A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

These two amazing kiddoes are the reason for our at home Halloween party. Myia, who is 8 and the cutest Black Panther-ess out there (okay, I might be prejudiced but look, she's adorable!) had been very concerned about how this whole Pandemic thing was going to affect her trick-or-treating. But Aunt Gonnie and Uncle Gene (and Uncle Hal) always take care of the kiddoes at Halloween. We don't have kids ourselves but we've long thought that having our nieces and nephews around gives them people their own age to play with--especially at Halloween.

In our family, there was also a long tradition started by our Aunt Bessie who always always had Chili on the stove on Halloween, along with popcorn balls and cookies for all the neighborhood kids. I loved that tradition so years ago, after Aunt Bessie was no longer able to entertain, I took over making sure at our house there was, and always will be, Chili, popcorn balls, and treats for all the family and friends.

Because the pandemic has changed so much in our lives, we've had to rethink our Halloween get togethers too. Instead of opening the house to all, we focused on my brothers and sister, and their children, and grand child. The youngest are Junior (above, who started out the evening as a Mutant Ninja Turtle, but as he got hot ended up as mostly a naked child running through the house) and Shamyia, whom we mostly call Myia. All together there were 9 of us able to spend the evening together

Since this is a food blog, I'll go through the food first, but at the end I'll also talk about keeping everyone entertained which is also part of the fun of Halloween. There are four recipes: Chicken and Homemade Noodle Soup, Spider Bread, Knorr Spinach Dip, and Jello Spider in the Brain. And then descriptions of three great activities: Over the Top Large Halloween Word Search, Solo Cup Bowling, and Mini Cornhole.

For 30 years we've always had Chili on Halloween but this year we voted and they chose the lovely, country Chicken and Noodles for the big pot on the stove. And I said "No problem!"--fun change for me too.

One note as you click on my recipe links, for some reason the blog's photo takes about 20 seconds to load so please be patient with it. I apologize. I'm working to solve the technical problem and hope to have that corrected soon.

Glenna's Chicken and Homemade Noodle Soup

If you are in a hurry, I will say that Rheames makes a great homestyle egg noodle in two different shapes so if you're not in the mood to roll out pasta dough...slip over to the freezer section in the grocery store. Other than perfect shapes, no one will know the difference.

My favorite food part of the night was Knorr Spinach Dip in my own little creation: The Bread Spider. It was a last minute "Hmm...would it work if I..." thought that turned out to be my favorite foodie thing we had. This will definitely become a tradition. Who doesn't like a spider than you can pull off his legs to eat dip with?

My everyday bread (rolls, loaves, braids, cinnamon rolls) is a recipe Auntie Susan, Cousin Ann, and I were given by the amazing Faith Brockoff who was the head cook at War Eagle Mill (Arkansas) when she gave us bread making lessons, a fun birthday gift we chose for Auntie Susan. So. Much. Fun! With her permission, I've loaded it here to the blog and have made a hundred variations on it, always coming back to this basic recipe for almost everything. It's very accommodating of type of flour and additions. My thanks, always, to Faith! The version I have on the blog is by hand, as in kneading by hand, but to be honest, I throw it all in my Kitchen Aid mixer and let the machine do the work. When I do, upon occasion, knead by hand, you can bet it goes down in my fitness diary as my upper body workout!

Faith's Farmhouse Bread

This recipe is for a double recipe as compared to most. You can make 2 loaves or 3 very small loaves or 30-30 rolls, depending on size. I used about 2/3 to make the spider and then still had enough dough for about 14 small rolls.

To construct, make the bread dough and allow it have a nice full first rise. Punch it down and then go to work.

1) The spider butt was a boule shape of dough, approximately 4" across.

2 ) At the "head" of it, I laid down 4 double legs, a large roll sized of dough pinched off, and rolled out (like Play Dough!) into skinny bread stick shapes, two on top of the other two but with the legs spread out so they didn't stick to each other. Then I pulled the "butt" boule up over the top of the nearest middle of the legs so that it would all cook together and form one unit.

