Scary Halloween Party Foods: Five Appetizers To Gross Out Your Guests

I love Halloween! It's the one time of year when your imagination and your mind play tricks on you. Believing becomes more important than seeing, and what you see is not always what you get.

Use this feeling of trickery to your advantage with food. For your holiday get together or Halloween party, here are five appetizers to gross out your guests.

Think scary, spooky, slimy, and yucky. Think body parts, fluids, bugs, and bogs. Think dark, secluded woods full of slinking creatures, cemeteries full of shadows, and something out of the corner of your eye.

Now put those feelings into your food. Keep the mood going as you concoct.

Start with blood.

Make some kind of a red dip. You can use pizza sauce with cheese, a beet dip, or something made from raspberries or strawberries, like a jam. Call it something like Bloody Dip. Think of a creative name for the dippers. Call bread sticks Witch Fingers, or carrot sticks Zombie Fingers. Use pita chips and call them Mummified Skin Flakes.

Add some guts.

Something stringy will work great here. A pasta salad, made with spirals or noodles, can pass for intestines. Make sure it has something like corn or small pieces of onion or olives or chopped nuts. A Chinese chicken salad will work well. Call it Intestines Salad, or Ghost Guts.

Now for the vomit.

Think of something chunky and yellowish or greenish colored. A curried dip or cream cheese spread with chutney on top is both delicious and gross looking. Mix everything together, to get a sort of runny substance with small bits and pieces in it. If it has parmesan cheese, it'll even smell like vomit. Of course, put a label on it and call it Cat Barf Spread, or Vampire Vomit.

Add some pond scum.

Use your favorite greenish soup. Cream of spinach or split pea are perfect. If you have some stringy vegetables in there too, that adds to the mood. If you can get some spooky bowls to serve them from, even better.

Here come the bugs.

Take some dried dates. Make a filling out of cream cheese, some bacon bits, chopped nuts, and a few chopped herbs. Stuff the dates with this mixture, and label them Stuffed Roaches. For extra realism, use the tips of green onions as antennae.

Your guests will be grimacing as they are gulping down your delicious food. Or trying to, at least! Try these gross Halloween appetizers at your next party, and see what happens! Bone Appetit!