The Miracle of Halloween

It's Friday at the ACBN, and I've got an essential cookbook recommendation, a second go at a questionable idea in mixology, some spooky glam rock and more!

Halloween isn’t a holiday we often associate with miracles.

It’s a frivolous holiday, a mishmash of light paganism and heavy commercialism that gives us one last chance to get silly outside before the dead-seriousness of the winter holidays sets in, what with all the giving of thanks and silent nights and resolutions and so forth.

Still, between the 12-foot skeletons and slutty minion costumes, I feel like we sleep on what a special thing Halloween actually is.

I’ve seen a sentiment expressed on social media that the public library is a thing we absolutely could not create today if it didn’t already exist—that the idea of collectively funding a place where people could simply read books for free instead of paying for them would be laughed out of the room in our profit-focused present day. 

I think there’s a good deal of truth to that notion, and I think that Halloween would be a similarly-tough pitch if we didn’t already have it.

I mean, we just have kids walk up to strangers’ doors and ask for a small gift? And the strangers give it to them?

Can you *imagine* suggesting this if it weren’t already the norm?

It’s wild that we have it.

I’m fortunate to live in a neighborhood with high participation in Trick-or-Treat, and lucky to have kids who still want me to go with them while they fill their bags with candy. It’s one of my favorite nights of the year, mostly because it’s a chance to really feel like I belong to a community. I spend Christmas and Thanksgiving with family. I spend Labor Day and the Fourth of July with friends. I spend Halloween with my entire neighborhood, including people I don’t see but once a year. Some of them earn a permanent place on my mental map based on this single night.

That’s the house that gave the kids Pokémon cards. That’s the house that gives them full-size candy bars. That’s the house that gives the adults cocktails.

(Rest assured, as soon as the kids age out of having me with them, I will become the latter two at the same time. I dread my kids getting too old for me, but I am so ready to be a Cool House.)

In a society as paranoid, divided and car-centric as we are today, the existence of Halloween as we know it is a miracle. We shouldn’t take it for granted.

You know what else we shouldn’t take for granted? Friday.

I mean, sure, it does come once every week—but some weeks it takes a lot longer to get there than others. However winding your path to Friday has been, the ACBN is here waiting to usher you into the weekend with a fully-loaded slate of Certified Good Things.

Today, I’ve got an essential cookbook recommendation, a second go at a questionable idea in mixology, some spooky glam rock for your Halloween enjoyment, and more! 

It’s Friday. No tricks. Just treats.

We’re not done talking about chili. Something’s missing.

I’m going to do something a little different today for the section of the newsletter where I normally feature a recipe.

You see, earlier this week, I re-shared five recipes, each of them a distinct type of chili that I think could help you win a chili cookoff—or at least make an autumn Saturday a bit better.

How to Win a Chili Cookoff and/or an Election

There’s one thing that every chili needs, though—and that’s a good cornbread to go with it. (I prefer to crumble cornbread straight into my chili, to be clear.)

Rather than sharing a specific recipe for cornbread today, I have to share a full-throated recommendation for a brand-new cookbook—Anne Byrn’s excellent Baking in the American South: 200 Recipes and Their Untold Stories.

Anne and I first became acquainted in 2022, when we were both among the food writers honored with Substack’s inaugural (and to date, only) Food Writing Fellowship.

Unlike me—a dipshit home cook who puts chili in things it doesn’t belong in—Anne is a serious food writer, author of multiple bestselling cookbooks and former food editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Tennessean. In addition to her cookbook writing, she publishes

Anne Byrn: Between the Layers

, one of my favorite newsletter subscriptions.

Her new book features tons of recipes, each with stories illuminating the history and diversity of Southern baking. When I made chili last week, the very next thing I did was crack open the book and make a Brown Butter Cornbread to go along with it.

I won’t actually re-share the whole recipe since it’s not mine to share (you should just buy the cookbook) but I will tell you that I couldn’t resist adding my own Action Cookbook spin to things: before stirring the brown butter into the cornbread batter, I melted a couple tablespoons of gochujang paste into it, and it gave a lovely amount of heat to the cornbread. You should think about putting gochujang brown butter in your cornbread, if you’re so inclined.

Anyhow, this is a long-winded intro to me telling you that I’ll be joining Anne for the Louisville stop on her book tour, when she visits Carmichael’s Bookstore on Thursday, November 14th at 7pm.

If you’re in Louisville or nearby, you should come!

Now, back to my regular tomfoolery, including a corn recipe I will share:

It’s corn… that tastes like candy!

When it comes to Halloween candy, my tastes are… unconventional. That is—I don’t like a lot of Halloween candy! Chewy stuff? No thanks. Gummy stuff? Absolutely not. Sour? Not in my beer or my candy. Stretchy? Why would you make that?

I’m pretty much only on board with the chocolates and peanut butters, and everything else can get lost.

With one notable exception, that is.

I like candy corn.

This is likely as divisive a statement as my embrace of Skyline Chili, but just like that preference, it’s not a lie or a troll. I genuinely like candy corn, and I think it gets a bad rap. I will happily eat it while blithely shaking off the scorn of candy corn haters.

Heck, I even decided to make a cocktail inspired by it for today.