from their own experience or the recent past, which meant the parallels were very convincing. In fact, too good to be true.

In particular, a historian named Ronald Hutton in Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain (Oxford University Press, 1996) demonstrated that the usual claims about early Celtic practices are not verifiable. The evidence for the "development of the feast and of its associated days of All Saints and All Souls," he says is "intractable and ambivalent." (p. 360) Writer David Emery summarizes: "It seems reasonable to conclude that the connection between Halloween and Samhain has, at the very least, been overstated in most modern accounts of the holiday's origin."

Finally: Devil's Night. 

I always thought this was the accepted name for the riotous and disorderly side of the holiday. I remember having to drive through Detroit one late fall evening in the mid-1980s for a job interview, without realizing it was Devil's Night. From the freeway I heard police helicopters and sirens and saw smoke rising from burning buildings. Detroit's Devil's Night festivities then were at their most destructive, and hundreds of houses were being torched and other vandalism done. A few years later, with a lot of effort from the authorities, things calmed down.

What I did not realize until I looked up information for this post, is that Devil's Night was a name used almost uniquely in Detroit, and the vandalism was never as severe or systematic anywhere else. Yes, the Irish had Goblin Night or Mischief Night, but not Devil's Night. And bonfires were an old British-Isles tradition, but not insurance fires!

Many changes in the economic and political life of Detroit have enabled the end of the antisocial and violent aspects of this holiday. An AI search says: “Devil’s Night in Detroit (October 28–31, 2026) features a series of official film screenings, art retrospectives, and underground electronic and goth music events across the city and surrounding areas.”

Well, what about the food? 

Deviled eggs

Deviled eggs, deviled ham, Julia Child's poulets grillés a la diable, deviled crab cakes, and similar dishes are devilish because of their spiciness -- though they make a perfect choice for Halloween menus. Deviled tongue and deviled kidneys, now obsolete at polite luncheons where they once would have been popular, might enhance the Halloween spirit in more ways than one! And devil's food cake, named not for its taste but for being the opposite of pure white angel food cake, is a very popular Halloween dessert.

The term "deviled" for spicy originated long ago. "The first known printed mention of ‘devil’ as a culinary term appeared in Great Britain in 1786, in reference to dishes including hot ingredients." More and more dishes with "deviled" in their name appeared in the 19th century. In Mrs. Beeton's 1861 Book of Household Management, the term comes up in reference to turkey, of which the legs "appear only in a form which seems to have a special attraction at a bachelor’s supper-table, - we mean devilled: served in this way, they are especially liked and relished." (Household Management) Mrs. Beeton also recommended a deviled sauce made of vinegar, sherry, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, salt, and cayenne; as well as chicken with deviled butter made with chutney, anchovy paste, and of course cayenne pepper. Beyond Mrs. Beeton:

"In The Essential New York Times Cookbook, Amanda Hesser includes an 1878 recipe for deviled crabs, saying that today’s deviled eggs are the mild-mannered cousins of deviled crab and kidneys, which 'were meant to be spicy and bracing, the kind of food you had after a long night of drinking.' She also notes that in David Copperfield ..., 'Mr. Micawber saves a dinner party by turning undercooked mutton into a devil,' covering the slices with pepper, mustard, salt and cayenne and cooking them well, then adding mushroom ketchup as a condiment."

Above: Underwood Devil Logo, 1921.
Below left: 2014 Devil; right: original 1870 Devil

Underwood's Deviled Ham was first sold in 1870. Underwood's devil logo is the oldest trademark in continuous use (left). Their deviled ham is still available, though I can't say I want to eat any of it.

To make things even more complicated, in France there's an earthenware or cast-iron pot called a "diable" (devil) that allows cooking a whole chicken without added fat -- this utensil also gives its name to dishes cooked in it.

I'm afraid the original Halloween tradition was a lot more bland, not even as much fun as the candy that we'll be giving out next week. Oat cakes called "soul cakes" were offered to visitors or beggars in seventeenth century Shropshire, Lancashire, and Herefordshire for All-Souls Day. Those who received the cakes said "A soule-cake, a soule-cake, Have mercy on all Christen soules for a soule cake." Or "God have your soul, bones and all." In Wales, the gifted food was bread and cheese, and later on the beggars asked in rhyme for apples, pears, plums, or cherries as well as soul cakes. (Hutton, p. 374-375)

From this week’s Kroger price list.

