Several weeks ago I attended a meeting at Cody’s school. In attendance were two kindergarten teachers, the three other room moms, and various parents all there to organize the classroom Halloween party. Cody’s classroom shares one of those accordion type walls with another kindergarten room and the two teachers do a lot of co-teaching. They also open up the wall between the two rooms for all the classroom parties.  The more the merrier.

The discussion mainly focused on various stations the kids would have available to them: cookie decorating, mummy wrapping, hammering golf tees into pumpkins, gak (let me be very clear – I am referring only to the second definition of gak from urban dictionary NOT the first or third and certainly not the fifth.  I am also not advocating the use of gak for anything other than the making of farting noises or grossing out your friends.  On the second thought maybe I should just remove that link, but, yeah, no, I won’t.  Oh, and if the definitions should change ranking, thereby no longer coinciding with my disclaimer, I trust you to determine, via context, the appropriate usage.  Now where was I – oh, yeah), mini pumpkin bowling, and a table full of cooked noodles to muck about in. Fun times.  We talked briefly about the parade the kids would be in and how having extra hands to get costumes on would be helpful.  Then the topic of snacks came up; everyone agreed that the kids would be overexposed to candy, candy, and more candy and we did not need to contribute to that.

It was at this point that I opened my big mouth and said  “I have a great recipe for mini pumpkin muffins.”  Everyone looked at me like I was crazy while I continued to talk about how great this recipe was and that I could just whip up a couple batches so we could all have a somewhat healthy pumpkiny good snack.  And that was how I ended up volunteering to make mini muffins for about 46 kindergartners, 2 teachers, and who knows how many parents and younger siblings for Cody’s Halloween party.

So this morning I dusted off this lovely recipe I found last year at New Nostalgia and decided to bake a test batch.  The recipe called for a half can of pumpkin but it really seemed silly to have a half a can of pumpkin hanging around so I simply doubled it.  Something happened, I don’t think it was a miscalculation in the doubling (since they taste delicious), but I ended up with enough batter to make 100 mini muffins instead of the projected 50.  Oops.

Mmmm - mini pumpkin muffins.

Oh well, my house smells of pumpkin, clove, cinnamon, and nutmeg.  I have enough muffins to not only bring a plate up the hill to our neighbor, who recently and unexpectedly lost her husband, but I will also give some to Carter’s speech therapist and all four of the school bus drivers who shuttle my kids to school and back.

And perhaps I will go eat a couple more myself.