Halloween Bloody Eyeball Soup with Gravestone Grilled Cheese

Happy Halloween everyone! Today I have a bloody and cheesy dish to share with you - it makes a great lunch or dinner! As is my theme, this is a super simple but fun recipe!

First up, Bloody Eyeball Soup! The bloody soup is just plain old tomato soup. You can use your favorite recipe or store bought soup. The eyeballs are made by stacking mozzarella balls, olive slices, and tiny bell pepper or carrot pieces and gently placing them in the soup. You can make some gravestone-shaped grilled cheese sandwiches to go along with the soup - Lil C loved cutting the sandwiches into fun shapes.

I hope you enjoy this recipe and stay safe and warm this Halloween!

For more Halloween recipes, check out:

Halloween Monster Pancakes and Apple Monster Eye Pops

Halloween Worm Sandwiches and Crispy Zombie Skins

Halloween Franken-Smoothie

Pumpkin Jack Smoothie

Halloween Surprise Cupcakes

Eye Scream Sundae

Bloody Guts Cinnamon Rolls

Halloween Worm Sandwiches and Crispy Zombie Skins

 

We're continuing our Halloween foods with a gross meal perfect for lunch or dinner: squirmy worm sandwiches and crispy seasoned zombie skins! These recipes couldn't be easier to prepare and they barely even need a real recipe.

For the squirmy worms, I took 8 hot dogs and cut each one lengthwise into 4 pieces. Then I tossed them into a dry hot pan and gently stirred. As you stir, you'll notice the pieces start to curl up.

Once the hot dog pieces are curled up and hot, add BBQ sauce just to coat and stir it all together.

Serve on hamburger buns with a slice of your favorite cheese. We also added some sauerkraut - maybe the sauerkraut could be weeds or hay? Squirmy worms with hay? Whatever you want to call it, we thought it was delicious!

Halloween Monster Pancakes and Apple Monster Eye Pops

After coating each apple slice in chocolate, Squidgy added one piece of marshmallow - sticky side up - and a chocolate chip to make an eye. Then just chill them in the fridge until set and enjoy!

Our Day of the Dead Altar

We started celebrating the Day of the Dead and making an altar a few years ago. This happened for a couple of reasons. In 2017, I began (more officially) homeschooling Lil C and, that October, we did a unit study on Day of the Dead. I sort of fell in love with the holiday, with its celebration of love, remembrance, and happiness rather than the sadness usually associated with those who are gone. It also became very personal because we were approaching the one year anniversary of my mother's passing and it gave me inspiration on how to honor and remember her. That year we set up our first little altar in her honor. Lil C helped make some beautiful tissue paper flowers, we chose a picture, and added the skull we got in Mexico (the one in between the flowers and in front of the candles) along with some festive animals and a skeleton. Lil C also added some little gifts my mom had given her and things she made that she said reminded her of my mom <3

This year our altar has grown even more! Unfortunately, we lost a few more family members, a fish, and a doggy cousin last year and Lil C wanted to remember them all. We haven't finished making frames for all of them yet, but I wanted to share what we had. We created some papel picado using the templates I shared in the last post (you can find them here) 

We also made little nicho boxes to display our new photos. See how we made our boxes and get a free template to make your own at Day of the Dead Altar - Nicho Boxes.

Day of the Dead Altar - Nicho Boxes

 

This cute little frame is our homemade version of a nicho box. You can read more about them at Zinnia Fold Arts. In this post I will show you how we made them and give you a free template to make your own (yay! Doesn't everyone love free??).

Supplies needed:

Nicho box template

Cardstock (white and/or colored)

Scissors

Glue stick

Hot glue gun

Markers/crayons/pencils or whatever you want for decorating your box

2"x3" photos of your loved ones

Instructions:

1. Print out page 1 of the template on whatever color of cardstock you like. 

2. Cut out the shape and fold along the lines on the top, bottom, and side flaps.

3. Use the glue stick to attach a photo on top of the gray rectangle at the center.

4. I found the best way to assemble the box was to fold over the top flap and place a dot of hot glue in each corner. Repeat with the bottom flap. 

5. Next, fold the side flaps up and glue them down at the top and bottom. 6. Print out pages 2 and 3 of the template, decorate the frames, cut them out and glue them over the top of the box.

