Our spooky dinner

I've been trying to decide if I would post this to my recipe blog or my regular blog.  I finally decided that I wasn't really including recipes, just ideas.  So here we go.

Now, I'm not usually big into Halloween.  I don't really like paying a lot of money for costumes that are worn once, maybe twice, spending money on candy that we just give away, and getting tons of candy that I don't really want my kids to eat.  I don't like all the spooky, macabre parts of Halloween, and I don't decorate (except for jack-0-lanterns).  So, for me, Halloween is really all about the kids having fun.

But this year I decided to do something fun with dinner.  So I looked online and got some ideas for a spooky feast.

We had Bloody Rats, which were small meatloafs covered in ketchup, with carrots for the face and ears and a chinese noodle for the tail.  The recipe actually said to use peas for the eyes, but I couldn't get them to stick.  It also suggested that you wrap the meatloaf around a cube of cheddar cheese so the guts ooze out.  But I wasn't sure if my kids would eat that.

We had Bloody Eyeballs.  I put red food coloring on a pasty brush, and brushed the egg whites before I filled them with the deviled egg mixture.

And we had Severed Fingers -- thin breadsticks with the knuckle lines made by a knife and slivered almonds for the fingernails.  The baking made the almonds a nasty brown color, which was a bonus.

I was a bit afraid that my kids wouldn't eat it, even though they like all of it, because they tend to be picky eaters.  But they fought it was fun and kept calling the food by their spooky names.

Kids say (and do) the darndest things...

Some recent gems from my kids:

Jessica is in the middle of potty training. She can go. She just doesn't want to. So if I make her go all day, she's dry. But if I leave it up to her, no deal. One night we were getting ready for bed, and I told her to go potty. She ran to the bathroom screaming, "I'm dry! I'm dry!" When she got to the bathroom, she turned around, looked at me and said (with a forlorn look on her face), "Now I'm wet. I'm so very sorry." Too cute!

Erica has been listening to scripture stories every day. She really caught on to the story of Cain and Abel and wanted to listen to the Old Testament stories over and over. Well, she now says that when she's 11 she's going to be wicked and kill people. We don't let her listen to the stories anymore, but she still persists in this. I got a call the other day from a very shocked school psychologist. Erica visits with her twice a week. One day, Mrs. Diaz asked her what if she could do anything in the world, what would it be. Erica responded that she wanted to be wicked. When asked what it meant to be wicked, Erica answered that it meant killing people. So of course, she called me, and I was able to alleviate her concerns a bit. We're used to hearing it now and tend to ignore it so as to not give it the attention she wants, but it always shocks people the first time they hear it.

The other day was laundry day, and Eldon came into my room to tell me he didn't have anymore underwear in his drawer (he should have had plenty, so not my fault). I told him sorry, he'd just have wear his underwear from the previous day because I didn't have any more for him to wear. Well, before the kids left for school (luckily), I went into their rooms to put their jammies in the laundry piles. I saw Eldon's underwear on the floor, and it was wet, so no wonder he didn't want to wear it. So I found him and did a quick check. His solution to the problem had been to stuff his pants with socks until it made pseudo-underwear. At the time I found him, he was trying to keep the socks from falling out his pants legs. I had to give him a pair of Erica's underwear to wear to school. I just told him not to let his friends see and be thankful it was white instead of flowery in case they did see!

The Great Pumpkin

Eldon's recital

Today Eldon had his first piano recital.  He played a two songs.  One was a "spooky" song that he wrote himself called "Approach of the Shark".  The second was a song from his piano book called "The Woodchuck Chucks Wood."  It was at a church in Glastonbury and 12 students performed.  He did a pretty good job, and we are proud of his progress.

P.S.  Forgive the shakiness of the video, I had one daughter crawling on me and the other grabbing my arm during the filming. :)

Cheesecake!

I absolutely LOVE cheesecake!  I've loved it for as long as I can remember.  My mom always made cherry cheese pie for Thanksgiving.  And then one fateful day we were having a meal for my brother-in-law's farewell (before he was my brother-in-law, of course).  I ordered a slice of New York style cheesecake.  My mom warned me that it wasn't like her cheesecake, that it was drier, but one bite and I was in love.  Droo-ool, droo-ool.

So, now I experiment when I can with different cheesecake recipes that I find.  My dear husband got me four 4" springform pans, so I can experiment with cheesecakes on a small scale.  Droo-ool, droo-ool.  He's so sweet, but that poor man is happy with out-of-the-box Jello cheesecakes.  Not drool.

Last night there was a relief society dinner at my house.  The main course was lasagna.  When I asked James what dessert went with lasagna, we both looked at each other and said, "Cheesecake!"  I haven't made one for a while (thanks to the low-fat diet I'm supposed to be on), so I was excited to make one.  After thinking it over, I decided on Caramel Brownie Cheesecake.  It is de-lish-ous! The recipe is on my recipe blog.  Droo-ool, droo-ool!

P.S.  I did make the recipe reduced fat by using reduced fat cream cheese, sour cream, brownies, and vanilla wafers.  It's still not lowfat, but it turned out pretty good using the reduced fat ingredients.

Ultimate winter cuteness!

All I have to say, is how incredibly cute is this?  After the kids were sent to school, Jessie went digging through the hat/mitten box and put on her winter hat.  Oh, that we could all look this good in a hat!

On another note, I've decided to start posting recipes that I like on my blog.  I really love to cook (when I have time, haha).  So I decided I would share recipes I like, recipes I've tried, recipes that are disasters (yes, there have been times when James has come home, looked at what I've cooked for dinner, then promptly asked me, "Pizza or chinese?").

The first recipes I'm posting is corn muffins.  These corn muffins are wonderful!  They're not crumbly like regular cornbread, which is a great idea when you have small children that like to tear apart their bread.  I didn't post a picture because, hey, they're corn muffins.  They look like corn muffins.  I think you can get the idea.

Cookie Craze

Well, it happened again.  I wasted a perfectly good evening when I could have been sleeping.  It seems that every time James is out of town (he's camping with the Boy Scouts), I can never get to bed at a decent hour, then I have to wake up tired the next morning and deal with kids by myself.  But at least this time I was doing something fun.

I decided that I want to take cake decorating classes.  So I talked to my friend Christie about it, got some pointers, and headed to my local Michael's store to sign up and buy some starting equipment.  The classes might be on Monday night, so we'll have to see whether or not I can actually go, but I bought the kit for the first class and talked to someone who was in the middle of taking it.

So of course, I had to play with my new stuff!  Christie had the brilliant suggestions of decorating cookies.  This is great for two reasons -- one, I'm able to practice with the tips on more surfaces, and two, we'll actually eat them!  Our family is not all that crazy about eating cakes, but the cookies will be gone fast!

So, if our family doesn't eat cakes, why cake decorating?  Good question, glad you asked.  When the kids' birthdays come around, I like to try and make fun cakes for them.  They're starting to ask for cakes that require a bit more talent than I have, so I would love to be able to decorate cakes for them.  Also, I think it would be a good side hobby to have to decorate cakes for others.  We'll see how it goes, I guess!  As for now, the above picture shows my creations.  Not all that great, but hey, it is my first time.  And James will be happy when he comes home and has cookies to eat!