October, Friday The 13th (#84)

Our October movie is one I had on the calendar for awhile. I knew that we would be spending a lot of time in the 80's and Friday The 13th was on my list of 80's horror movies. We normally reserve scary movies for October, so it was a matter of finding an October that had a Friday The 13th. Those don't come up very often. If you want to be more authentic to the movie, Friday, June 13th is the date that the story happens.

For dinner, I decided on generic summer camp type foods with a spooky twist. We had something I called "Bloody Joes" which are basically just sloppy joes, but I substituted the tomato paste with tomato sauce to make them extra wet and messy. You can adjust the amount of paste and sauce to change the consistency of the joe. To make this, I simply browned some lean ground beef. Once the meat is browned, add 15 oz of tomato sauce, 1 tbsp of worcestershire sauce, and 1 tbsp dark brown sugar for each pound of ground beef cooked. Next, add veggies and spices. I used chopped onion and green pepper and seasoned with garlic powder and mustard powder. I did not measure the quantities. To add some extra grossness to the sadwhich, you can use green or black food coloring to make your buns look moldy. Add a couple drops to the inside of the buns. It takes very little. The green spot in the picture below is an example of this.

 

I also had some finger foods, namely fingers. These were variations of pigs in a blanket. I made them by cutting an 8 pack of bun-length all-beef hotdogs in half to make 16 fingers. I wrapped the base of each finger in Pillsbury croissant pastry. At the tip of each finger, I used a pairing knife to cut a groove into the hotdog and then pushed a triangular piece of onion up into that groove to create a fingernail. The fingernail is an important part of completing the look and is what turns the hotdogs into creepy looking fingers. Once assembled, I cooked the wrapped fingers at 375 until the pastry was golden brown. I served these with a dipping sauce we got from mixing ketchup with a little brown sugar. These fingers were pretty savory, so making the ketchup a little sweeter than normal provided some nice contrast.

A guest also brought some bacon wrapped dates, known as devils on horseback. With their dark and shiny look, they definitely have a sinister appearance and fit the general vibe of the night.

For dessert, I made some smore bars. For these, I leaned into the camp theme and not the horror theme. I followed this recipe, but they didn't come out very much like bars. They were more like melted chocolate and marshmallow goo. Still tasty though.

All in all, it was a very successful night. Guests enjoyed the food and the film. If you wanted to host your own Friday The 13th night, there are a couple things that I noticed in the movie that might help. For starters, there was a snake scene where a snake gets killed and someone jokes about making it for dinner. If I had known that, I might have used that as my inspiration for the main course. I could have cooked something that was snake-like in appearance. There was also a reference to apple pie in one scene, so that could have been a dessert option for this night as well.