Saturday, October 25, 2008

International Talk Like a Pirate Day

Yes, I know, Pirate Day was over a month ago, but forgive me.. I'm a busy person! So, allow me to catch you up.
I made us a very special dinner for Pirate Day and, though I didn't enforce pirate speech, I did make us some particularly yummy themed treats. The internets suggested that I make palm trees out of veggies. Well, I did that! We peeled two large carrots, chopped the tops off of two green peppers and balanced them together. I dug a small hole into the center of the pepper top so that the carrot "trunk" would nestle into the pepper "leaves." Fun and easy way to increase our veggie intake. (Incidentally, that's me holding my "trees").
I used the rest of the peppers to make pirate lifeboats -- filled with golden treasure! Well, I guess it was white gold, because the mac and cheese was made with white cheddar. I usually just use the boxed macaroni because it's so convenient.. this was one of those times. Serving the macaroni in the uncooked peppers isn't really "canon" food prep, but it worked out fine and kept the peppers crunchy, just the way we like them.
Now, the real treat in this meal was the funny little shapes in front of the "lifeboat." Thanks again to Biggie, I know exactly how to make really adorable terrifying octodogs. As per her suggestion, I sliced regular (turkey) hot dogs in half, leaving two single legged proto-octo-creatures. Then, I just used a really sharp knife to cut legs into the dogs. I boiled the resulting critter to acheive slightly flaired legs -- worked beautifully! TheBoy was really impressed with them and we devoured them in no time. A huge win for a simple, fun dinner food. If you have kids, or a finicky man/partner/friend/person who likes hot dogs, I definitely recommend this meal. Or, if you just like fun food... go for it!
Overall, this meal really excited TheBoy and was really easy to make, with a total preparation time of, excluding macaroni cooking time, about 10 minutes.

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