Easy Halloween Themed Dinner Ideas

As is the case with most holidays or “important” days, I have a hard time getting my kids to eat a decent meal in lieu of just skipping right to the good stuff.  I get it (kind of).  Candy sounds way more appealing than a delicious nutritious meal until it’s the middle of the night and bellies hurt and no one’s sleeping… Last year I tried to spice things up a little bit to make dinner on Halloween night a little bit more appealing to the kiddos.  I didn’t have hours to put things together so you can believe me when I say it was really simple.

Mummy Dogs

This was probably the trickiest thing of all to make.  I found some crazy detailed directions on Pinterest (where I found the original idea) but got frustrated with them because it was way too hard for something that should have been simple.  You can make them one of two ways – either leave the hot dog in one big piece and wrap pieces of crescent roll around it or do what I did in the picture above.  I cut my hot dog in half for about the bottom third (eyeball it and go with what looks right to you).  I also cut two smaller pieces off on the top towards the middle for arms (again, eyeball it or skip it if it’s too much work).  Then just cut up a crescent roll and start wrapping your hot dog until it’s covered to your liking.  Throw them in a 350 degree oven until the crescent rolls are brown, maybe 10 minutes (be sure to keep an eye on them-they’re smaller pieces instead of the whole big biscuit cooking at once).

Spiders & Hats

Again, super easy! It’s just Oreo cookies with pretzels broken in half for the legs and chocolate candies for the eyes.  If you are feeling ambitious, you can open the Oreo to put the legs in or just stick them in (like I did).  I did have to dip the chocolate candies into chocolate to keep them on the cookie (you could also using premade icing too).  For the witch hats, just dip the big end of a Hersey Kiss into chocolate or icing and stick on an Oreo.

Jell-o

I’ve got tons of molds so this one was really the easiest of all for me to do.  First I made the small finger and bone pieces out of Jell-o.  Then I poured the rest into a Halloween cake pan I had.  Chill and serve.  Super easy!

Other Options

To go with the hot dogs, I made simple macaroni and cheese for the kids.  You could add anything else to this meal you want.  Fruits, veggies, chips, whatever.  I picked things that were easy for me to make that I knew my kids would eat to try and limit the battles over dinner.

I also feed my kids before they get into their costumes when I can.  Having to spot clean a costume isn’t fun either….

What do you feed the kids before they head out for trick or treating?