The finished product. Not quite what I was hoping for visually, but it did taste good.

Okay.

So, last night, my wife, after dinner, turns to me and says, “You’re making dinner tomorrow.”

At first, I thought she was kidding. She’s a very good cook, and me, well, I can follow a recipe, but I’m not her. My role has always been the eater, or the food appreciator. Because of that, sometimes that means I’m on KP duty, too.

But she wasn’t kidding. She was dead serious. More serious than I’ve seen her.

Yes, it was scary. I didn’t know what to say. I usually just say no, but that wasn’t working.

So, I threatened to order pizza. She said, “No, YOU have to make it.”

After a moment of contemplation—aka, running through scenarios where I could still order pizza—I said, “Okay, fine. I’m changing my name to Olive Garden.”

She didn’t find it funny. But the conversation ended and we went on with the rest of our evening.

Fast forward to noon today. I suddenly remembered, on my own (I KNOW!), that I was in charge of dinner. She hadn’t re-mentioned it before heading off to work, so I thought, I might be in the clear. But then guilt started to creep in, which for me, is pretty strange, and I figured, I should follow Obi-Wan’s advice and “Search my feelings.”

The brain? No, this is the eyeball material.

So, I asked Twitterdom for suggestions. Not sure why, really. I ask about things here and there but hardly ever get responses. Today, though, was my lucky day.

I got all kinds of responses. One person suggested I grill steak and fry potatoes. I thought, “Hmmm. Yeah. I can do that.” Then someone else suggested I look up “fool proof meals” on Google. I thought, “Gee, thanks a lot.” Then, I realized she wasn’t really calling me a fool. At least, I don’t think she was calling me a fool. It was true, though. I needed something foolproof.

I am known around these parts (read: in my immediate family) for my spaghetti. It’s my mother’s recipe, which she got from her church cookbook. Normally, my wife makes it, but I’ve made it two or three times since we’ve been married. I figured, if nothing else, I could do that.

Still I waited for Twitter to make more suggestions, figuring I might be on a roll. Someone else, another guy, said he always cooked with his phone, as in 1-800-PIZZA. I told him what my wife said about that, and my snarky follow up.

Then, idea number four came from an always reliable tweep who apparently was in the spirit of Halloween, since she first suggested “Witch finger stew” and “ghoul kidney bread.” When I asked her where to get the ghoul kidney, she said, “The basement?” I didn’t have a basement, but she then tossed out the possibility of “brains and eyeballs.”

Spaghetti and meatballs.

After a few more thoughts came tweeting in, the person who had told me to Google fool proof meals said, “How about worms and blood?”

Spaghetti and sauce. She told me to add meatballs.

Seeing the recurring theme, I decided to go for it.

I checked around on the internet for some “eyeball” recipes, and found one that looked fairly easy. It called for a pound of hamburger, an egg, a 1/3 cup of plain bread crumbs, a teaspoon each of ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise, some salt and some pepper.

The eyeballs take shape. Muhwwaahhahhahaha!

I ended up breaking up some crackers instead of bread crumbs, but basically, I was set.

Once the meatballs were fashioned, I took some previously chopped black olives and squished them into each meatball, and then I put tiny pieces of green Bell pepper in the holes of the slices. The recipe called for cooking the meatballs at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, so I put them in for 15, then pulled them out and surrounded them with shaved mozzarella. That’s not what the original recipe said to do, so I was improvising at this point, but I figured I couldn’t go wrong with cheese.

Fortunately, I put foil between the meatball, cheese and pan, because when it was done, the cheese took some doing to get off the foil (but not too bad).

While the meatballs were cooking, I got the spaghetti going and heated original Prego sauce, adding a couple of cans of mushrooms and a little more of the Bell pepper.

This is the best shot. Eyeballs with gooey socket gelatin.

When everything was done, I scooped the “eyeballs and goo” onto the spaghetti, and then for effect, I splashed on some of the sauce.

In retrospect, I should have arranged each plate individually with “brains, blood, eyeballs and goo,” but maybe I can do that next time.

On Halloween.

2033.