3) Next I lightly crumpled up approx 18" of foil x 2 times. Each form was about 2" in diameter and gently curved them like a crescent to form around the spider body. And then, and this is important!, I generously sprayed the forms with cooking spray so the legs wouldn't stick.

4) I gently laid the legs on one side up over onto the other side while I slipped the crumpled foil forms up close to the body. And then brought each of that side's four legs back over the foil form, spreading them out, and pressing down slightly on the "foot" to create more of a cartoonish rather than scary spider.

5) Lastly I pinched of a large roll size of dough and worked it into a completely round shape and placed it on top of the middle of the legs, where they all joined.

6) I let this rise for an hour. It didn't quite double in size but it filled out well. Then baked it in a 400 degree pre-heated oven for about 30 minutes until it was nicely browned.

7) To prepare for the dip, I used a serrated steak knife to cut all the way around the spider butt in a nice circle, and then gently pulled and dug out the bread with my fingers until the hole inside was was nicely evened out.

The bread that I cut it out? I chunked that up to place on the tray with the crackers to serve the spinach dip on and, well you know, some of it ended up slathered with the pre-made spinach dip for my lunch. Hey, I was working hard. I deserved to nibble a bit, right?

8) I "glued" Wilton candy eyes on his face with a little leftover frosting from a can. Yes, I know I'm a cake decorator but I do keep a little Betty Crocker vanilla and fudge frosting on hand for cake emergencies. Wait. You don't have cake emergencies? What the hell?

Knorr Spinach Dip

This Spinach Dip is a tradition in my family. It can hardly be called a celebration if we don't have this. We all love it, even the spinach haters, totally dig this dip. But it is not the spinach artichoke hot dip that's on so many restaurant menus. This is a cold dip and the recipe (like Fantasy Fudge, who writes that down, right?) is on the side of the package. But I've also put the link directly to the Knorr website. It's such a great dip. There's rarely any left and when there is, someone always grabs it! Haha. Just like my sis did Halloween night. And I let her. Because the Spider Butt wouldn't hold the last 1/2 cup of dip and I thought "Well, won't that be a nice treat for me after everyone leaves I settle down in the chair with my Kindle. Yes, yes it was.

Also on the table were Deviled Eggs, cheese slices in a rolling skeleton coffin, cream cheese mints shaped as purple roses, and Sydney and Myia made funfetti cupcakes to share.

I did not get a photo of the punch, a simple mix of Hawaiian Fruit Punch and Sprite that we all love with the kicker of Ice Hands in it for spook flavor. I smiled every time I opened the freezer door the week before Halloween. I would catch my breath at first "Hands?" "Oh yeah...Halloween..." The ice hands are simply water in latex gloves that don't have powder--that's very important.

Junior and his mother, Jordan, and her friend since high school, Sam, were the first ones through the door and they all helped me put together the final spin on things. Junior was particularly helpful with the Ice Hands. As soon as I used the scissors to make a slash across the palm of the glove, he quickly freed the ice from each and then chomped down on a finger gleefully before surrendering the ice to go in the punch. Such an easy thing and they look so cool floating in the red murk. Learn from our mistake. We also washed a glow in the dark bracelet and dropped it into the punch but the red was too deep and the glow didn't make a difference. We're thinking next year a bigger (this one was pretty tiny) thicker one will do the trick.

Lastly we must talk about the Jello Spider in Brain. We have a brain mold that was used for years to host shrimp dip, a really yummy 1950's concoction made with salad shrimp, tomato soup, gelatin, and diced celery and peppers. It sounds disgusting but, I promise you, it is delicious. However, a few years ago we changed when we found this really crazy spider about 3" long, washed him up and put him in jello. Myia happily tore into the jello to release the spider and then got to eat super concentrated (like she didn't already have a sugar high) strawberry jello.

Jello Spider in the Brain

The concept here is really easy. I used 2 large (6 oz) packages of strawberry jello. But instead of using 2 cups of hot water and 2 cups of cold water, I used half that. So I used 1 cup of boiling water to stir the jello mix into until it all dissolved, then I stirred in one cup of cold water. I put that into the brain mold (no cooking spray or anything) and put it down in the veggie drawer of the fridge to set up.

