What to Do with Halloween Candy?

Halloween means costumes and ghosts and haunted houses and lots and lots of candy. Here's what to do with it all.

So it's the day after Halloween, and my kids' school system, in their infinite wisdom, decides that today is the perfect day to give the teachers a professional study day and the kids a day off.

Oh sure, get the kids dressed up in costumes, give 'em candy until they're totally wired and keep them home the next day? Gee, thanks guys.

Next time, I want to see the members of the Board of Education in my kids' classrooms stringing beads for 24 pumpkin necklaces, leading the kids in freeze dance to the Monster Mash, and shlepping to 25 different houses in a never-ending quest to get the most candy of anyone in the neighborhood.

Ah, but it's all worth it, right?I mean how many other days a year do you find your pantry crowded with a dozen different kinds of candy?

Besides counting it, weighing it, trading it, and of course, eating it, what else can your kids do with their Halloween candy?

A local dentist offers to donate $1 to charity for every pound of candy he collects. If you can convince the kids to part with it (or swap some of it behind their backs), I think that's a great idea.

Then there's always bribing them. Buy a bunch of little toys and trinkets and give each one a price in candy (e.g., 3 Kit Kats for a superball, 4 lollipops for a bracelet, etc.). And of course, you can just very, very quietly take it to work, put it in a gift basket for the mail carrier or throw it out.

Shhh...I won't tell.

Um, I don't know about you, but I don't see the Board of Education stringing beads for 24 pumpkin necklaces for the class Halloween party. I don't see them dipping apples in caramel, spending hours gluing googly eyes to tissues to make lollipops into ghosts. And I certainly didn't see them schlepping to glue popcorn on a cardboard box for a popcorn box costume. Or schlepping to 25 houses with the kids trick-or-treating.