Monday, November 18, 2013

Arachnophobia

for our fall backyard movie night I chose Arachnophobia.  I hadn't seen this movie since I was a kid!  I remember being a little scared when I first saw it, and it still has its creepy feeling when all the real spiders are running around, but it was pretty corny, so that was fun!
I did a big no-no and tried stuff I hadn't done for a crowd before.  I never have good luck when I just throw together an idea for a recipe, especially for a party.  I will test a recipe out until we're sick of it so I know how to do it, but this time I just threw caution to the wind and hoped for the best, and if it didn't work out I had Matt's corn dogs to fall back on, but it all came together great :)
while I have made beer pretzels before, I only did 8.  I made 24 this time, and set out a bunch of dipping sauces - a variety of mustards, "cheese" sauce, caramel, and chocolate - they doubled as a savory and a sweet treat.  it's a nice little versatile "snack" :)
I made Rolo pretzel spiders which is not quite a first time "recipe" either, but I took a chance that they would turn out in a nice spider configuration, and they did :)  I tried melting the Rolo and sticking the pretzels in, but that didn't work so I used candy melts to glue the legs to the candy.  chocolate and pretzels seem to be a hit combination at movie night so I'm glad I did them.
a new thing I did that I hadn't tested out before was kettle corn.  I used coconut oil and bacon drippings, stirred in some sugar and salt with the popcorn kernels and shook it all together on the stove in a big pot until it was done.  this one didn't come out as awesome as I thought it would, but it was okay.  some people really liked it so I'm happy I tried it.
Harlan & Hailey                                                  Judy and Kathy
Reagan, David, and Dad                              Larry, Marie & Joel
Kim, Amanda & Michael                                           Matt & me
Hailey, Kim, Amanda and me                 Matt making corn dogs
Marie and me                         Dad with a spider on his shoulder
Marie and Jack                                   Pawpaw making Leo "fly"
Leo waiting to have a pretzel                                Mom and Jack

the weather was nice, the food turn out great, the new speakers sounded wonderful and everyone enjoyed themselves :)  another success!