Besides food names, many common plant names begin with "devil." Some are spices or foods -- but some are poisons. Devil-in-a-bush, Devil's horn, Devil's stinkpot, devil's milk, Devil's apple, Devil's dye, Devil's butter, Devil's coach-wheel, Devil's curry-comb, Devil's garters, Devil's night-cap, Devil's fingers, Devil's claws, Devil's eye, Devil's guts, Devil's head, Devil's darning-needle, Devil's dung, Devil's walking-stick, and many more were listed in an article in 1890 in American Notes and Queries, Volume 5.

Devil’s Food

Enjoy Halloween treats!

We are prepared. Though I’ve been a bit reckless in eating the fun-size Butterfingers.

A treat from the past: this used to be my favorite not-chocolate candy.
Maybe when I finish the vast quantity of Halloween candy (or give it away) I’ll buy some Chuckles.

Blog post © 2014-2026 mae sander

More Pumpkins in my Neighborhood

 Just the beginning…

Our neighbors’ Halloween displays are so wonderful that I can’t pick a favorite.

Some displays are very simple but…

… as usual, one house always has the prize-winning biggest ever pumpkins.
This was how they looked earlier in the week.
To answer a question: they are delivered on a pickup truck with equipment to move them.

The Prize Pumpkins are carved into the best Jack-O-Lanterns EVER,,,

This face honors the new grandchild of the family.

At another house nearby: a very nice witch.

A creepy lady in a yard with around a dozen various skeletons.
I can’t begin to capture the enormous number of displays near us.

Photos © 2026 mae sander

Politics

 

I have already voted absentee. 

Much More Than I Want to Know About Fungi

 

When we were kids we thought it was funny to say “There’s a fungus among us.”

Robigus (from web search)

Merlin Sheldrake has definitely shown that we live in a vast web of mushrooms and spores and other creepy things. It’s worse than a Halloween nightmare. The author provides a huge number of weird examples like this: “Romans prayed to the god of mildew, Robigus.” (p.7)

The author offers a bewildering variety of theories about truffles and similar fungi, for example that “manna—the providential food that sustained the Israelites during their passage through the desert—was in fact the desert truffle,” (p. 43)

After the psychedelic chapter on the truffle (which seems almost like an acid trip) the author continues with the more prosaic lichen, which grows on a rock. His description of words for lichens is perfect for Wordy Wednesday — a celebration that I used to do but recently haven’t found such a perfect example:

“The names used to describe lichens sound like afflictions, words that get stuck in your teeth: crustose (crusty), foliose (leafy), squamulose (scaly), leprose (dusty), fruticose (branched).” (p. 74)

I haven’t decided whether to keep reading this book, as it’s actually pretty heavy with technical details.

blog post © mae sander 2026

Bee Wilson: The Way We Eat Now

 

In The Way We Eat Now (published 2019), author Bee Wilson has a lot of interesting material taken from her earlier books. I found many repetitions here from these books, which I’ve been reading over the years — I didn’t really mind reading it all again. Starting in the introduction, she emphasizes one important point:   

“For most people across the world, life is getting better but diets are getting worse. This is the bittersweet dilemma of eating in our times.”   (p. xvii)

A consequence is the global rise in the rates of both malnutrition and obesity, due to consumption of less-than-healthy foods, and too much of them. This trend is not just a first-world problem, but becoming prevalent almost everywhere. 

Wilson cites many previous writers about the topic of food consumption and how it plays a role in our lives and in our society. I was amused at her citation of the work of the French food writer Édouard de Pomiane (1875-1964), “who was already thinking about how to eat well during busy times the best part of a century ago.” Several years ago, I read a number of his books, beginning with his most well-known cookbook called Cooking in Ten Minutes, or Adapting to the Rhythm of Modem Life. Pomiane was somewhat ahead of his time, for example having had the first cooking show on radio in the 1920s. I’ve always found him intriguing, so I enjoyed her summary of his life and work.

On my shelf: Pomiane’s books, many now long out-of-print.
His book on the cuisine of the Polish Jews is a very important
source of information on this destroyed community.

More Food, Less Quality

I would summarize Wilson’s idea thus: food is more plentiful, but this food is lower in quality, both in terms of taste and nutrition, than in the past. People eat more calories, and the foods they eat are becoming globalized; that is, traditional foods are less frequently consumed, and a limited range of foods have replaced the previous global variety. Especially: packaged and processed or ultra-processed foods are ubiquitous. This standardization has been rapid: “in the 1960s, there was no such thing as an average eater across most countries, just lots of specific and wildly divergent patterns of eating.” (p. 21)

