If you ask me what I remember from the Halloweens of my youth, it's always the candy. Not the costume, but the candy. In fact, as I'm writing this, I can't think of a single costume I wore as a kid, save for that ridiculous one-piece clown outfit that my grandmother had sewn for the family (and our mom made each of us kids wear at the appropriate age, as if it were a rite of passage to deal with the utter embarrassment of the damn thing).

Yes, Halloween was always about scoring candy. After our evening rounds, my older sister and I would spread out our loot on the living room floor and negotiate trades for the candies we liked. I always hated Sweet Tarts; those were easy to give up. Most of the miniature chocolate bars were non-negotiable; Three Musketeers, Baby Ruth, Nestle Crunch (especially Nestle Crunch!), and Snickers were my protected players. Mounds, Butterfingers, and Almond Joy were imminently tradable.  The candy corn were like minor league players; you might have to throw in a few to complete a trade.

Junk food was obviously my reason for wearing any clown outfit on Halloween. I've mostly given up junk food as an adult — although the occasional afternoon candy bar craving still hits — but I still associate Halloween with food. So do a lot of others, including chefs and bartenders.

After the jump, I've aggregated a number of Halloween recipes, events, odd-ball items, and party round-ups from around the web (thanks all for doing the work already!). Many of these dishes, recipes, and cocktails sound, alternately, funny and inventive and maybe even tasty (or nasty). Frankly, I miss the thrill of trick or treating for my haul.

• BrightestYoungThings has compiled a list of Halloween food events and scary cocktails.
• Speaking of scary cocktails, The Passenger has boiled up some hellish concoction called El Zombie, which the Brothers Brown will serve up to the brave (or foolish) during their Halloween Fiesta.
• Y&H's very own Stefanie Gans has compiled an extensive list of Halloween drinks for the occasion. Best cocktail name ever: Brain Hemorrhage.
• Metrocurean has a list of seven scary dishes to try.
• Serious Eats counts down the best and worst Halloween candies.
• Chow wants to help you dress as your favorite celebrity chef for Halloween. (If you go as Paula Deen, just make sure your pants fall down at some point.)
• Chow also suggests you make your own candy this year.
• Girl Meets Food has compiled a fairly comprehensive list of events under the  heading of Ghoul Meets Food.
• Twenty ways to cook a pumpkin from Epicurious.
• Food & Wine makes a skull cake.
• Metromix has your guide to the local party spots.

Photo by StarMama via Flickr Creative Commons, Attribution License

As promised last week in my '70s-era Bond recap, BrightestYoungThings has published a series of photos exposing the innards of our fridge in Takoma Park.  I feel simultaneously honored and violated. They even found my Kraft singles, which were sitting in plain sight next to our iGourmet cheeses.

If questioned about them, I was willing to defend those Kraft singles to the death. To the death, I tell you! Fortunately, no one asked. You can see the whole refrigerated expose over at BYT.com.

It's an issue that brick-and-mortar restaurants have been bitching about in other cities for awhile now: that food carts and food trucks steal their business. Now the battle has reached the D.C. area. We Love DC reports that the beloved District Taco has been forced to relocate because of complaints from Baja Fresh in Rosslyn.

This David vs. Goliath battle leads our latest edition of Food News You Can Use, if only because it gives you a glimpse into the tactics that an overextended chain will employ to stay alive.

More local food news after that jump.

• A car crashes into Rhodeside Grill in Arlington. [via ARL Now]
• Still no word on whether Wagamama has given up on D.C. [via WBJ's Top Shelf]
• A wood-oven pizzeria opens in Silver Spring, run by a guy from a long line of pizzaioli back in Naples. [via Urban Daddy]
• Scheiße! The much anticipated Biergarten Haus opening has been delayed. [via Frozen Tropics]
• WaPo wonders if the Obama White House really has the willpower to lower childhood obesity. [via All We Can Eat]
• Seaton Smith turns Cochon 555 into a long comedy routine. [via BrightestYoungThings]
• An early look at Slaviya, the Eastern European outpost that gobbled up the old Left Bank space in AdMo. [via Thrillist]
• District Taco is promising to rise again tomorrow — at a new location.

A look inside Todd Kliman's refrigerator

This morning, one of the BrightestYoungThings founders, the statuesque Svetlana, started pawing through my refrigerator, asking all sorts of invasive questions about the products stored in there. She even brought along a photographer,  Jeff Martin, to catalog everything.

I felt like I was in a Roger Moore-era Bond movie — without the sex, violence, or unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanisms.

Maybe I should have mixed them a martini — shaken, not stirred — as they went about their work. Or maybe I should have made myself a martini. I mean, I didn't realize how thorough Svetlana and Jeff would be. They were pulling apart our fridge, looking for the crappy yellow mustards and sticky bottles of ketchup that I had hidden in the back. They acted like they were looking for state secrets, not putting together a fun little Food Month feature for the BYT site.

Had I done my homework, though, I would have noticed that Svetlana had done much the same to the fridges of Washingtonian critic Todd Kliman and Buzz Bakery's Josh Short.

Both of their fridges look suspiciously clean and well-stocked (well, well-stocked beyond the beer/wine/condiments/leftovers/dog food that rule our fridge in Takoma Park). I promised Svetlana that I wouldn't clean my fridge up too much.  I also said that I refused to take down the semi-embarrassing "literature" magnetized to the fridge door or add vegetables to the crisper to make it look like I shop at farmers markets more than I do.

So whenever you get a peek into my fridge on BYT — look for it one day soon — you'll get a genuine peek into our real lives, only slightly cleaned up. I'm sorry, I had to ditch those old yogurt containers. I had no need to knock-out my kitchen interlopers with moldy yogurt, even if it would have made for a nice Bond-like moment.

Photo courtesy of Jeff Martin and BrightestYoungThings

Guess which trend got dissed by local food writers?

Yes, it's started already: The lists. The roundups. The endless regurgitation of the year's best and worst in dining trends/meals/restaurants/chefs/bathroom door handles. We love 'em, and we hate 'em.

BrightestYoungThings gets out of the gate early with its D.C. Foodie Writer 2009 Wrap Up, which includes bloggers such as Capital Spice, Endless Simmer, DCist, and DC Gastronome. BYT's Alex Nicholson also asked a few of us dead-tree media types to contribute, including Young & Hungry.

You can get the full blast of our gastronomic gas-baggery over at BYT. Oh, and by the way, Young & Hungry will contribute more such gas-baggery at the end of the year, when I roll out my list of Best New Restaurants of 2009.

It's a short work week, and we at Young & Hungry Central have just the thing you need: beer and dining recommendations for the Fourth. We also have something for your reading pleasure:

The top blog posts of the week.

1. Obama Ate Here: The Working Map (with apologies and gratitude to BrightestYoungThings)
2. What Did Your $10 Ticket Get You at the Safeway Barbecue Battle?
3. On July 4th Weekend, Buy American Beer
4. Breadline Busted on 19 Health Code Violations, Ten of Them Critical
5. Dairy Godmother's Owner Doesn't Want the Obama Bump That Ray's Hell Burger Got

Photo by cristinabe via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution License

Alex Nicholson over at BrightestYoungThings got bored and decided to put together a Google map on where the Obama family has eaten since they moved into the White House. As Nicholson writes, "If you tell your boss you are making an 'Obama Ate Here' Google Map, and she says it's a good idea, it's okay to do it at work."

If you haven't read it yet, the Post's Reliable Source talked to Amanda McClements, Don Rockwell, and me about the Obamas' dining habits, which have already generated a major bump for Ray's Hell Burger and an unwanted bump at the Dairy Godmother.