Looks like this will be a food blog today! We begin with our special Halloween night dinner – chicken pad thai. What makes it special for Halloween? Purple noodles!

Last night was the second installment of Komac Dinner Party. We had new responsibilities this time. Ashley had the side dish, and she decided to make potato rolls. She put the ingredients into the bread machine and used it to make the dough. Then she rolled the little balls, let them rise, and baked them. Pretty tasty!

Kayla was in charge of the main dish. She chose to make a baked chicken breast coated in a parmesan bread crumb mixture (with egg whites to act as glue and be crunchy). She made a spiced up ketchup to go with it (she mixed ground mustard into the ketchup). Also tasty!

I was in charge of veggies. I mage a pan fried fritter with zucchini, sweet potato, carrot, scallions, and some fresh ginger. Kevin and I loved them, but the girls ate peas. They did taste the fritters, but did not like them.

Kevin was in charge of dessert. He decided to try baking. The last time he tried to bake was around 15 years ago. He was trying to make me dinner, and thought he would bake one of those frozen apple pies.  He followed all of the directions, but he forgot that there was a sheet of aluminum foil still under the broiler, full of the barbecue sauce drippings from the dinner he made. We ended up with smoky pie! But he braved the challenge and chose an apple coffee cake muffin. Muffins are pretty forgiving recipes, so a good start. He did it all by himself, and the results were delicious!

Big chunks of apple and a crunchy crumb topping. Yum!

The girls get tomorrow off for Veteran’s Day, so they will be with Gramma. This coming Sunday is a big day for Ashley. She will take her first belt test for karate! She won’t get the results until her regular Wednesday night class. She has been practicing, so we are excited to see how she does!

People around here are VERY divided about Halloween. Some believe that trick-or-treating MUST be on Halloween, in the evening and the dark, or it doesn’t “count”. And others like the way it is done here, where the trick-or-treating is done on the Sunday before Halloween from 1-5PM. I like it on Sunday. I am more relaxed, I can walk around with other parents, and I am not trying to make dinner with the doorbell ringing every few minutes. It’s also so much easier to get the kids ready with their costumes when I am not just walking in the door from work! So today was the day. Kayla had a Halloween dance on Friday night, so some of the pictures for her come from that night.

Kayla wanted to be a dragon. So we made her wings with metallic fabric and pool noodle strips as the ribs/spines on the wings. It worked better than I thought! We found some cool sticky glitter tattoos at the dollar store to complete the effect, and braided her hair back to help hold on the ears and horns headband.

Ashley wanted to be a hula girl. That was easy. She already had the bright green jeans, and I found the tan shirt at Wal-Mart. She used glitter nail polish to make the sea shell bikini look prettier. She used the sticky tattoo things that Kayla didn’t use.

Here are the two girls getting ready to head out into the neighborhood.

We were pretty fortunate this year with the weather. It was windy, but about 50 degrees. Not as warm as some places……but pretty good for here! Ashley stopped in a spooky yard for a picture.

Ashley is still coughing. It has been over a week, but no fever and she can go about her day. But she quit trick-or-treating after about an hour. Kayla came home after 2 hours. 50 degrees is not too cold, but it gets cold after a couple of hours spent outside! We’re hoping Ashley will knock out the cough this week. In the meantime, lots of humidifier air, benadryl and delsym. The combination seems to help.

Another fall tradition happened this weekend too. We lit the pilot light on the fireplace! This means a tricky game where you push in a button, hold it while you rapidly push the spark button until it ignites, then continue holding the big button for 1 minute. Then you can put everything back together and light a fire with the remote (gas fireplace of course). Kevin was working this out, but he had “help”.

We think Gizmo has decided that Kevin is the “alpha dog” or pack leader. He follows Kevin everywhere, and if Kevin leaves a shirt or jacket on a chair, Gizmo will sleep on it. He wants to be with Kevin and around Kevin all of the time. It’s funny! Gizmo still has the chunky scab on his ear, but he is fine with it. The girls are sad to bring him home later this week.

We can’t wait to see some pictures of a certain mini mustard bottle and some spooky two year olds!