Tomato and Goat Cheese Tart

When I was a kid, my mom had a book called "Jane Asher's Fancy Dress," a costume how-to book, and my sister and I loooooved paging through it.

Now the book sits on my own bookshelf, and it is my daughter who likes imagining herself in the costumes. She asked whether I could make her a pixie-on-a-toadstool costume, and that was the genesis of our family Halloween costumes this year.

Those aren't her real legs!

I have made a lot of elaborate family Halloween costumes in the last few years, and guess what? We've never won a costume contest, though we've placed second or third repeatedly. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride, so maybe we'll dress up as bridesmaids next year.

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

Back in the present, my friend Ginge "The British Realtor" Calhoun and her real estate team offered a refreshing alternative to the usual candy at Maplewood's Halloween parade: environmentally friendly bamboo toothbrushes! And with rainbow bristles, they were even more appealing than sugar to my backup dancer.

Bamboo toothbrush

Cutting back on plastics with alternatives like bamboo is a smart choice for the environment, and so is cutting back on meat. We recently tried NYT Cooking's (subscription required) "Tomato and Goat Cheese Tart."

I am a big fan of a tomato pie recipe from A Garden For The House (although I modify that recipe with a lot of yogurt and a pastry crust), but this tart is quite a bit different. The crust of the tart is really sort of breadstick-like, in a good and interesting way.

As you know, I'm incapable of making a recipe without screwing something up, and this time I neglected to spread mustard on the crust. I do think it would have benefited from that. It would have offered, I presume, a little extra depth of flavor that this tart needed. But it was still good.