Spider Tacos

Tonight was a fun dinner:

SPIDER TACOS

Just make tacos your favorite way.  Our favorite way is putting a 6 pound pork roast into the crock pot with 5 Tablespoons of liquid smoke for 14 hours.  YUM.  When you get your tacos made just the way you like them.  Cut up some olives into little strips.  Add one big olive on top of your taco & give him 8 little legs to make him a scary spider.

My boys refused to touch their tacos until I took the "spiders" out.  Trek & I were laughing SO HARD at how scared they were.  Enjoy!

Bubbling Witch Cauldrons

Tonight was a yummy fall dinner with a Halloween twist:

BUBBLING WITCH CAULDRONS

Just go to your local bakery & get some yummy bread bowl "CAULDRONS" & put your favorite homemade or canned soup or chili inside.

I made my kids' favorite:

Chicken Chili Chowder, but really you can put in whatever is easiest & tasty for your family.

Mummy Dogs

Tonight was the infamous

MUMMY DOGS

These are super easy.  Just wrap a hot dog with either crescent dough or breadstick dough so it looks like a mummy.  Leave a space open for the eyes.  Bake for about 10-13 minutes until the dough is done.  Add two little mustard dots for the mummy's eyes.

I always do a ketchup/mustard spiderweb dip for them as well.  Just fill a bowl with ketchup then do 2 circles of mustard.  Take a toothpick & pull the mustard out from the center to make the spider web pattern.  Super easy & Super cute.

Enjoy!

Witch Fingers & Candy Corn Pudding

This is another family favorite:

Witch Fingers & Candy Corn Pudding

I LOVE making homemade chicken strips & I have the best chicken nugget recipe from Chic-Fil-A itself.  YUM.

What you'll need:

2 pounds chicken breasts (cut into finger-like strips)

2 eggs

2 cups milk

2 cups flour

5 Tablespoons powdered sugar

1 teaspoon pepper

2 Tablespoons salt

(This is to feed my large family of 7, so cut the recipe in half if you don't have big eaters like I do.)

Mix the eggs & milk in a bowl.  Put chicken "fingers" into the egg wash mixture & let sit for at least 5 minutes.  Mix flour, sugar, pepper, & salt in another bowl.  Heat frying oil in a pan.  Dip your wet chicken into the flour mixture & coat it.  Then dip it BACK into the egg wash mixture & then AGAIN into the flour mixture. . . . (double dipping makes it extra crispy & good).  Fry until brown & cooked through (about 10 minutes).

Arrange your chicken fingers on a plate like fingers on a hand.  Put a small bowl of dipping sauce as the palm of your witch hand.

Then for the candy corn pudding, make 3 packages of pudding:

Banana Cream for the bottom layer,

Butterscotch for the center,

& White Chocolate for the tippy top.

Mix according to the package instructions & layer in a clear cup so you can see the layers.

Serve together & enjoy!

Chicken Noodle Soup Jack-o-Lantern Pot Pie

I love Sunday Dinners.  I love to make things that are warm & comforting. . . I don't know.  Sunday dinners were always special at my house growing up so I like to make hearty food on Sundays.

Tonight I made my family's favorite chicken noodle soup recipe with a Halloween twist.

Chicken Noodle Soup Jack-o-Lantern Pot Pie

Just make your family's favorite chicken noodle soup recipe for the base of your pot pie.  Here is the recipe to my favorite.  It's the Lion House recipe.  My friend gave it to me last year & it's FABULOUS. 

Lion House Chicken Noodle Soup:

2 teaspoons chicken bouillon

3 cups chicken broth

2 cups chopped carrots

2 cups chopped celery

1 cup chopped onion

2 cans cream of chicken soup

1/4 cup evaporated milk

2 cups COOKED chicken, chopped into bite size pieces

4 cups COOKED egg noodle pasta

Heat the chicken broth & bouillon.  Add veggies & cook until nice & tender.  Add the cans of soup & the evaporated milk.  Mix well.  Heat until bubbly.  Add noodles & chicken & heat through.  

It's not your typical chicken noodle soup.  It's thick & creamy & delicious.

Next, get a refrigerated pie crust & cut a jack-o-lantern face into it.

Put your soup into a ROUND pan (my mom didn't have a round pan, so I had to use a rectangle roasting pan).  Then put your jack-o-lantern face on top of the soup.

Bake at 425 for about 15-20 minutes until your crust gets nice & brown.  ENJOY!

Pumpkin Pockets

These guys are a fun little dinner.  They're super simple to make too.  First get 2 packages of refrigerated pizza dough (I like the Pillsbury brand that comes in the long roll).  Get it all flat & cut each package into 9 squares (you'll have 18 squares total).  

