Burger Monsters & Cheese Ghosts

Tonight was an easy dinner that the kids loved.

Burger Monsters:

You could use just about anything for these. . . hamburgers, grilled chicken, chicken patties, salmon burgers, etc.  Just add all your veggies to make it good & add olives for eyes & tomatoes or peppers for fangs.

Cheese Ghosts:

My kids love these in their lunches in October.  Just take some string cheese & draw a face on it with a sharpie.

Easy & Delicious!  Enjoy.

Jack Skellington Pizza & Fried Worms

Today was luckily a very normal day.  So normal, that I got to get creative making my pizza this afternoon.  One of my kids' favorite Halloween/Christmas movies is The Nightmare Before Christmas because.  The Haunted Mansion at Disneyland is my all time favorite ride at Disneyland & starting in September, they change the entire ride into a Nightmare Before Christmas version of the ride.  October is my absolute favorite time to visit Disneyland.

Any who. . . . I decided to make my pizza in the shape of Jack the Pumpkin King.  The kids loved it.

Jack Skellington Pizza

And of course you have to make

Fried Worms

to go with your pizza.  I opted for some sweet potato fries for this.  Mmmmm.  There's just something about sweet potato fries. . . my guilty pleasure.

Snakes, Bat Wings, & Zombie Slime

Today has been a day.  First the van breaks down . . . like seriously just flat out stops working.  My husband is in Boston on a work trip, I'm completely stranded with my 3 year old, & I was a mess.  Luckily I did get my other 5 kids to school.  I finally got the van stuff worked out (thank you Enterprise for picking me up giving me a rental van that fits my family) & wound up having to take Craiger to the hospital for a really high fever & earache.  I guess his eardrums are extremely swollen & ready to burst, poor kid.  I swear, it never fails when Trek is away I always have car issues & one kid in the ER.  BUT. . . . the important thing is I pressed on, survived the day, & still managed to put a meal on the table for dinner.

Snakes:

My kids love bean & cheese burritos.  I crisped them up in a little oil & added olive eyes & a tomato tongue.

Bat Wings & Zombie Slime:

These are basically chips & guacamole.  Yum.

Fingers crossed that tomorrow is a lot less eventful at the Potter house.  :-) 

Halloween Pasta & Caramel Apples

Tonight was another one of those nights where it felt like we were playing catch up for most of the night.  So we kept it simple.

Halloween Pasta:

You can find the funnest little shaped pasta at World Market & on Amazon.  These my friend sent me as a Halloween gift (she knows I love to make Halloween dinners all month).  The pasta was shaped like bats, spiders, & witches.  The kids LOVED it.

Caramel Apple Slices:

My kids live on apples.  I swear I can never buy enough.  We just sliced them up & added a dollop of caramel sauce to dip them in.  They were delicious.

Monster Pancakes & Frankenstein Treats

Tonight has been a little hectic at the Potter house.  Trek left today for a work trip to Boston & my kids seem to become unhinged when they know daddy is gone, even if it's less than a week.  So I thought it would be nice to let them CREATE their own spooky dinner tonight.  They had a blast.

Monster Pancakes

Lorien made pancakes in lots of different shapes & sizes.  Then I put out a bunch of toppings on the table & let them create their own faces.  They seemed to enjoy it a ton.  I like letting my kids be creative.

Canyon's Monster

My Frankenstein Pancake

Craiger's Monster

Cadence's Skeleton Monster

Taya's Swamp Creature

Bladen's Spider

Lorien's Creature

And then for dessert we made some simple 

Frankenstein Rice Krispie Treats.  

Swamp Slugs, Boo Bananas, & Salad

Tonight we had a fun looking dinner.

Swamp Slugs:

My family loves chicken cordon bleu.  You can make it by hand (which is time consuming, but tastes SO good) or you can buy the frozen chicken cordon bleus in the freezer section of the grocery store.  Bake them in the oven for 45 minutes at 375 degrees.  For the "sauce" (that makes it look like an actual slug) mix 1 can of cream of chicken soup & 1 cup of sour cream.  I double that for my family.  Heat it in a saucepan & add on top of your chicken cordon bleu.  Add olives on toothpicks for eyes, & a tomato mouth.  Voila.  A slug you can eat.

Boo Bananas:

are just bananas with chocolate chips for eyes.  And then I added a salad because I love salad.

Meatloaf Mummies, Mashed Potato Ghosts, & Viruses

This was the first time I made these little mummy guys.  They are kind of cute.  The kids loved them.