Once it was set up, I placed the spider on his back on top.

Then I prepared the second large box of jello, again, only 1 cup of boiling water to dissolve the jello mix and then 1 cup of cold water stirred in. Then I gently poured that onto the spider and set jello and put it back in the veggie drawer to set up. Nothing helpful about the veggie drawer. The fridge was getting full and the brain isn't very stable when you fill it so the veggie drawer was a nice, stable, accommodating space for it to set up.

To release the jello from its mold, place it into a larger bowl of hot tap water (or a sink filled with the hottest tap water) carefully making sure the water doesn't lap up over the sides into the jello. Let it rest for 2-4 minutes. When you pick the mold up and it jiggles a little at the edges, then place the serving plate upside down on the top of it (serving side to top of jello) and quickly flip it over. If it doesn't immediately drop onto the serving plate, be patent for a few seconds or try squeezing it a bit to see if it will come loose. If it absolutely will not drop, reverse back to the jello being upside down and place back in the hot tap water for a couple more minutes and try again. When the jello finally releases you may have a small pool of melty jello at the base which is easy to wipe up with kitchen towel or paper towel.

I have to say I ate some of it and the jello was delicious, very concentrated strawberry flavor and extremely sweet! And the texture was much more like jigglers or the little pre-made jello cups than normal everyday jello. I might make it that way from now on.

My sister Suzanne, niece Sydney, and niece Myia were in charge of cupcakes. They were delicious, a "funfetti" cupcake with the "funfetti" orange frosting that also has sprinkles in it. I added a bag of Wilton candy eyes and they were set to decorate. The best part of the cupcake making was Myia's "head blown" moment of figuring out that you can use a CAKE mix to make CUPCAKES. There isn't a special CUPCAKE mix. I just love it when some small thing bounces around in someone's (or my) head and suddenly makes miraculous connections. So cute. We'll remember this epiphany of hers forever...and probably tease her about it forever too.

For activities, we had a few things going on...to start the kids off before the BIG CANDY EVENT , we set up a mini cornhole set donated to us by Auntie Susan. Perfect for indoors.

I also made really horrible faces on 10 orange Solo cups to be the "pins" and found a 6" diameter soft rubber ball left over from Jordan and Sydney's younger days, so we could have indoor bowling. I say "horrible" because I am truly no artist and those Solo cups were the proof but Junior and Myia didn't seem to mind at all. Simple and easy activity for any time.

Those two games alone kept both the kids and several adults entertained off and on all evening. Great fun!

For extra fun, I taped 3 yard wide pieces of parchment paper together and printed off a fun-looking Halloween Word Search and free handed it onto my giant piece of paper. I can't take credit for this idea. I saw it on Pinterest where they had then masking taped it to the wall so everyone could find a word or two as they walked by. I simply left ours on the dining room table where it took up about half the table. The funny/great part was our niece, Sydney, is such a Word Search aficionado that she ended up sitting down and completing the whole thing. She said loved it and wanted to do it again so I'm thinking it could become very common at our house for holidays. Good thing there are tons of holiday-themed word searches on Pinterest!

The last activity of the night was the BIG CANDY EVENT. It worked out quite well to divide up all the candy into individual sacks for each adult, we spread out, and then Myia and Junior went from adult to adult trick-or-treating us and getting a handful of candy at a time until it was all gone. I had also collected a treat box full of small toys (with Auntie Susan's help) to give out and I admit I had a fun time yelling Myia, Junior, and Sydney's names with "Head's up" and then flinging everything from decks of cards to baby plush unicorns to mini cans of silly string and mini gobs of glitter slime.

As the saying goes, a fun time was had by all. By the end of the evening, I was happily, cozily exhausted (much like I am now after writing this long post). I will end with some of my favorite pics of the evening. Happy Halloween to all, it will be interesting to see what next year brings! Whatever life brings in the new year, as Sydney and I like to say "We will make it work." And work well.