Bloody Worms and Maggots

Tonight I really didn't feel like cooking. It was just the little man and I and he wanted hot dogs. Easy enough.  I offered him bloody worms... aka hot dogs and ketchup, and being that I'm half Asian, I have to have rice with my meal.  While I usually go for the basic white rice, I opted for some yellow rice tonight just to add some color to the meal and to double as the maggots - although I'm sure the white would suffice just fine.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED:

• Hot Dogs 
• Ketchup
• Rice 

DIRECTIONS:

Make your rice ahead of time as it'll take longer than the hot dogs.  You could also just use hot dog buns and skip the maggot factor.

Once the rice is near done, slice the hot dogs into four strips. You may be able to slice an additional strip or two if you're careful.

Boil some water in a frying pan and place the strips in.  They will start to curl up - its pretty cool to watch. Reminds me a little of shrinky dinks from back in the day. Do they even make those anymore??

Pour out the water and return the worm dogs back into the pan. Mix in some ketchup to coat.

Serve over a bed of rice.

Little Jason Past and Present

This kid is too much. 

Born on Friday the 13th, this is my son Khai.

I think he was around 3 years old here.

 I came home to find him standing at the front door waiting for me like this, with the chainsaw he had picked out at Target.

He just turned six years old the other day.

He's mad about something.

DIY Pumpkin Fruit Cups

Here's another cute and easy throw together for the kiddos.  Any orange fruit cup - mandarin oranges, jello, etc..  will do.  Draw your pumpkin face on it and thats it! Cool fruit cups. Happy Kids.

Worms and Witch Fingers

Spaghetti and breadsticks Halloween style, served up in a couple of bell pepper pumpkins.  I had fun making this dinner as much as everyone enjoyed eating it.  There's not much more to it, so lets get to the recipe (aka its late and I'm too tired to babble on about it).

WHAT YOU"LL NEED:

• Spaghetti noodles  (however much you want to make)
• Spaghetti sauce
• Ground beef (optional if you want a meat sauce)
• Bell Peppers (orange and yellow are best. Use however many you would like to serve up)
• Bread stick dough (I used Pillsbury)
• Almonds
• Red gel dye
• Italian seasoning and/or garlic salt
• Large black olives
• 1/4 cup melted butter

DIRECTIONS:

Pumpkin/Worms ~

Make your spaghetti as you normally would.
Hollow out the peppers and carve pumpkin faces in them.
While the spaghetti noodles are boiling, make your witch finger breadsticks - see directions below.
When noodles are done, add your sauce and loosely fill the peppers.  
Before its too full, slice the olives in half and place them inside the pepper behind the cuts for the eyes.

Witch Fingers ~
Shape the breadstick dough into knobby fingers.
You can use a knife to mark up the knuckles.
Dab some red gel dye on the tips of each finger and press an almond into it.
Brush the tops of the finger with the melted butter and sprinkle with the seasoning.
Bake per directions on the packaging.

Spooky Pizza

If your household is like mine, pizza is a quick and easy go to meal for those days you don't feel like doing much. In keeping up with the Halloween theme, I stumbled upon this great homemade pizza recipe thats loaded with spinach, cheese, ghosts and pumpkins.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED:

• 1 tube of pizza dough (I used Pillsbury or you can make your own from scratch)
• 1 cup pizza sauce (I just used some Prego spaghetti sauce)
• Spinach
• Shredded cheese
• Slices of pre-sliced mozzarella and cheddar cheese
• Pepperoni slices
• Cookie cutters - ghost, pumpkin (or whatever you want)

WHAT TO DO:

Roll out your pizza dough and add your toppings. 

Bake according to directions on the can of dough.

Using the cookie cutters on the pre-sliced cheese, cut your shapes out.

Once you pull the pizza out of the oven, place the shapes on it and add eyes - I used pepperoni but you can use anything, olives, etc.  

Place back into the oven for about 30 seconds.

Remove, let it sit on the counter for a few minutes before serving it up.

(Adapted from Within The Kitchen)

Choco Pretzel Pops

I don't have a recipe for this other than to say go to a craft store like Michaels, and buy Wiltons Candy Kit for Pretzels.  The instructions are fairly easy to follow, but the photo on the front of the box with the little girl and her mom is totally false advertising because this was definitely not a job for a little kid - at least not mine. 

While the instructions are easy to follow, painting in the different colors into the mold was a pain in the ass. The end results however are pretty cool, although my crappy photos don't show that.  And I can't say that I'd make dozens of them like I had hoped.  I stopped at a handful and at most I'll pull the molds out again when I'm very bored or next Halloween.

Sloppy Devils

Who doesn't love an all American classic on a Sunday - Sloppy Joes!  So in the spirit of Halloween, I've decided to make Sloppy Devils.

What You'll Need:

• 1lb Ground Beef
• 1 Can Sloppy Joe Mix (or you can make your own)
• 1/2 Red Bell Pepper
• 12 Slider Buns (I used the potato roll kind)
• Shredded Mozzarella Cheese

Directions:

• Cook your ground beef and add the sloppy joe mix as instructed on the can.
• Make little horns with the bell pepper.
• Scoop the sloppy joe onto the buns and top with a pile of the cheese.
• Cut two small slits on the top of the bun and insert the horns.
• Devour the devils. Like a devil.

