Five Easy Food Costume Ideas for Halloween

I don't like Halloween. It's an adult holiday now, what with all the sexy nurses and sexy pirates and -- I'm going to go out on a limb and hazard a guess here -- this year way too many Michael Jackson-inspired costumes of questionable propriety.

At any rate, even before declaring war on Halloween, I found choosing a costume stressful. True story: The last time I went to a Halloween party, I waited until the last minute before buying a cheap rubber alien mask from Target and pairing that with a cheap suit. I told people I was an Intergalactic Insurance Adjustor -- until, that is, the mask became too uncomfortable to wear and I was just that weird dude at the costume party in a cheap suit.

Here, using the same creativity and thrift that produced the Intergalactic Insurance Adjustor, I offer you five ideas for food-related Halloween costumes that won't set you back much dough -- ha ha! -- but will make sure you're the talk of the party. Especially if you wait until your office's Christmas party to use them.

1. Buy a small metal crate (like you would use for training a puppy) and a rubber pig's nose. Or an actual pig's head, as pictured above. Whatever. Remove the bottom of the cage, put on the pig's nose and then lower the cage over your head and shoulders. Voila! You're a CAFO animal. Try to maintain a disaffected or even distressed expression as you trick-or-treat.

2. Wrap yourself from shoulders to feet in a beige or off-white blanket. Wrap the lower half of the blanket in aluminum foil. Affix green, red and white tissue paper to your head and neck. Voila! You're a burrito.

Among the foodie set, I imagine Julia Child will be a popular costume -- if wearing a curly-hair wig and an apron, carrying a soup spoon and doing a horrible impersonation of Julia Child's voice can be called a costume. Be ambitious, foodies!

3. OK, so do your lame-ass Julia Child costume but then fill a hot-water bottle with fake blood and strap it to your torso. Run a tube from the bottle down your arm so that it ends just below your sleeve. In this hand hold an onion, in the other hand a kitchen knife. Walk around your Halloween party pretending to chop the onion, every so often giving the hot-water bottle a squeeze so that blood seems to shoot out of your hand. Voila! You're Dan Aykroyd as Julia Child.

4. Tie a white bedsheet around your body so that it resembles a toga. Wear this with sandals and, if you can rustle one up, a crown of laurels. Fry up several pounds of bacon and crumble the pieces into a sturdy sack. Walk around showering other party-goers or trick-or-treaters with the bacon, proclaiming, "I am the God of Pork Belly."

(Note: This is also acceptable as a Valentine's Day seduction technique. Allow bacon to cool before showering on naked flesh.)

5. Put a paper bag over your head and a stick up your ass. Voila! You're a restaurant critic.