Halloween feels very different in California than it did where I grew up, in New York City. Tomorrow night I'm wishing for a cool, crisp, clear evening so my felted wool sailor suit will not stifle me. October 31 is always cold in the Northeast.

Tomorrow night I'll help make a dinner that will include late fruits of summer like strawberries and just arrived fruits like persimmons, and pomegranates. We'll throw in some heirloom white acorn squash from Annabelle Lenderink for good measure. (She's asked me to cook it up and get back to her-- not a bad assignment.) In NY strawberries and persimmons would never exist in the same sentence. And persimmons might never exist as a noun at all.

Tomorrow night I'll watch children giddily walking down Cortland Street in Bernal Heights, collecting sweet things from shop owners and neighbors. In New York City trick-or-treaters are climbing stairs and hitting elevator buttons. On the street, it's all about tricks, like smoke bombs in mailboxes and raw eggs thrown from anonymous windows.

This year marks the first year in a few where I will voluntarily participate in Halloween. I plan on donning an authentic American sailor suit and walk the streets unabashedly staring at costumes, snapping photos, talking to strangers, holding the hand of my cop-clad sweetie, and share in the mirth.

In recent years I lived on 16th street in the Castro and my only plans for this night were to sleep elsewhere. It's hard to enjoy people who keep you awake all night, vibrating bedroom windows with music, getting arrested and peeing on your front steps.

Will you be tricking or treating on Halloween?

Will you be hiding from the ruckus or making it? Dimming the lights and lighting candles or pulling your shades in tight? Hanging sheets from trees, carving pumpkins, roasting pumpkin seeds or reading your election booklet cover to cover? Will you tiptoe out your glowing orange fruity-veg to let the short folks know yours is a door whose bell they can ring?

Shuna's famous Naked Salad.

Pastry cheffing means coming from the world of themed holidays; royal icing in every color, thousands of cookies baked in shapes, and decorating well into the night. Food coloring becomes your friend. Hands and arms get slimy from reaching in to hollow out winter squash and gourds. For one month everything is orange and black.

Halloween's the easy part, next is Thanksgiving.

Halloween themed cupcakes at Poulet.
More pumpkin cupcakes can be found at Chokylit's Cupcake Bakeshop.

So live it up this year. Check out the latest candy miniatures. Get your fill of Beta Carotene. Take a gander or a gawk out your window. Spend some time on the streets absorbing the energy created during this nod to pagan history. Deliver tricks as well as treats. Carve a pumpkin or two. Let the flickery shadows of candles create whispery intrigue. Conjure ghosts, salt and roast pumpkin seeds, spatter the sink with pomegranate blood and celebrate

"A night of power, when the veil that separates our world from the Otherworld is at its thinnest." Mike Nichols

Whether you will be staying home to greet children with sweet treats to fill open bags and plastic jack-o' lantern pails, or donning masks and painting the town orange, I wish you a safe, and ever-so-slightly sinister evening.

Wednesday night's Lycheegate on Top Chef goes way beyond whether Otto Borsich was the only one to blame on Team Korea for the grand theft lychee from a LA Korean grocery store. (And by the way, he TOTALLY wasn't!)

First of all, one issue is the correct pronunciation. Some of the cheftestants pronounced it "lie-chee," while others favored, "lee-chee." Merriam-Webster offers both pronunciations, so perhaps there's an end to that debate.

Also hotly debated topic is the definition of "larceny." As in, "Did Otto commit lychee larceny?" A poster in the swelling Top Chef episode thread at Television Without Pity references text from the California Bar Exam:

This is not an authoritative source, but it reflects my memory of the continuing trespass doctrine:

"Continuing trespass: Wrongful taking of property without intent to permanently deprive (borrowing umbrella w/o permission), and D later decides to keep property, is guilty of larceny when D decides to keep. But not larceny if D thought umbrella was hers when she took it and later decides to keep it."

It's a very fine distinction. But if Otto thought the lychees were paid for, he then believed that the lychees were rightfully his at the moment of asportation. Therefore, he did not commit larceny.

I'll tell you what's certain, San Francisco pastry chef, Marisa Churchill, just pulled way ahead of Marcel "Teen Wolf" Vigneron in the Top Villain race. Her extreme pointing of fingers and frantic insistence that Otto was totally to blame for the purloined lychees was a clear attempt to keep the judges' fire and brimstone from raining down on her rock-hard panna cotta. Plus, she twisted her face up into all sorts of nasty expressions that put Tiffani's original bitchface to shame.

Lee Anne Wong -- one of last year's cheftestants and my personal season one favorite -- has her own blog at Bravo. Regarding Marisa's so-hard-you-could-bounce-a-quarter-off-it panna cotta, Lee Anne comments:

...I caught Marisa putting TABLESPOONS of knox gelatin in her recipe. If she miscalculated, even by a teaspoon, it can make all the difference in the world for the texture of your panna cotta.

Oh, the drama!