Swamp Slime Pizza and Other Recipe Ideas

No child should be permitted to trick-or-treat on an empty stomach. Let's be serious here, a hungry child plus a seemingly bottomless bag of candy will most certainly end in a severe tummy ache (if not puddles of candy apple red puke). And that is why parents should always feed their children a large meal before they set out on their night-long, door-to-door quest for sugar. If not for their health, then surely feed your children a large Halloween dinner so they don't wake you up in the middle of the night complaining of cramps.

Whenever I'm preparing a Halloween dinner, I take a few things into consideration. First, it has to be quick-to-prepare as most children will be too preoccupied with costume design to wait for their dinner. Second, the dinner must be quite filling to curb excessive candy consumption. And third, it must look as grotesque as possible and have an equally disgusting name to accompany it.

In past years I've made:

• Swamp Slime Pizza – which is nothing more than pizza crust smeared with loads of slime-green pesto and topped with shredded mozzarella.
  
  
• Maggot Garnished Vampire Soup – bowls of blood red tomato soup garnished with larvae-like orzo pasta.
  
  
• Rat Dropping Risotto – steaming plates of parmesan cheese risotto, dyed a most disgusting shade of black with either food coloring or squid ink (which can be found at specialty shops or ordered online).
  
  
• Deep-Fried Ogre Toes with Mud Dip – a creative name for chicken nuggets served with a generous dollop of gloppy sweet and sour sauce.
  
  
• And of course for dessert there is always Blood and Pus Pie – a lemon curd pie dyed blood red with food coloring and topped with mounds of fresh and foamy meringue.

No child will be able to resist such a ghastly Halloween dinner. And who knows, some of these recipe ideas might just help avoid that late-night sugar shock that so many children experience after a successful night of trick-or-treating