Meatloaf Mummies:

Just make your favorite family meatloaf recipe & mold them into mini-meatloaf cakes in muffin cups.  Since they are cupcake size you only have to cook them for about 30 minutes at 350 degrees.  Check them to see if they're cooked through, but it's a whole lot faster than a typical meatloaf.  Next make some mashed potatoes & try to make them a thinner consistency.  Add them to a pastry piping bag & a thin frosting tip.  Add 2 peas as eyes & frost strips of mashed potatoes on top of the meatloaves to make a little mummy face.  Super cute, tasty, & filling.

Mashed Potato Ghosts:

With your leftover mashed potatoes make little piles with a point & add olive pieces as eyes.

Viruses:

My kids LOVE grapes.  I asked them what they though grapes looked like that was spooky & they said a virus . . . so there you go.  Viruses.

Monster Sandwiches & Mini Pumpkins

After a day filled with SIX dental appointments, we opted for a pretty quick dinner tonight.

Monster Sandwiches:

are a favorite here.  We just get hoagie buns & heat up some mushrooms, onions, & peppers in a pan with some lunchmeat & melt cheese on top & throw it in the bun with some lettuce & tomatoes.  I added olives on toothpicks for eyes.  They are delicious & FULL of fresh veggies.  

And since we still have a bazillion clementines in the house, the kids begged for more 

mini pumpkins.

Enjoy!

Jack-O-Lantern Pizzas & Mini Pumpkins

Tonight we made a fast, but cute dinner.

Jack-O-Lantern Pizzas:

I just take biscuit dough & smash it to make a crust, add pizza sauce, cheese, & add pepperoni to the top in the shape of a face.

Mini Pumpkins:

We love clementines in our house.  Just peel your little orange & add a cut of green onion as a stem.  Easy peasy.

Creature Lasagne & Spooky Donuts

So this week is hammered with my oldest doing basketball tryouts until 5 every afternoon limiting my dinner options & my time to make them.  We'll see what we can come up with.

Creature Lasagne: 

Tonight we made simple lasagne & added some faces to make it a creature looking thing.

Monster Donuts:

Then for dessert for Family Home Evening, I stopped by Krispy Kreme on my way home from picking up my kids & got some Halloween donuts.  Their donuts are super cute right now.

Monster Claws, Spider Web Mashed Potato Casserole, & Caramel Apple Trifle

Tonight's dinner was SUPER good.

Monster Claws:

Just make your favorite chicken nugget recipe & make sure you cut your chicken into finger like shapes.  Here is our favorite nugget recipe (which happens to be the Chic-Fil-A recipe which is amazing!)

1.5 pounds chicken cut into nuggets or slices

1 egg

1 cup milk

1 cup flour

2.5 Tablespoons powdered sugar

1/2 teaspoon pepper

1 Tablespoon salt

Mix the egg & milk in a bowl & add chicken pieces.  Let sit for 5 minutes.  Mix the dry ingredients in another bowl.  Heat oil.  Dip wet chicken into dry ingredient mixture, back into the egg mixture, & once again in the dry mixture.  Place into hot oil & fry until brown & cooked through.

(FYI, we have 8 in our family & we triple this recipe to feed us all.  Every last piece gets eaten.)

Spider Web Mashed Potato Casserole:

Make mashed potatoes. . . . I leave the skins on & add bacon, green oniobns, butter,  & cheese, then I topped it with sour cream or ranch in the shape of a spider web.  Mine wasn't very pretty this time around, but that's alright.  It tasted good.

Caramel Apple Trifle:

3 Tablespoons butter

4 cups chopped/peeled tart apples

1 cup chopped walnuts

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1 teaspoon apple pie spice divided

8 oz cream cheese

1 jar caramel ice cream topping, divided

12 oz cool whip

2 loave pound cake, cut into 1 inch cubes

Melt butter over medium heat.  Stir in apples, walnuts, brown sugar, & 1/2 teaspoon apple pie spice.  Cook & stir for 10 minutes or until the apples are tender.

In a large bowl, beat cream cheese until creamy.  Beat in 1/2 cup caramel topping & remaining apple pie spice.  Fold in 2 cups of cool whip.

In a trifle bowl layer 1/3 of the cake cubes, cream cheese mixture, & the apple mixture.  Repeat 2 more times.  Garnish with cool whip, caramel topping, & apple pie spice.  Cover & refrigerate for 1 hour before serving.

Jack-O-Lantern Grilled Cheese & Blood Soup

Tonight Cadence made dinner since my hand is still wrapped up.

Jack-O-Lantern Grilled Cheese

(your basic grilled cheese with a cute face carved into the top piece of bread.)

Blood Soup

(also known as tomato soup)

Super easy, the kids love it, & it tastes great!

