h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This is a matter of choice, but comfort foods always rate highly in our household, along with food that can be eaten with the fingers.

Jacket potatoes are really good - if you're very careful they can be wrapped in foil and cooked on the edges of the bonfire. Make sure you use a long stick to fish them out though! Corn on the cob can be done like this as well. Sausages are also good, but it's probably safer to do these on a conventional cooker.

If you're catering for a lot of people, big pots of chilli or stew are nice and warming, as well as being relatively simple to prepare, and with the advantage of minimal effort. Big chunky soups are also a possibility.

The most important thing for bonfire night though are treacle toffee and cinder toffee. You can't celebrate properly without them!

I agree about all the foods mentioned above. I just wanted to add that the toffee is best if it's home made and tough enough to take out even the best fillings.

Does this mean that you have a recipe for treacle toffee that you'd be willing to share? I can't find one anywhere!

We have huge get-togethers for Bonfire night as members of my family are pyromaniacs. Last year we tried various sorts of curry. Usually we go for tandoori chicken legs, chicken nuggety-things, veg sticks, mulled wine and good old marshmallows . Quite exotic actually although I don't believe you can beat a hearty hot dog which can be eaten at the same time as you hold a sparkler.

Nothing can beat marshmallows...

The best thing to do is put them on a stick, wait till they catch fire, blow on them to put out the flames, and then eat it quick before the burnt black outer shell falls off...

I agree with all of the above, and would like to add the delight of the chocolate banana. Take one banana, leaving the skin on make a cut lengthwise but not so deep as to cut it in half. Stuff the opening with chocolate pieces (chocolate buttons are good for this). Wrap the whole thing in tin foil and place near the bottom of the bonfire for a while. Carefully fish it out with a stick and allow to cool so that you can pick it up and voila - warm, chocolatey, bananary mush.

Tomato soup out of a flask that you take with you to an organised display, eaten at just around the point when your fingers and toes have started going numb with the cold, is one of the most heavenly things ever.

Childhood memory flash-back!
When we were (very) little boys, my mum used to give us our pre-fireworks tea of sausages, jacket potato and a little cake as a Guy Fawkes man on the plate (Spud body, Sauagage limbs, cake head!)
Awwww. Waves of nostalgia as I write this! Wasn't she sweet!