Ghoulie Meal

My Hubs loves to decorate for Halloween. Every year he buys some other kind of decoration for it. This year it's an owl. Last year it was the NOPE spider (As in NOPE, NOT GOING TO THAT HOUSE--THERE'S A TITANIC SPIDER!!!)

www.dailykos.com/blog/PHScott‎

The thing is, he gets the decorations going pretty much on Halloween. So for me, October 31 evening is Insane. He always stays home to prey on...I mean scare people spitless and I take our horde and go trunk-or-treating and sometimes the regular kind of house-to-house begging. So with getting everybody in costume and doing the Hubs' last minute deco errands, getting people fed is absolute craziness. 

In years past I've found myself gnawing on the odd 3 Musketeers bar swiped from someone's bag, or something petrified from the fridge, or nothing at all until well after midnight. About four years ago I came up with a better solution. 

The Hands all corpsified and gross

<-----------THIS!

Severed hands. I made them out of meat loaf with hard boiled egg bones. They were such a smash hit with my family that the next year I made hands and feet. There's always a healthy dollop of ketchup 'blood' and pumpkin seed nails. I coat the hands and feet with cheese to make it look like burnt skin.

Ghoulish feet to go with the hands

Last year I tried something even more ghoulish--a severed head. The eyeballs were hard boiled eggs and there was cauliflower for the brains. I had to cook it in two parts so it would cook all the way through (and fit in the oven). It was much harder to make it look like a real head.

This year I'm going to do guts. The heart is going to be interesting trying to make the coating on it look like pericardium, but cheese might work. And I'll need to apply the ketchup with a paintbrush. The main vein might be tough. I figure I'll make the lung with cauliflower for the alveoli...that is, if I have time to get to the store. Otherwise it'll just have to be the outside of the lung. And there'll be sausage kidneys.

Ack! A Weeping Angel!

Okay, so I'm freakishly ghoulish. It's strange to hear my kids say, "Please may I have a pointer finger" or "Please pass the brain." But what can I say? They sit down to eat on Halloween now.