Zombie Taco Salad & Hocus Pocus Potion

Tonight we had a slight mishap at the Potter house.  I somehow managed to stab myself in the hand while making guacamole.  Let's just say I had to contemplate whether or not I needed to rush to the ER for stitches.  As I type this, its still bleeding ( an hour & a half later ) so I may still need to go, but for now we are trying to enjoy our dinner.  I have 2 absolutely amazing daughters who know how & love to cook so they made dinner tonight.  They did anamazing job.

Zombie Taco Salad

Just your typical taco salad however you like it.  I add guacamole on top to make a green zombie face.  Add sour cream with olive slices as eyes & tomatoes for a mouth,

Hocus Pocus Potion

You make 2 smoothies for this.  Put orange sherbet & orange juice in a blender & blend until nice & smooth.  The 2nd smoothie is apple juice & frozen berries.  Layer the 2 to make a pretty (& yummy) potion.

Pumpkin Brains & Graveyard Pudding Cups

So this is my kids' all time favorite Halloween dinner.  Favorite, favorite, favorite.  It cracks me up how much my kids LOVE peppers.  They eat them right up.

Pumpkin Brains:

Just get your favorite colored peppers, take the seeds out, & carve faces into them like you'd carve pumpkins.  I even let my girls carve their own since they know how to handle knives.  Add your favorite pasta & sauce inside so it looks like overflowing brains for your pumpkin friend.

Graveyard Pudding Cups:

My kids love pudding so I just add crushed oreos to the top to make it look like dirt.  Then I add some kind of a cookie with chocolate frosting spelling "RIP" or a skull & crossbones & add it.  I usually add those little pumpkin shaped candy corn, but I swear they don't sell them ANYWHERE here.  I checked 5 different stores.  So instead I just added some plain old candy corn.

Anyhow, my kids loved it & they were SO happy with their little pumpkins & ate every last bit of them.

Bloody Fingers & Boo Bananas

So the plague hit our house this weekend & yesterday was the last straw.  We had 6 people sick as sick can be.  Today we were down to 1 sickie so I thought we'd be safe to start up spooky dinners again.  Fingers crossed that the sickness has gone for good now.

Tonight we made it simple since we're all still not 100% better.

Bloody Fingers

(hot dogs shaped like fingers with lots of ketchup)

Boo Bananas

(bananas with chocolate chip eyes to make it look like a little ghost)

Enjoy!

Pirate Flag Pancakes & Apple Cider Floats

Sundays are breakfast for dinner days so we did 

Pirate Flag Pancakes

for dinner tonight.  Just make a pancake in the shape of a skull & add chocolate chips for eyes, nose, & mouth. . . & then add bacon slices to make the crossbones of a pirate flag.  Easy peasy.

For dessert tonight I made

Apple Cider Floats.

Just put vanilla ice cream in a cup, add equal parts of apple cider & sparkling cider, then top with whipped cream, caramel, & cinnamon.  SUPER YUM.

Jack-O-Lantern Pulled Pork Sandwiches & Candy Corn Fruit Cups

Today was a CRAZY day for kid pick-ups.  The middle schoolers had early out, I had 3/4 day kindergarten pick up, normal pick up, & play practice pick up . . . all about 40 minutes apart from each other.  Some days are just insane.  So, after over 4 hours of sitting in a car today, I was relieve tonight's dinner was SO easy.

Jack-O-Lantern Pulled Pork Sandwiches:

Remember the yummy pork tacos we made on Wednesday?  This is just the leftover meat from that.  (Remember, 1 Tablespoon of liquid smoke to every pound of pork loin in a crock pot on low for 10 hours)  I added some BBQ sauce & a slice of cheese with a jack-o-lantern face carved into it.

Candy Corn Fruit Cups:

These are super simple.  Cut up some pineapple for the bottom, use some clementines or mandarin oranges for the middle, & a little whipped cream on top & you have a candy corn fruit cup.

Boo-Ya Ghost Pizza & Deviled Eyeballs

What's for dinner tonight?

Boo-Ya Ghost Pizzas 

are some of my kids' favorite things.  Use biscuit dough or pizza dough to make miniature pizza crusts, add pizza sauce & bake for 18 minutes at 350 degrees.  After you pull the pizzas out of the oven, add slices of mozzarella cheese cut into the shape of ghosts (use a cookie cutter).  Add olives for eyes, & you have the cutest little pizzas ever.

Deviled Eyeballs

are just deviled eggs with olive pupils.  My kids LOVE deviled eggs so these are always a bit hit at our house as well.

Enjoy!!!