In my opinion the spirit of the book is characterized by this statistical summary: “Perhaps the biggest change is in the quantities that we eat—around 500 calories on average more than our equivalents in the 1960s (from 2,237 calories in 1961 to 2,756 calories in 2009). … When you strip away the packaging, the recipes, and the brand names, most humans—from Rio to Lagos—are getting a sizeable majority of our energy from meat, sugar, refined wheat, rice, and refined vegetable oil.” (p. 21-23)

Wilson sees a self-reinforcing trend of  impoverished, though calorie-heavy, diets. She says “It’s hard to disentangle cause and effect here. Obesity contributes to poverty, and then poverty makes it harder to escape obesity. We know that across the world, lower socioeconomic status is associated with higher rates of obesity.” The issue is that this food is of a particularly unhealthy sort, specifically:  “More than half of the calorie intake in the United States—57.9 percent—now consists of ultra-processed food,” (pp. 71 and 88)

The American diet has changed along with much else about the American lifestyle, especially the decline in home-cooking:

“The economist Gary Becker (1930–2014) first articulated, in 1965, the idea that Americans had changed from people who economized on food into people who were frugal with time. Becker’s article ‘A Theory of the Allocation of Time’ was a groundbreaking essay that helped established a novel branch of economics: New Home Economics. Becker and his colleague at Columbia University, Jacob Mincer, were interested in explaining human behavior in terms of domestic households rather than seeing our actions as purely individual. … Partly what has changed is the way that time in households is divided up between the sexes. Since the 1930s, men of working age have done on average less paid work, but women have done a great deal more. American women did eleven more hours of paid work per week in the year 2000 than they did in 1970. This colossal social change was bound to have knock-on effects on the rest of life, leaving both men and women hard-pressed to find time to cook.” ( p. 132-133)

There are many little observations that make reading this book fun. For example: “Bananas are a quintessential modern food in that they are overwhelmingly grown in tropical regions but eaten in temperate ones.” (p. 28)  All in all, Wilson provides a very interesting collection of ideas about food.

An Unfortunate Parallel

In the current edition of the Guardian I read an article that seems to be an unfortunate parallel to what Wilson is saying — specifically, about how rich people are profiting from everyone else’s misfortune. The title of the article is a good summary: "Super-rich get ‘double dividend’ from causes and costs of climate crisis, report finds. Oxfam says investing by rich in disaster recovery widens inequality and gives incentive to delay climate action." 

I was particularly interested in the author’s observation about the food industry. Various events, “caused by extreme weather or war – have tended to boost the profits of major food trading companies that are dominated by billionaires, whose wealth has increased by $120bn since 2020. When drought, floods or storms hit crops, any subsequent increase in food prices tends to disproportionately benefit big corporations and their investors at the cost of small producers and regular consumers.” (link)

Blog post © 2026 mae sander

More Halloween in My Neighborhood

Photos © 2026 mae sander

Good Eats

Leek and Potato Soup

We ate this for lunch. It was quite nice. The recipe is from the New York Times.

Black Beans

Recent lunch: black beans and tortillas dished up with my special Halloween spatula.

Halloween Dish Towel

Hanging on the stove handle near the soup pot.

Breakfast Treat

A bit sweeter than our mothers’ blintzes, but not bad. Len made sauteed apples to go with the blintzes.

Friday Lunch at Totoro Sushi

The restaurant is named for the film “My NeighborTotoro” and has themed decor.

Chirashi sushi bowl.

Photos © 2026 mae sander

Reading

Much of this book is a repeat of the authors’ earlier works,
but I’m reading on hoping for something new.

Scary Spooky Displays AND Has Agatha Christie been brought back from the dead?

Halloween in Our Neighborhood

My Shadow.

In our neighborhood the elaborate Halloween decor is showing up.

Agatha Christie:

Not Brought Back From the Dead

It must have been magic. Agatha Christie had a magic all her own, and this book, by modern author Lucy Foley, doesn’t have it. Christie’s famous Miss Marple is claimed to be here, though she’s not as vividly portrayed as in the original books. There’s a classically restricted setting — a ski resort that’s temporarily snowed-in. Several of the characters who are present at the resort have a motive for the murder that takes place, and any one of them could have had the opportunity. The method is straightforward — poison in a drink. Method… motive… opportunity: the classic trio. And the author uses a gimmick of having four different narrators — well, it’s gimmicky.

Unfortunately, this sequel just didn’t engage me the way that the original Miss Marple books did. Yes, I read them all — though it was quite a long time ago. As for this one: I ended up not even reading very carefully. I think I’m starting to forget it!

I’m disappointed, I guess, but not really surprised. There will never be another Agatha Christie — she published so many wonderful mysteries until her death in 1976. Even though it’s Halloween, you can’t bring her back.