9 Foodie Halloween Costumes for the Farmers Market

Brie Mazurek, CUESA Staff
October 30, 2015

Illustration by Fred Noland.

It’s no wonder that the pumpkin is an iconic vegetable for Halloween: the celebration has its roots in agriculture, signaling the end of the harvest season in colder climes. It represents a time when the days get shorter, the leaves fall from the trees, and the natural world goes to sleep for the winter.

All this makes Halloween an especially appropriate holiday at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. Since it happens on a Saturday only once every six or seven years, we’re planning to make the most of it tomorrow, and we hope you will, too. Classic jack-o’-lanterns and scarecrows are of course welcome, but we came up with some modern (and pretty ridiculous) costume ideas to inspire creative Halloween foodie fashion.

The GMO Frankenfood: It’s ALIVE! Early attempts at a frost-tolerant tomato involved inserting an antifreeze gene from a flounder into a tomato, dubbed “the fish tomato.” This GMO experiment was never brought to market (RIP), but you can memorialize it as another freakish example of biotech gone awry.
What you need: tomato costume, fish fins, Frankenstein bolts

The Vegan Vampire: Twilight put the stake in the “vampire chic” coffin years ago, but the trend hasn’t totally been sucked dry. Revive it with this retro homage to the popular children’s book series Bunnicula, the vampire rabbit that drains beta-carotene-rich juice out of its vegetable victims.
What you need: costume rabbit head, Dracula cape, fangs, carrot

The Plastic Bag Mummy: You know that drawer full of plastic grocery bags you’ve been saving? It’s time to give those bags new life as your own one-person trash vortex! It’s estimated that we use 1 trillion plastic bags per year worldwide, and those bags take up to 1,000 years to break down. That’s biodegradability that only a mummy could love.
What you need: plastic bags, ribbon, safety pins

The Superfood: Food marketers are constantly on the hunt for the next hip food with cancer-fighting and anti-inflammatory superpowers: goji berries, seaweed, quinoa, chia seeds, turmeric. We prefer Golden Age classics like kale and collard greens—locally grown superheroes that pack a nutritional punch.
What you need: green leotard and tights, Superman “S” cutout, antioxidants and phytonutrients

Pumpkin Spice: Scary, Sporty, Baby, Ginger, and Posh, move over. When the Spice Girls disbanded in 2000, they made room for a sexy new Spice to come onto the scene, with an intoxicating autumnal blend of cinnamon, nutmeg, high-fructose corn syrup, caramel color, and potassium sorbate (yum!). The Spice Girls reunite every few years, but Pumpkin Spice makes its annual appearance each October in the form of cloyingly sweet (and usually pumpkin-less) lattes, cookies, candies, and even vodka.
What you need: orange jumpsuit and platform heels, orange wig, “natural” and artificial flavors

The Hipster Food Mashup: From the sushiritto to Scotch-egg muffins, San Francisco has always been on the cutting edge of outrageous and delicious food trends. Bring your wildest foodie mashup to life this Halloween. We’re thinking bacon-wrapped, ramen-crusted cronut burger, with an egg on top.
What you need: pieces from random food costumes, hipster tattoos, creativity

The Food Waste Zombie: Here’s a scary one: Americans waste 35 million tons of food per year. Much of that waste is due to confusing expiration dates that cause retailers and consumers to toss perfectly good food in the landfill, where it left to rot creating toxic greenhouse gasses. Avoid the food waste zombie apocalypse by bringing that prematurely buried food back from the dead.
What you need: zombie makeup, oversized milk carton with day-old sell-by date

The Imperfect Mr. or Mrs. Potato Head: What Grumpy Cat has done for our feline friends, the “ugly” fruits and vegetables meme has done for cosmetically challenged produce. For anyone who thinks that Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head promote an unrealistic ideal of vegetable beauty, take inspiration from France’s genius anti-food-waste campaign, which celebrates the Ridiculous Potato, the Grotesque Apple, and the Disfigured Eggplant.
What you need: cardboard cutout of a lopsided potato and face parts, strong sense of self-worth

The Goat Fest Groupie: Nothing says 2015 (The Year of the Goat) like this throwback to CUESA’s epic Goat Festival. Pay tribute to the viral Facebook event that took San Francisco by storm earlier this year with this goat-meets-festie-goer costume. We kid you not.
What you need: goat costume, Kanye-style shutter shades, goatee

No tricks, just treats! Show us your Halloween best at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market tomorrow. Bring your kids in costume to the CUESA Info Booth for a treat, and share your Halloween photos of the farmers market at #cuesahalloween.

And be sure to pick up our new limited edition farmers market tote, perfect for trick-or-treating (organic cotton, $20).

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