April Fools’ Dinner Ideas (Guest)
Eat the Meal in Reverse
Sometimes the easiest concepts can make for a good April Fools’ trick, and this is certainly one of them. While you typically serve your meal followed by dessert, try to go in reverse instead. Eat your dessert, then the meal, then the appetizer. Your little ones are sure to think it’s the best day of the year.
Serve Faux Food
Easily one of the most popular April Fools’ Day meal ideas, there are many different ways to tackle this. There are also a variety of different recipes that fall into this category. If you want to stay on the easy side of things, go with premade stuff like “peas and carrots” candy. They’re small candies that are made to look like frozen peas and carrots might.
Want to take things to the next level? Get ready for some real fun. Make a “hamburger” for dinner. Simply make cookies into the shape of hamburger buns, complete with the sesame seeds, and then add a peppermint patty to the middle for the meat. You can even add food coloring to coconut to turn it green so you’ll have the lettuce to go with your burger. A bit of red icing can make the ketchup. Other similar ideas include a meatball sub with a pound cake bun and ice cream meatballs, a “cake” that includes pizza sauce, Italian sausage, and pepperoni topped with a biscuit mix to make it resemble cake, and even a pudding dessert that looks like dirt from your garden instead of dessert.
You could also go with a cake that looks like a pizza, pound cake coated in graham cracker crumbs to resemble chicken nuggets, taco salad made from ice cream, coconut, and maraschino cherries, or even berry sodas that are really jello, making them tough to suck through a straw. There’s quite a bit of fun to be had with these faux food ideas, and you’re likely to surprise anyone who sits down to your table.
Go With Whimsical Names
A great idea if you have little ones in the house, simply renaming a few of your own favorite dishes can be a perfect way to create a meal for this amusing day. For example, for breakfast, you could serve ostrich eggs, which are simply canned peach halves surrounded by whipped cream. For your beverage, you could serve dragon blood, which is really just fruit punch. Coming up with fun names or presentations for your food is the best way to serve your typical meal while still incorporating the holiday spirit into things.
No matter what you decide to serve this April Fools’ Day, it’s certain to be a memorable treat they’ll look back on fondly in the days to come.
Barbara Petersen is a writer with an interest in family, food and fun. See more of her work at the Holiday Gifts & Baskets Blog, put on by http://www.holiday-gifts-gift-baskets.com.
Fun kids’ foods of the past (Guest)
Today’s post is brought to you by guest poster, Sally.
Everyone remembers the food that they ate when they were young. These are the foods that weren’t always the best things around or the healthiest – but the most fun! Most adults forget about what they used to go crazy for as their tastes change, but it’s always fun to take a trip down memory lane.
So if you have ever tried to eat a full packet of popping candy in one go or loved the huge sizes of the old Monster Munch (which are now back!) here are some of the so called “kid’s” food that you will probably have feasted on and loved in the past.
Crispy Pancakes
What was not to love about Crispy Pancakes? These favourites from Findus were a fast tea with chips and beans and had flavours like mince and onions, chicken and mushroom, chicken and bacon and cheddar cheese. These fillings were slipped between a folded pancake that had been coated in breadcrumbs. Cook them for too long and they are like cardboard, don’t cook them for long enough and they taste like soggy cardboard – but as a kid everyone thought they were amazing!
Jawbreakers
These were some of the most popular sweets that kids would run to the shop to buy with their 20p in their hand. Jawbreakers were (or should I say are as you can still find them) massive gob stoppers that have loads of layers. Each layer is a different colour and flavour and it was so exciting seeing which one would come next. Most kids couldn’t manage the full jawbreaker in one go so they would leave it and go back to it later – by putting it on a plate, worktop, desk etc!
Pop Tarts
Pop Tarts are the ultimate in kids food – stick one or two into the toaster and wait…..when it pops out you have a slice of sugary heaven with a super hot filling. Not only were these a favourite of kids and plenty of adults all over the country they were the cause of a lot of burns. Hands up anyone who hasn’t grabbed a Pop Tart fresh from the toaster and bitten straight into it and suffered the agony of hot jam burning their mouth! It might have hurt but we went back for more. One of the best things about Pop Tarts was they were marketed as a breakfast snack, so we could munch them thinking we were being good.
Um Bongo
Um Bongo they drink it in the Congo! This was the drink that had more tropical fruits than you can shake a stick at. It was fruity, sweet and addictive for kids. Most parents hated it but nearly everyone had this in their lunchbox at school. It came in boxes which were easy to keep in your bag 9and pop once you had drunk it) and the advert jingle was sung in playgrounds all over the country.
Angel Delight
You might have forgotten about Angel Delight but it if you try it again it will probably be a new guilty pleasure. Making Angel Delight took a few minutes (mix the powder with milk) then put it in the fridge to set. Some people would eat it runny before it set, which was good, but others would be forced by their mum to eat it ‘properly’. The only question with this sweet and smooth combination of a sauce and mousse was which was your favourite flavour? Was it chocolate, raspberry, strawberry butterscotch or banana? Mine was butterscotch.
Micro Chips
What could be better than chips that cooked in the microwave? For plenty of kids nothing! Check a packet of microchips in your microwave and three minutes later you could be eating scolding hot chips that tasted as though they were fresh. Well they didn’t but they were fun and they were quick to make as soon as you got in from school!
Author bio: Sally Lindsey, kitchen designer for London based kitchen company Nicholas Anthony. She focuses her effort on kitchen paraphernalia and design trends that adds life to this place of the house, including optimal use of space for big families, cooking recipes and light fixtures.
The joys of parenting
Reminder that this year’s NaBloPoMo theme on Quirky Cookery is “adults.” Content may not be appropriate for kids.
It’s like seeing a kid on caffeine for the first time….
Or the first Halloween that they decide to sneak into the candy after you tell them they can only have one piece.
Just hold out with the no’s for a little while longer and you can enjoy the flip out, too!
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