Halloween is one of our favorite holidays! There’s just something really fun about getting dressed up and walking around with friends collecting yummy treats. Even better, it’s an excuse to invite all our neighbors and friends over for snacks.

For Halloween, I’m not into all the gore and vampire stuff, but I do love to make fun food. I like to make spaghetti with eyeballs – I make meatballs and put a green olive with pimiento in the center for a little creepy fun – and I make Spider Web Dip.

We’ve all been there, that dreaded moment at 3pm when we realize nothing is planned for dinner. So what do you do? Go out to eat? Make a frozen pizza?

My hubby grew up on great oatmeal cookies, lovingly prepared by his grandma and his mom - Land O’Lakes’ very own test kitchens guru, Becky. And while I prefer the oatmeal cookies with chocolate chips, his very favorites are Oatmeal Raisin Cookies. In the three years we’ve been married, I have pretty much avoided making this dessert, because seriously, people! how can a young wife live up to her mother-in-law’s cooking skills when she is the director of a test kitchen?! Fortunately, Becky is a great encourager and Ryan is always willing to try whatever I attempt. And since marriage is all about sharing and sacrifice, I decided it was time to give my hubby’s favorite cookies a shot. Ryan was delighted by the treat and he even had extras to share at work!

I love to dig into a good book, and over the years I’ve found friends, family and co-workers who feel the same. We share laughs, our ideas and our recommendations. And though it’s fun to discuss books casually, this love of reading has often made me wish that I could be part of an official book club. The opportunity just never arose… until now. At the end of this summer I thought, “Why don’t I start my own book club?” So, I gathered some friends, we set an autumn start date and our literary society began. First things first: we voted on a kick-off book – a memoir from a local Holocaust survivor (a fascinating story, by the way). Then came the next crucial question, “what will we do for food?”

I have toyed a little with Indian cooking, learning the bits and pieces I know from my world-traveling husband and friends who are versed in Ayurveda, an Indian science that includes healthful methods for cooking. One of the simplest ingredients used in Ayurvedic cooking is ghee – basically butter that is simmered until the solids separate. Then, the clear golden liquid is poured off and used like oil in cooking. The beauty of this is that the resulting ghee performs more like oil, handling higher temperatures, but has the flavor of butter. You can buy ghee, but it is so easy to make your own using only one easy-to-find ingredient: a pound of unsalted butter.

What’s easier than whipping up a quick ham and cheese sandwich? With three hungry girls and little time to devote to dinner (especially during the week), we usually look for something quick and easy to make for dinner. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich, bowl of cereal, ramen noodles, and spaghetti-o’s are some of the girls’ favorites. There’s always takeout, but we try to avoid it when possible. We typically only eat fast food once or twice a month. So with Jeremy out of town on business and dinner on my mind, I thought we’d try something new.

Every October Land O’Lakes Test Kitchens holds a bake sale to benefit the United Way. Everyone in the department rallies together to bake a multitude of yummy treats. One of the most popular treats we make is Favorite Caramel Corn. This year we plan on making approximately a dozen batches of this recipe. We then portion the caramel corn into small gift bags to sell at the bake sale to our fellow employees. We’ll have close to 100 bags of caramel corn. This event has become so popular there is typically a line of people waiting for us to open on sale day. This delicious caramel corn is one of the first treats to sell out.