'The Day of the Dead' - Read and Rise October 2020

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Frida Kahlo-inspired Jungle Self-Portraits

Lil C and Squidgy finished their Frida Kahlo-inspired self-portraits! 

If you missed the Read and Rise post about Frida Kahlo, you can find it here: Read and Rise Book Club - October 2020 Week 3

'Our Era is Now' by Zoe Yu Book Review

I was thrilled to discover "Our Era is Now" by Zoe Yu - Zoe is only 15 years old and such an inspiration for all our children! I'll be honest, when I was 15, the only things I was really worrying about were not being super awkward for the rest of high school and stressing about maintaining my GPA. It was a different world 20-25 years ago. Without social media, streaming TV, instant access to hundreds of news outlets, and the ability to Google anything you're wondering about, it was easier for our world's problems to get swept under the rug and for us to remain ignorant. I was admittedly naïve and ignorant - I thought things like racism and sexism were largely in the past and the biggest problems facing the planet were littering and oil spills. 

Today's youth are growing up in the age of information. I don't think I knew a quarter of the things my children know when I was their age. But this access to information also gives them more power - power to start making a positive impact on their community. And that is exactly what Zoe Yu has done. She has taken this information and compiled it into a book that reminds us all that though change may not be easy, it is absolutely possible. As I read the book with my children, we learned about many women that none of us had ever heard of before and one of our favorites, Frida Kahlo. After reading, we were so intrigued by Filipino banana ketchup that we had to research to find out exactly what it was! The book is a fantastic starting point and resource for a study of influential and groundbreaking women. It is also a big step in what I believe will be an amazing writing career for young Zoe Yu <3

"Our Era is Now" is perfect if you want to learn about women's history. There are a lot of inspiring people in this book. My favorite is Frida Kahlo. I like Frida Kahlo because she did amazing art and she fought for women's rights. She helped women who live now like me. Thank you to every woman who fought for women's rights. - Scarlett Mae, 10

Grab your copy of "Our Era is Now: 14 Remarkable Women Who Rewrote History" by Zoe Yu today!

https://www.amazon.com/Our-Era-Now-Remarkable-Rewrote-ebook/dp/B08GLCXKSC/

 

Tres Leches Cake

 

I'm so happy to say that my second Latin dessert attempt went SO much better than the first! The tres leches cake went off without a hitch (at least mostly)! I used this recipe from Delish D'Lites.

The first step was to make the cake batter. The only issue I had came when I was trying to separate the whites and yolks - I almost never have any problems doing this but for some reason my first two eggs decided to be difficult and my yolks broke when I cracked open the eggs and fell into my bowl. But I was able to scoop up just about all of the yolk and my whites whipped up beautifully! 

The batter was so light and fluffy it reminded me of a perfect mousse. I kind of wanted to take a big bite of it! But that definitely would not have tasted very good...

After the cake was cool, Lil C and Squidgy helped make holes in the cake with toothpicks and I poured the tres leches mixture (evaporated milk, condensed milk, and heavy cream) over the top. The final step was to make a whipped cream topping - it turned the cake into a delicious fluffy cloud.

Everyone gobbled up the cake so I think it's safe to say it tasted as good as it looked. It may involve a number of steps, but it's actually pretty easy so don't be intimidated by it - give it a try!

DIY Maraca/Shaker and Guiro

We continued our week of recycled instruments by making a maraca/shaker and a guiro. First, we painted two empty water bottles. After they dried, we filled one about halfway with beans and screwed the top back on to make the shaker. The other one we left as it was and grabbed an unsharpened pencil to rub along the side of the bottle to create that guiro-like sound. If you're not familiar with the guiro, the following video will introduce you to it, along with the cowbell, bongos, and congas.

'Frida Kahlo and Her Animalitos' - Read and Rise October 2020

Flan de Coco Flop

I love flan and have successfully made a pumpkin flan in the past for Thanksgiving. So when it was time to try some Latin desserts during Hispanic Heritage month in the Read and Rise Book Club, I knew I had to make flan. I decided to try out this recipe for Flan de Coco (Coconut Cream Cheese Flan) because cream cheese and coconut are two things I absolutely love. 