DIY Ghost Milk

I can't remember where I originally saw this idea, but since then have seen it on several blogs. Its simple enough and makes one little boy very happy.  All you need is an empty and cleaned out bottle 

- a Starbucks Frappuccino works perfectly -

You can glue on some goggly eyes or just draw on the face with a black sharpie as I've done here.  

I had a bag of jumbo straws in the pantry which suited perfectly! Happy Drinking!

Baked Bloody Rats

Halloween is a big favorite in our house. I'm pretty sure its up there with Christmas, if not even more - from the decorations, to the dressing up, to the trick or treating and gobs of sugar consumed, to the pranks, and now the newest addition of Halloween cooking.  I hunted around for some good ideas this season and came up with a handful of things that were fun and easy to make and some even a little gross looking, like these baked bloody rats. Plain and simple, they are meatloaf balls stuffed with gooey melted cheese and covered in spaghetti sauce. Baked and served on a bed of mashed potatoes, they were absolutely delicious despite the ewwwww's I got when I set the plates down at the table. Success!

WHAT YOU'LL NEED:

Rats ~

• 1 lb. ground beef
• 1/2 c. dry bread crumbs
• 1/4 c. milk
• 1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1/4 tsp salt and pepper or preferred meatloaf spices.
• 1/4 c onion, minced
• 1 egg
• Cubed mozzarella cheese

Sauce~

• 1 Jar of Prego or whatever spaghetti sauce you like.

Decorations~

• Carrots
• Dry Spaghetti Noodles
• Raisins

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl, mix ground beef, chopped onions, bread crumbs, egg, and seasonings.

Take out a palms worth of meat mixture (about 1/3 cup) and roll it into a ball.

Press it out somewhat flat and add about 3 blocks of the cheese in the center. 

Mold the meat around the cheese and shape it out to a point - like a rats body. 

Place your rats in a baking pan or sheet and  then add spaghetti sticks in the rear for the tail.  The noodle will cook just fine when you bake these suckers.

Pour the Prego sauce over the rats to completely cover them.  Its ok if you get sauce on the tail.

Cover the entire thing with aluminum foil and bake for about 45 minutes.

Now take the aluminum off and you will have what looks like a total mess. The cheese may have oozed out too.

Bake for another 20 minutes, uncovered. Scooping the sauce around the rats, spoon it over them from time to 

time so that it glazes a little.

                                                                                                         

To decorate your rat, simple circle cuts of carrots will serve as the ears. You don't have to cook them, although if you insist, you could steam them. I'm too lazy to bother. Make two slits in the rats head and press the carrots in there.

For the eyes, I just grabbed a couple raisins, and then for the whiskers I broke off six pieces of dry spaghetti noodles and stuck them in the face. 

Place your rats on a bed of mashed potatoes or spaghetti noodles and pour some of the sauce around it to give it a bloody trail. How cool are these?!!

Meat Demons

 

(adapted from Taste of Home)

Meat Demons are the greatest little evil meat pies ever!! These things started out as pumpkins but once carved and cooked they took on a totally different feel and thanks to a fellow meat demon lover (I don't even know if that sounded right), they have officially been dubbed: Meat Demon -  instead of Pumpkin Turnovers.. or something equally lame like that.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED:

• 1/2 pound ground beef
• 1tbs chopped onion
• 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1/4 cup yellow mustard
• 1/4 cup ketchup
• 2 tubes (16.3 ounces each) large refrigerated flaky biscuits (Pillsbury Grands is perfect).
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• Nonstick cooking spray

DIRECTIONS:

So ideally, you need a couple tubes of Pillsbury biscuit dough. I didn't have any and I wasn't about to run out to the store,  so I resorted to using Pillsbury Crescent dough because I had at least four tubes of that. The outcome is pretty much similar, its just much more of a pain to have to roll it into a ball and flatten it out. The major plus of using the biscuit dough is that its already round and you just have to cut it in half (two flat pieces).  The point here is that it can be substituted with what you have available. 

What a pain!! Make sure you buy the biscuit dough instead and save yourself the time! There are 8 perfect biscuits in each tube. Carefully slice each one in half so you have 2 disks (this will be the top and bottom of the turnover).  If you use other dough like I did, just roll it into a ball and flatten into 3-4 inch disks.

Pre-heat the oven to 350.

Cook your ground beef in a skillet with the chopped onions. You can add salt, pepper, or whatever hamburger seasoning you'd like.  Once cooked, add the shredded cheese and mix it in, followed by the ketchup and mustard.  Blend completely.

Spray a baking sheet with the nonstick spray. 

Place one disk down and scoop about a tablespoon worth of the meat mixture into it. More if there is room.

Carve out your pumpkin, ghost, demon face in the 2nd (top) disk, and place it on top of the meat mixture.  

Pinch all around the sides to seal the pocket.

Lightly brush the surface with the egg and bake for 10-15 minutes or according to the dough package.  You basically want the outside to be a nice golden brown. 

 

                   

DINNER IS SERVED!