Hotdog and spaghetti culinary terror

I'm lucky enough that after a year of writing this blog, my freinds often send me links to things that they think I would find cool to make with my kids. This link was sent to me by one of my hubs work collegues (thank you Brad!)

Can you fathom the freaky awesomeness of this? I knew the kids would love it. We're having halloween for dinner tonight children! Someone out there in the intertubes suggested calling these terrifying edible creatures "Squiddlies" and I think that's a top name for them.

Just cut up your weiners, skewer a few bits of dried angel hair pasta or spaghetti through them and then boil until the spaghetti is cooked. Add sauce. Serve to delighted children, whilst adults look on in horror.

Here are some pictures to make your toes curl...
By the way, it makes eating spaghetti much easier for the wee ones too, because they can skewer the hot dog bit and of course all the spaghetti comes with it.

I always feel a little dirty when I eat a hotdog sausage (good dirty, but dirty non the less). They aren't exactly the most natural of food products, so I thought it would be best to see if we could recreate the Squiddly with a slightly more healthy food source.

I tried carrot chunks that I'd first microwaved for a couple of minutes, which made them just soft enough to skewer, but not so soft that they would disintegrate in the time the pasta took to cook.

With this I tried regular chunks of ham and that seemed to work just fine. They don't look quite as extra-terrestrial as the hotdogs, but the kids still loved them.

It's great being able to sit the kids down to help prepare this meal. They really enjoyed skewering the dried spaghetti through things and it kept them quiet for a good fifteen minutes. If I'd let them and we had the resources then I think they would have been happy to make enough of these to feed the whole city.

We'll have to try it with mushrooms, peppers and courgettes to see if they work too.