Next you're going to get a saucepan & brown a pound of ground beef with half a large onion all chopped up.  Once it's brown, drain the grease & add whatever seasonings your family likes.  Tonight I added some season salt, pepper, garlic powder, & mesquite smoke seasoning.  Then add some ketchup & BBQ sauce until it tastes good to you.  You want it to look similar to sloppy joe mix.

Spoon the meat mixture into the center of each square of dough.

Take all the ends of the dough & fold it up so that you have a ball of dough surrounding the meat mixture.  Pinch the dough shut so it looks like this.

Then turn the "pumpkins" upside down so they look nice & round.

I bought this AWESOME Wilton food color spray at Zurcher's yesterday which made coloring these things a WHOLE LOT EASIER.  If you don't have the cool spray, just get some egg whites & add red & yellow food coloring (to make a good orange color) & brush over your "pumpkins."  With the Wilton spray, you just spray it until it's all orange like a pumpkin.

 

Bake at 425 degrees for about 12 minutes or until the dough is cooked through.  Cut one green onion into little strips & then insert them in the tops of your "pumpkins" to make stems.

See?  Super easy, super cute, & super tasty.

Monster Sandwiches

Tonight was a simple but fun Halloween dinner:

MONSTER SANDWICHES.

Just get some special hoagie buns & have some fun.  I did their favorite cheese with ham & turkey, added lettuce, tomatoes, onions, & a red pepper tongue. . . then I added lettuce for hair, olives for eyes (on toothpicks), pretzel sticks for arms & legs & tomatoes for feet.

The kids laughed REALLY hard at their little monsters.  I served it with fresh potato salad & baked beans.  YUM.  Enjoy.

Pumpkin Brains

Tonight was my kids' very favorite Halloween dinner.  They always get excited when they see:

PUMPKIN BRAINS 

on their plates.  It's a fun one & it's pretty healthy too.

First, buy an orange bell pepper for every family member.  Cut the tops straight off (like a hat) & pull out the ribs/seeds.  Wash them really well.

Next, use a sharp paring knife to cut jack-o-latern faces in the peppers.  If you have older kids, they LOVE to help with this.  You can make scary faces or silly faces.  It's up to you.  The kids love it though.

Then you're going to cook some spaghetti & sauce.  Make it the way your family likes it.  I mix the noodles with the sauce.  Then scoop the "brains" into your "pumpkins" so it looks like the brains are oozing out the top of it's head.

(Yes, it's disgusting, but the kids love it.)

You'll be amazed at how much of the actual pepper the kids will eat.  Normally kids would think it was gross, but disguised as a pumpkin head, they eat it right up because it's "funny."  My 5 year old ate her entire pepper tonight (for the first time ever.)  She loved it.

Enjoy!

Zombie Taco Salad

Day 2 of our Potter Halloween Extravaganza was:

ZOMBIE TACO SALAD

We usually call this "Eyeball Taco Salad," but Lorien insisted that it was a zombie so we left it at that.

This one is simple.  Just make taco salad the way your family likes it best.  I always cook my ground beef, add taco seasoning, & then add a big can of pork & beans to mine.  That's the way my kids like it so it's how we do it, but you can make it any way you like it.

First I crush tortilla chips in the bottom of the bowl, then add the meat/bean mixture.  To make the zombie face I add lettuce as hair, cheese a skin, onions & an olive as a nose, tomatoes as the icky mouth, & 2 dollops of sour cream for the eyes with olives as the pupils.  This is a fun one to make.

My son Bladen looked at it & said,

"Um, Mom?  My dinner is looking at me." 

How hilarious is that?

Enjoy!

It's OCTOBER 1st - Pumpkin Pizzas!

Hooray for October!!!

Halloween in my favorite holiday, which most everyone knows already, but I just wanted to say it again.  

HALLOWEEN ROCKS.

So today was October 1st & we made our first Halloween dinner of the year.  We actually moved over the weekend & got to my parents house late last night so it was a little insane trying to plan my Halloween dinners today, but I got it done & we did a fun easy dinner that the entire family could enjoy!

PUMPKIN PIZZAS

First, cut you pepperoni (or other toppings) into fun shapes.  I did some funny mouths & then a bunch of triangles for the eyes & noses.

Next you take those fun little biscuits you buy in the tubes & let the kids flatten them into individual pizza crusts.  The kids LOVE this.

Then you spread a spoonful of pizza sauce on each pizza.

Sprinkle each pizza with ORANGE cheese (because they're pumpkins of course).

And let the kids make silly pumpkin faces on top of the cheese with pepperoni.

Bake at 375 for 13 minutes & voila!  You have adorable little pumpkin pizzas.  Serve it up with a yummy salad & some fruit & you're set for a fun Halloween inspired dinner that the kids will love.