My annual Weird Food post is my favorite of the entire year. I start researching, writing, and linking to all of the health, harvest, and Halloween food trends I can find in September, and wait as long as I can to unveil my favorite fangorious findings.

As I started this year’s post, however, I realized quickly that the inter webs had a lot to offer about each chosen morsel. So, for the first time in Blogtoberfest history, each “October Food” of 2021 will have its own dedicated post. Read on and spoil.

Red Rum

The first trend I saw bubbling up in my virtual travels this year was the blood-bag cocktail, and that opened the vein (sorry) to an entire array of blood-borne beverages.

First, let’s address the aforementioned drink receptacle. Blood-bag beverage containers are actually food-grade party fare, and widely available online (complete with funnel). I like this set from WaWaFun because it offers zombie-blood, alien-blood, and poison bags, thus opening up the cocktail-color options.

If the desired scene is decidedly sanguine though, there are plenty of crimson concoctions to be had — both cocktails and mocktails.

Beyond the Bloody Mary, there’s also a Red Russian — one of the most popular suggestions I found for blood-bag contents; Halloween Punch made with raspberry lemonade drink mix and rum; vodka- and Schnapps-based Dracula’s Blood; non-alcoholic Dragon’s Blood, and for the classiclists, the Reign In Blood, crafted with an actual shot of porcus sanguis.

For those less-than-enthused about drinking out of plastic reproductions of medical supplies, there are plenty of other presentation ideas to be found: milk bottles disturbingly filled to the rim, sugared shot glasses, or punch bowls with floating hands, to name just a few.

Conversely, for the crowd that might find a blood-bag beveragino too tame, there are also syringe shooters, bleeding-heart martinis made with pickled beets, and a Brain Hemorrhage made with curdling Baileys — which reminds me of something that happened once at a party in college, and I don’t know that I can recommend.

Leave your favorite red or rancid cocktail ideas in the comments, and stay tuned for the next course.