Halloween Food - the good, the bad and the ugly

Inspired by this tasty looking Halloween meal (from allrecipes.com), I made the kids a pumpkin shaped cheese quesadilla for their afternoon snack last week.

They were a big hit and I felt very proud. A day or so later, with the pantry (pantry in our case, being one cupboard) looking rather bare, and dinner needing to be made, I noticed a can of pumpkin at the back of the shelf and since we still had tortillas (and what with the pumpkin Q’s being so appreciated a few days earlier) I decided to make pumpkin quesadillas for dinner. Well, it sounded delicious to me. The reality, however, was a little bit different. I suppose I should have googled an actual recipe instead of simply assuming that heating up the pumpkin and melting cheese on it would be a good filling for a pumpkin shaped quesadilla. Let’s just say that the kids were not impressed from the start.

JJ: “What’s that disgusting smell?”

Rocky immediately deadpans: “Oh, that’s just the smell of Mom making dinner.”

And it kind of went downhill from there. The comments that were muttered while they were being forced strongly encouraged to eat their dinner, were not very complimentary. Words such as dirt and mud were used repeatedly, along with unpleasant sound effects. Even BigP, who always says thank you for every meal, muttered an almost inaudible thank you on this particular evening.

Aarrrrrgghhh…cooking is just not my thing. But I did seem to fare better on the snacks I made over the past few weeks...

The Ghost Crackers made with cream cheese were a big hit - I used chocolate sprinkles for the eyes (Kraft Foods uses raisins.)

The mini pumpkin pies were a combination of Bakerella's Pumpkin pie bites and Martha's Jack-o'-lantern tarts.  I used Bakerella's recipe because it looked easy and delicious - although everything she bakes looks delicious.  However, true to my style, I didn't follow the recipe exactly.  I had every intention of doing so, but somehow I ended up adding an additional egg and I didn't have pumpkin pie spice, so had to make my own and added too much of it.  So my little pies were not bright orange looking like hers and the taste was good but not great.  Which is why I typically stick to things I can bake out of a box, but I'm trying to expand my horizons...I will definitely try baking them again, maybe trying Martha's recipe, which I think uses cream instead of cream cheese.  But they were so cute and irresistable that disaster nearly struck when I took the little pie crust Jack-o'-lantern faces out of the oven (they get baked separately and simply pop on top of the pies once everything is cooled).  My husband was hovering in the kitchen and thought I had baked a batch of cookies and went over and started eating them...I had only made a handful or so, and so the poor unsuspecting chap got quite the earful...but the kids (and the hubby, once he was officially allowed to taste them) thought they were really fun and were very happy to have them in their lunch bags for school snack for the week.

The pear mouths didn't come out as well as the apple bites from FamilyFun, but we had just bought pears and the kids really wanted a pear for a snack, so I quickly cut them out to look like mouths - next Halloween I will try this again with apples, though.