Email Elizabethcancel halloween
If You’re a Halloween Party Pooper, Come Sit Down Next to Me
You can’t walk into any professional service office in Sacramento and not find it decorated in some sort of PC-tasteful Halloweeny stuff. The sort of stuff you imagine a committee spent hours pondering. Like, OK, hanging stuffed scarecrows on the cabinet knobs suggest a fall theme, and not necessarily a human sacrifice theme, so let’s use those. Pumpkins, OK. Knives and daggers and blood, not OK. It’s all so lame and blasé. But the hospital staff at U.C. Davis hope to brighten your day and keep employees engaged, morale high and the spirit of Halloween can be found in a candy dish, wrapped singular, of course.
My neighbor down the street hangs out a Halloween flag, or maybe it’s an autumnal flag with leaves on it, signaling to all passersby what time of year it is because otherwise we would be uninformed. I should mention that lots of noteworthy events have happened on Halloween. For example, the great Harry Houdini died on Halloween. The Donner party initiated camp on Halloween. They set off the first thermonuclear bomb in the Marshall Islands the year I was born on Halloween. I had my first wedding on Halloween. And it’s a holiday today that children almost everywhere in the world celebrate, alongside their parental figures. Nobody would ever dream of canceling Halloween except probably for me. Because after 60 years of it, that’s enough.
I’m just one big party pooper. Don’t wanna dress up, not even if it means I could masquerade as Donald Trump. Hey, I’ve got the blonde hair. Don’t wanna hand out candy, either. My husband and I tend to buy really horrid candy, stuff nobody really likes, so when we have leftover candy, we’re not tempted to eat it. I cannot tell you how many boxes of exploding Willy Wonka Nerds I am capable of pouring down my throat, and that’s just about the worst candy ever.
The last time I can recall wearing a costume on Halloween was when I lived in the foothills of Tustin in southern California, circa 1980, with my second husband, now dead. We owned and managed an investment club, of sorts, made up of mostly real estate agents who hoped to hit the big time by buying investment property in Orange County, and we invited all 500 of those guys to our home for a Halloween party. We had bought a huge home with several wings and an indoor pool, much of which we never utilized. During the party, our septic tank backed up and flooded our sidewalk. We blamed it on Halloween.
Three years ago we went to the Kitchen Restaurant for Halloween, but have since discovered other opportunities to avoid the celebration. For example, lots of homeowners in Sacramento, I hear, just turn off their lights and sit in the dark on Halloween. Fortunately, our street in Land Park doesn’t seem to attract a lot of kids anymore, and it’s out of the way for most Trick-or-Treaters to visit. I think my husband is picking up a pumpkin at Sacramento Natural Foods, though and, thanks to Martha Stewart, the trendy thing now is to drill quarter-size holes in your pumpkin and stick in a candle. No more smiley or frowny faces, just a bunch of holes in a vegetable. That, we can probably manage.
Go to The Kitchen Restaurant and Cancel Halloween
A Halloween alternative for those of us with homes in Land Park. Here is another option if you’re ever thinking about a way to cancel Halloween. My husband tacked a note to the front of our home in Land Park. It told visitors that werewolves lived there and we were out because it was a full moon last night. Perhaps you came by and spotted that note? The note also said if you took more than one piece of candy from the bowl on the front porch that zombies would eat your brains. Which reminds me that I have to see if there is a new version out of that Plants vs. Zombies computer game. No, there is not. Not until spring. Darn Pop Cap.
Our idea of canceling Halloween last night entailed going to The Kitchen Restaurant for a 4-hour dinner and a flight of wine. They call it a flight of wine because flying is exactly what you feel like doing after consuming all of that wine. True, you’re also stuffing food down your face to soak up much of that alcohol, but it’s still a lot of wine to drink with dinner. I shared my flight of wine with my husband, but he couldn’t drink much of it because he was our designated driver. This is a reason in itself to get married. Designated driver. Otherwise, both of you would have to take a cab.
The last time we were at The Kitchen was the day after Thanksgiving. My sister was in town from Minneapolis, so we hauled her and my niece out for a 7-course dinner at The Kitchen. As we were sitting at the counter at The Kitchen last night, my husband snapped a photo of me with his iPhone. He took the photo to send with a response to the text message my sister just sent him wishing us a Happy Halloween. He told her we were at The Kitchen. Except she had no idea where we were. I know her. She thought he meant we were huddled in the dark at home in our kitchen, avoiding trick or treaters. Because she knows us.
Nope, we were sitting at the counter at The Kitchen and spooning pumpkin bisque into our faces — followed by butter-poached maine lobster, swordfish, sea scallops, and a main entree of beef tenderloin with black truffle. I really enjoyed the apple pie dessert, with that delicious scoop of butter-chocolate crunch ice cream. All the ingredients at The Kitchen are farm fresh and mostly local. In fact, on Halloween yesterday, Mayor Kevin Johnson proclaimed Sacramento “America’s Farm to Fork Capital.” It’s true, he held a ceremony downtown, attended by all the top chefs in Sacramento.
I tell you the thing that really struck home with me last night was how passionate everybody is about their job at The Kitchen. There is a hierarchy but also a strong team spirit among the cooks and staff. There is distinct honor and respect among the workers. It’s clear that the job is serious business and everybody takes pride in their work. You don’t see that commitment to quality in many other establishments around town. In fact, you don’t see that passion in other professions, either. except maybe that of a Sacramento real estate agent. I care deeply, for example, whether my clients are happy at closing. When people say there is no pride in American jobs anymore, they should check out our restaurants in Sacramento.
When we got home to Land Park, we found our note still stuck to the front door. There were still a few pieces of candy in the bowl on the porch, too. They didn’t take everything. They also did not stomp on our Cinderella pumpkin. Yay! The kids in Land Park are a good bunch of kids.
