Happy April Fool's Day!

Today was April Fool's Day, and I made dinner.

The theme was PASTA!

We started off the meal with some nice spaghetti with marinara sauce. The vegetable was squash. For desert was a cake.

But really, the courses were reversed, the spaghetti was frosting looped over angel food cake with pureed frozen strawberries for marinara. I added a couple of chocolate chips and some green fruit leather when I blended the 'sauce' to look like spices.

The cake was a pasta dish (cooked elbow pasta with real marinara, cannelloni beans, bacon and farmer cheese) baked in a large cake tin, then covered with ricotta cheese. I decorated the top with a drizzle of marinara, and piped on some sour cream and sprinkled it with grated cheese and bacon bits.

Because last year's dinner was sooo very overly sweet, this year I really did make spaghetti squash baked in veggie broth as a side dish. I like the idea that it matched the pasta theme, and it looked great, all spaghetti-like, but still a veggie. Mother Nature's Faux Food.

April Fool's Day, 2010

This is my first post in about a year.

I have decided to post some happy stuff, after all that has happened this last year. If you know me you will agree it seems fitting to come back for April Fool's Day.

This year I made sushi rolls and pillows, sashimi with seaweed salad, all garnished with wasabi and ginger. It was served with jasmine tea and chopsticks.

Of course, being April Fool's Day, it wasn't really real. The sushi rolls started life as twinkies, fruit rollups, coconut, dried fruit and candy.

The sushi pillows were donut holes with Swedish

Fish and fruit roll ups.

The sashimi was seedless watermelon. Tea was apricot jello. The seaweed salad was fruit rollups cut into strips.

With pistachio pudding wasabi and dried apricots for ginger, the effect was pretty good, in a fun, cartoon sort of way!

Of all the April Fool's Dinners we've had, this one is by far the sugary-est!

Tasha found the idea for the sushi on the internet, and I found lots of help with the details at the hostess website www.HostessCakes.com and at familyfun.go.com/april-fools-day/.

Though my kids are now grown or almost so, it was just a lot of fun creating this meal. I got lots of help and the kids had fun sharing with their friends too.

Oh, and this year I got to share April Fool's day with yet another generation, my granddaughter Melody, who just happens to be the cutest thing on the planet.