Spider Tacos & Spider Web 7 Layer Dip

My kids LOVE tacos.  Period.  We could eat tacos every single day of their lives & they'd die happy.  It cracks me up.  So of course I had to add tacos to my spooky dinner menu.

Spiderweb 7 Layer Dip:

This is just your typical 7 layer dip (beans, sour cream, taco seasoning, guacamole, cheese, tomatoes, onions. . . or whatever else you like), but put the sour cream on top in the shape of a spider web.  Cut giant olives into little legs & add them to a whole olive to make a spider.  Voila!

Spider Tacos:

You can make tacos any way your family likes it.  Our favorite taco meat recipe is actually made with pork loin.  I buy a 5 pound pork loin & add 5 Tablespoons of liquid smoke (1 tablespoon for every pound of meat).  Cook it on low for 10 hours in a slow cooker.  Shred it, & it makes the best taco meat EVER.  Save the leftovers & eat pulled pork sandwiches later in the week (stay tuned, because we're doing just that in a couple of days).  Add spider olives & you're set.

Enjoy!

Mummy Dogs & Vampire Smiles

Tonight's Spooky Dinner was a family favorite & super easy to make:

Mummy Dogs:

(crecent dough cut with a pizza cutter into strips & wrapped around a hot dog with mustard eyes)

And Vampire Smiles:

apples, peanut butter, &marshmallow teeth

Yum

Eyeball Pasta, Mummy Garlic Toast, & Caesar Salad

Tonight's Spooky Dinner was a new one.  I'm loving that pintrest exists & that people like to make spooky dinners.  It makes my October dinner planning even more fun when a new recipe pops up.

Tonight we ate:

Eyeball Pasta

(basically spaghetti & spaghetti sauce . . . then slices of string cheese with olives as the eyeballs.  I also added some blue & red food coloring to the pasta water to make the pasta purple.  The picture doesn't show it well, but it really was purple.)

Mummy Garlic Bread

Make garlic bread on a french loaf (or buy one in the freezer section of your grocery store) & then add candy eyeballs (my grocery store has them, but you can get them on Amazon or any place that sells Wilton products).  Top it off with criss-cross patterns of strung string cheese.  My kids LOVED these.  They laughed SO hard at them.

And then of course, add a salad so you get some veggies in there too.

Voila!  Enjoy your eyeballs & mummies!

Skeleton Brains, Frankenstein Fingers, & Bloomin Baked Apples

Well, it's that time of year again.  Time for Spooky dinners!!!!

We usually eat breakfast for dinner on Sunday nights so I tried a spooky breakfast for dinner.

Tonight we ate

Skeleton Brains

(toast cut with skeleton cookie cutters with scrambled eggs as the "brains")

And Frankenstein Fingers

(celery with peanut butter & a raisin fingernail)

And for dessert we tried a brand new recipe from Pinterest:

Bloomin Baked Apples

Holy cow.  They are the best thing I've ever had in my life.  You HAVE to make these.  They were super easy, & tasted amazing.

Click this link to see the blog I got the recipe from.

Bloomin’ Baked Apples Recipe

 

PRINT

Prep time

15 mins

Cook time

30 mins

Total time

45 mins

 

Author: The Gunny Sack

Recipe type: Dessert

Serves: 2

Ingredients

• 2 Honeycrisp apples (or other crisp apples)
• 2 tbsp butter
• 3 tbsp brown sugar, packed
• 1 tbsp flour
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 4 caramels
• Optional toppings: vanilla ice cream, caramel sauce, and cinnamon

Instructions

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1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
2. To get the blooming apple look, you need to cut the apples. Slice off the top ¼ to ⅓ of the apples. Scoop out the core with a melon baller or stainless steel measuring spoon.
3. Use a thin paring knife to make two, deep circular cuts around the center of the apple. Next, turn the apple over and make narrow cuts all the way around the apple. Flip it back over and you can see all of the cuts.
4. Place the apples in an oven safe dish and put two caramels into the center of each apple.
5. Heat butter and brown sugar in the microwave for 30 second, stir and continue heating for an additional 30 seconds. Remove from the microwave and stir in flour and cinnamon. Divide the mixture over the top of the two sliced apples.
6. Bake at 375 for 25-30 minutes. (Check apples after 25 minutes and continue cooking until tender. Some apples can take 45 min to 1 hour to soften.)
7. Remove from the oven and use a large spoon to move the apples into bowls.
8. Top with a scoop of ice cream, drizzle with caramel and sprinkle with cinnamon. The ice cream will cause the caramel in the center to harden so eat quickly or put the ice cream scoop on the side.