Get your festive on with this healthy Halloween salad made with black rice and blood oranges and a few other ingredients that keep to this holiday theme. While the kids (and seniors) might be game for a full night of candy, caregivers need nourishment to survive a night of horrors. Eat this salad, then hit the candy and feel a little better about your life choices come morning.

Ingredients:

Cooked black rice
Chopped purple kale
Cooked then chopped red beets (small chop)
Some black olives, sliced
Crumbled Goat Cheese
Blood Orange segmented (Click here for a how-to)
Parsley
Vinegar based dressing

Directions

Rub some oil into the kale leaves and roast in the oven if you want it crispy (I'm a fan personally but this step is not necessary).
In a bowl, mix the kale and rice together in your desired proportions.
Place a serving of the rice mix on a plate.
Top with your beets and black olives.
Sprinkle on some goat cheese
Add the blood orange segments
Top with a little parsly and the vinegar based dressing of your choice.

Sorry for the lack of specific measurements on this recipe but you know… salads ain’t rocket science and Halloween is a holiday that’s supposed to be scary. Take a risk yo! And enjoy the blood bath. Beets never disappoint when it comes to a good spook. They’re always good for a nice stain of the hands and a brief scare in the bathroom if you know what I mean…;)

“You’re not hemorrhaging. It’s just the beets!”

And for an additional fright, please enjoy these photos of my dad and I celebrating Halloween night. We had a good run with wigs which seemed to be the backbone of our costumes every year. We started things out by just getting “dressed-up”. Wigs, a hat, and feather boa was enough to call us “festive”. But as the years went by we honed our looks. We pulled off Wayne and Garth from Wayne’s World one year before celebrating our last Halloween together as ET and Elliot.

The holidays were always fun. As a caregiver to parents with Alzheimer’s and dementia, I would often wonder if my efforts to celebrate any “festive” event would be in vain. I’d question if I was making more work for myself by decorating the house or preparing elaborate meals, knowing they wouldn’t understand, participate, or remember that said time was significant. But as I look back at this Halloween photo gallery and see our smiles and remember the laughs, I find myself comforted by the memories. The post caregiver life takeaway isn’t the stress or hassle of going through the holiday motions just because I felt we should. Rather, it’s the reminder that on this day and every holiday, the day itself was different. For short periods of time we managed to part ways with the monotony of long term, end of life care. On these days we actually lived life more fully. They are the moments that now standout. Don’t get me wrong; we had our share of nightmares. But Halloween and every other holiday that felt like a forced celebration was actually an escape from the nothingness. It was something and it was worth it!

Happy Hauntings!