Witch’s Potion Buffet Dinner & Halloween Pumpkin Carving Party

We had such a great time with our annual family pumpkin carving “party”! For added fun, we put together a witch’s potion themed buffet dinner! It looked so spooky and involved, but it was actually really easy to put together! The key is getting creative with easy-to-prepare foods! Just about anything can be turned into a witch’s potion ingredient when given the right name. But, certainly some items work especially well! For the more main dish options, we went with two things: fried worms and fried spiders! 😉 The fried worms were actually Tyson’s Any’tizers chicken fries!  The Any’tizers chicken fries were easy to prep, tasted great, and made the perfect “fried worms”! I was worried that calling the food by spooky names might freak the boys out a bit, but it didn’t at all. Big Brother really got into it! And, the boys slurped their fried worms right up! For the fried spiders, I used two things: mini corn dog bites & crispy chow mein noodles. We did the same concept for the bug bites at our Wild Kratts party! So, I knew they’d be perfect for our potions buffet. It is a little tedious sticking 8 chow mein noodles into each corn dog bite, but you could certainly recruit the kids to help. And, the end result is great-much like how I would envision large fried spiders would look! The rest of the menu was really easy to put together. And, we all had fun coming up with potion ingredient names! Here’s the complete witch’s potion buffet spread:

• Fried Worms – Tyson’s Any’tizers chicken fries
• Fried spiders- mini corn dog nuggets & chow mein noodles
• Insect slivers- coleslaw
• Black widow bodies – black olives
• Eyes of Newt – green olives
• Hearts of bat – grape tomatoes
• Poisoned entrails – baked beans
• Troll fingers – carrots with slivered almond “fingernails”
• Goblin toes – snap peas with slivered almond “toenails”
• Root of Hemlock – sliced cucumbers
• Frog’s blood- ketchup
• Toad venom – mustard
• Dragon’s milk – ranch dip
• Bubbling swamp slime – our favorite green punch recipe with dry ice

After all of us had eaten our potions plates clean, we enjoyed some pumpkin cinnamon cupcakes for dessert and then shifted gears toward some pumpkin carving (and painting). Ever since Big Brother was little, we’ve let the kids go to town with paint and small pumpkins while the adults carve. They love it. It was such a fun night!

Do you do any fun Halloween family activities?

Disclosure: I am a member of the Collective Bias®  Social Fabric® Community.  This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias™ and Tyson Any’Tizer’s #CBias #SocialFabric #MealsTogether. However, as always, all opinions & experiences are entirely my own.

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