Sweet goodness amid Halloween gore

LIANE FAULDER There’s a lot of fuss nowadays about Halloween, with whole drugstore aisles devoted to ghoulish greeting cards, and entire pop-up stores, big ones, shilling amputated limbs and zombie sluts. Some feel it’s a bit much, and decry the trend toward commercially driven celebrations.

I am not one of those people. I like Hallmark holidays on Halloween or Valentine’s Day, because I am always hoping that someone will give me a present, or at least some candy.

In fact, I really wish I had been born at the same time as my sons, who are part of the millennial generation and seem to do a bang-up job of Halloween. Instead of crazily building a career, saving for a house and popping out babies like me in my 20s, today’s millennials are eating in hip restaurants and going to Italy, not to mention having great parties featuring costumes inspired by Grumpy Cat.

Even when they were little, my sons seemed to have more fun with Halloween than my generation, what with all the orange cupcakes sprouting black licorice whiskers in the classroom, and parades around the school in costumes worth the equivalent of my weekly grocery bill.

When I was a kid, there was none of that kind of fun. My brother Warren and I were either dressed as old ladies or hobos (shocking amounts of hobo discrimination were tolerated in those days). Still, our little brother Graham would have been thrilled with even those sad displays. That’s because he always had chickenpox at Halloween and sat in the living room wrapped in a blanket, looking mournfully out the front window as a parade of hobos and old ladies waltzed by dragging pillow cases full of caramels.

Nobody can tell me that was a better way to live.

So, today, in my efforts to support a modern Halloween that goes on for weeks, I present a tasty Halloween recipe created by the Dairy Farmers of Canada.