How to Build the Ultimate Halloween Cheese Board [recipe + shopping list]

As with sandwiches, salads, and bowls of cereal, I am of the belief that cheeseboards don't require a recipe. What kind of instructions do we really need to put together a cheese board?! You buy some cheese. You buy some crackers. You put them on a board. Maybe for the sake of Mindy Kaling there's a 12 paragraph introductory story about how your great grandfather wore shoes made out cheese to walk 40 miles to school but other than that, you don't really need a recipe.

The Grocery Shopping List includes a brainstorm of orange, green, purple, and black ingredients to get you started. Not everything on the Grocery Shopping List appears on the board in the photo above. It is... a lot.

That being said, visual guides and grocery shopping lists have always been helpful for me when planning and putting together a cheeseboard for a certain occasion or holiday. So here are the visual guide above made together with @psimadethis and @ainttooproudtomeg, a grocery shopping list categorized by color and category, and resource links to helpful tools and equipment to put together the Ultimate Halloween Cheeseboard.

And because it's Halloween, an extra treat: an all sweet candy board shaped like, what else, a Jack o'Lantern. For that, you really don't need a recipe. The cute Halloween-themed gummies can be found at most grocery stores around this time.