Man, do I love this Halloween decorating trick: Dead Man’s Icy Hands. 

To make one, all you do is fill a clean NON-LATEX glove (some people are allergic to latex) with water, tie off the end, and stick it in your freezer for a couple of hours. Peel off the plastic, and you’re done.

To make the punch pictured above, combine 1 chilled 750ml bottle of vodka and 2 chilled 2-liter bottles of lemon-lime soda in a punch bowl. Add some red food coloring to make it bloody-looking, and then stick your dead hand right in the center. Pour in some marshmallows, and then squirt more red food coloring over the whole mess to make it even scarier-looking. 

Photo and recipe from Drinkoftheweek.

One of my favorite ways to use garlic is the simplest way: garlic bread. I cut major, major corners with this one, and have been known to just slather slices of french bread with butter and top them with loads of garlic salt, and then pop them in the oven at 250F until golden brown. 

A more elegant way to prepare garlic bread is to mince a few garlic cloves, saute the garlic in heaps of butter, and then distribute the butter/garlic mixture over the sliced bread before sticking it all in the oven. You might even want to try topping it all off with a bit of lemon zest and chives, as in the picture above. 

Reader Natalie suggests just mixing minced garlic with softened room-temperature butter before toasting, so as to avoid breaking out the saute pans. The leftover garlic butter can be easily stored for future use.  

Photo credit: 101Cookbooks.com