If ever a holiday was made for food crafting, Halloween is it. I LOVE Halloween. I’m an actor, after all—I wear costumes for a living! We both, of course, can’t quite entirely surrender to the candy onslaught that the holiday brings, so we like to have some control over the kids’ sugar intake this month. At my house, we practice a ritual that has proven to be so successful that friends have begun to adopt it. Before we leave the house to knock on doors, we allow the kids to pick ten treats from both the treats we baked and special-purchased good-quality chocolates. We label them and stash them in a cupboard. After the kids return with buckets and bags full of candy, they eat the squirreled-away candy and donate what they’ve collected to the less fortunate. This way, they enjoy the thrill of trick-or-treating but don’t suffer the fallout of eating processed junk! Gia’s trick is to fill the kids up before they head out—with an open-house style buffet of pasta salads, vegetables, and lots of greens. We do what we can!