Castellon's Kitchen: The 'Green' Reaper Platter (Green & Black Fruit and Cheese Tray)

The last few years, I've used color as inspiration to guide my Halloween recipes and decorating ideas. Last year, was traditional Black and Orange. The year before, a sultry and elegant Violet. And the year before that, I went for sophisticated neutrals with black accents. This Halloween season is all about the color Green! I've already got started and blogged a few of my green ideas like these fun 'Let Nature Run its Corpse' Cakes and this dramatic Slithering Salad.

So this brings us to The 'Green' Reaper Platter! My purple Abracadabra platter from two years ago (pictured below) continues to be very popular on Pinterest, so I decided to make another platter featuring the color green and black.
First, I needed to find some showstopping cheeses to anchor my cheese board. And thankfully with all this 'Stay at Home' going on here in California, I've been doing a lot of on-line shopping and discovered this Green Pesto Gouda and Sage Derby Cheese from igourmet.com. I ordered these two cheeses and the Spooky (Looking) Cheese Tray because the Spooky platter also came with these cool black charcoal crackers. It also came with a beautiful purple swirled cheese that would've been perfect for my Abracadabra platter and a layered orange cheese that would've been great last year, if I had done a cheese platter last year, maybe I still will? Anyway, I got my order 3 days later and got straight to work throwing together this gorgeous green and black themed platter.

As for the name... the green being an obvious pun, but there's a cute back story why I named it 'The Green Reaper Platter'. When my oldest son, Jackson was around 5 or 6 years old, he loved to play with a hanging grim reaper Halloween decoration. He loved to go by it and clap his hands and it would shake and make eerie sounds. He loved it but didn't know what it was called so I told him that it's a grim reaper. He seemed to take the name in stride and didn't ask any questions about it. A few days later he kept talking about the green whopper this and the green whopper that. My husband and I were so confused we couldn't figure out what he was talking about. We asked, "What's the green whopper, Jackson?" He went over to the hanging decoration and pointed to it, "The Green Whopper". We laughed so hard and even to this day, the Grim Reaper will always be the Green Whopper. 💗

The 'Green' Reaper Platter (Green & Black Fruit and Cheese Tray)

Cheeses
Green Pesto Gouda (link)
Sage Derby Cheese by Thistle Hill (link)

Fruit Veggies

Blackberries Broccoli
Black grapes Cucumbers
Green grapes Green cauliflower
Green apples Celery
Dried Mission Figs

Nuts Assorted Crackers
Pistachios Charcoal Crackers (link)
Pumpkin seeds Spinach Kale Thins
Wasabi peas or Multigrain crackers

Sauces
Fig Balsamic Dressing (bottled)

Guacamole Hummus (homemade)
Makes ~1 1/2 cups

1 cup white beans
1 avocado
juice of one lime
1/4 cup cilantro leaves
1 T jalapeno
1- 1 1/2 t onion powder
2-3 T canola oil
salt and pepper (to taste)

Blend all ingredients together. until smooth. Salt and pepper to taste.