Disclaimer: Flan is the Latin version of cheesecake. When it's made right it's so silky and creamy and unbelievably delicious. But like cheesecake, flan can be fickle and difficult and a huge pain in the butt. 

I started out positive and motivated thinking, it'll take me about a half hour to get this in the oven and then I can go do my yoga and play with the kids before lunch. Correction: it took at least an hour and a half, probably two hours when you add in cleaning up. So what happened? This is what happened.

I started out with caramel that was not cooperating. I swear it looked like this for a good half hour as it boiled and I stirred so it wouldn't burn. Sub-quality sugar? Maybe. Heat too low? Possibly. The wrong size pan? Perhaps. I've made caramel before but it can be a tricky thing and I am by no means an expert.

At this point I was exhausted from making the caramel and I just wanted to finish so there are no more photos of the cooking process. I threw all the flan ingredients into the blender, mixed it all up, and started pouring into the pan. And then my pie dish was full...but the blender was still half full...Seriously?! The flan in the picture didn't look that big! What do I do now? Improvise. I grabbed a rectangular glass baking dish, coated it with cooking spray and poured the rest of the custard in. I put both dishes in a water bath and stuck them in the oven - not knowing how long I should bake it because clearly my pan was smaller than the one used in the recipe. I started with 60 minutes then kept checking and adding 10 minutes. What I didn't realize was that the water under the rectangular dish had evaporated because near the end I was only checking the round one...The other one? It was definitely overcooked and though the flavor was good, the texture was off and not quite so creamy...but, if there's one thing I try to remind myself and my children, it's that our brains don't grow when we do things right. Our brains only grow when we make mistakes. In conclusion, I think my brain grew a bunch today.

'Ada's Violin: The Story of the Recycled Orchestra of Paraguay' - Read and Rise October 2020

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Bistec Encebollado, Platanos, and Tostadas

Today it's time for dinner! The recipe linked at the end of this post lists bistec encebollado as a Cuban dish, but some research led me to discover that most Latin countries have their own variation of it. The same applies to the tostones and platanos maduros - the recipes below are from Dominican and Columbian cooking sites but plantains are served all over Latin American and the Caribbean. All I know is that tostones and platanos maduros are both DELICIOUS and I'm not sure if I've ever gotten food from a Latin restaurant without getting one or both plantain dishes!

Our local grocery store only had yellow plantains so we weren't able to make tostones, but we did make bistec and platanos maduros along with Mexican tostadas. We've never had bistec encebollado and it is a simple recipe but the flavor is amazing!

You can look up a recipe for tostadas but I did not use one. I simply fried some corn tortillas in about a 1/4" of oil until they were crispy and then we topped them with homemade refried beans, guacamole, lettuce, tomatoes, sour cream, and queso fresco. Squidgy opted out of the lettuce and tomato but he inhaled his tostada and wanted another! I think I'll have to keep both tostadas and bistec encebollado in our regular meal rotation. I hope you try some or all of these recipes!

Bistec encebollado: https://www.cookedbyjulie.com/bistec-encebollado/

Tostones: https://www.dominicancooking.com/301-tostones-flattened-fried-plantains.html

Platanos maduros: https://www.mycolombianrecipes.com/fried-sweet-plantain-tajadas-de-platano

Instant Pot Refried Beans

Homemade refried beans may be easier than you think! I cooked up a big batch so we'd have some for chilaquiles and tostadas this weekend. I make them in the instant pot and freeze the beans in 2-cup portions in quart freezer bags. Squidgy likes to call my refried and black beans "chocolate beans" so we've started adding a tablespoon of cocoa powder to both recipes. For some reason the beans look extra dark and chocolatey after I moved them into the bowl!

Here's the recipe I use: https://www.thespruceeats.com/instant-pot-refried-beans-4140600

Pan de Mallorca and Barcelona Hot Chocolate

Yesterday, we made Puerto Rican Pan de Mallorca and had it two ways: fresh with coffee and Barcelona hot chocolate and then later as a grilled sandwich with turkey and cheese (I forgot to take pictures!). The kids were very excited to help shape the buns - they really love anytime they can help in the kitchen.

The Barcelona hot chocolate was really thick and rich - in our opinion a little too rich and thick to just drink on it's own but perfect for dipping! Next time we make some I think we'll have to make some churros too ;-)