Halloween Treats - Pinwheels and Pizza

One of my favorite holidays is officially over. It makes me sad because I absolutely love Halloween, but I'm also excited because it means the holiday season has officially started. When I was little my parents would let me go all out for Halloween, sometimes having multiple costumes for school and trick or treating. As I got older I looked forward to the month long airing of scary movies. Now I would never say that I'm too old for trick or treating because you can never be too old for a costume and candy, but since my life has been getting increasingly more hectic, the thought of walking in the cold, dressed as a sailor, knocking on strangers doors in an area I'm still new to didn't sound like my kind of thing, besides I had already gone out on Saturday night and had a fabulous time.

 

It didn't help that Halloween was on a Monday this year either, so I was ready to kick back and veg out. I did buy two bags of candy for any trick or treaters that might stop by (but what kid wants to climb stairs just to get candy... ok probably a lot) but our plans consisted of a scary movie marathon, margarita style pizza, and spinach and tomato pinwheels. I don't know if the whole bowl of candy was intended to be on the menu, but Mike and I ate it as an appetizer, main course, and dessert. Ooops...

Right before the good parts of Signs started we made our pizza. In 20 minutes dinner was done. As most of my go-to meals, these are semi-homemade to - you know how I roll.

Pinwheels

I'm not sure what these are really called but this name works for me. I got this idea from a Pillsbury commercial shown during the holidays last year, but I added a little extra oomph - tomatoes!! This is the perfect appetizer. I'm thinking about making these for Christmas Eve when I visit my family because they're so easy.

What You'll Need:

1 can (roll?) of refrigerated biscuits

chopped frozen spinach

1/2 a tomato

1/2 C of mozzarella cheese

Start by taking out all of the biscuits and rolling them into one piece of dough. Make sure the dough is rolled about 1/2 an inch thick. Sprinkle the cheese, spinach and tomatoes and lightly press down into the dough. Then roll the dough as tightly as possible and cut the roll about a 1/4-1/2 inch thick and place them on a greased cookie sheet. Bake them for as long as the container says to - about 10 minutes.

Eat them while they're hot. We ate ours with the pizza and it was the perfect meat-free (guilt-free) meal for a night in. 

Margarita Style Pizza

Once again this is an ode to a semi-homemade meals. I didn't feel like making a homemade crust so I bough one from the store. The crust was a little more spongy than I'm use to but the taste worked because of all the flavors on top. I made my own pizza sauce too.

What You'll Need:

Pizza Sauce

Pizza Crust

Mozzarella cheese slices

Basil

Tomato slices 

How could a pizza this simple be bad? For my sauce I just used one small can of tomato sauce and added some salt, garlic powder, Parmesan cheese, pepper, and oregano. I spread the sauce over my store bought crust, then put a layer of basil, cheese and then tomato.

Bake the pizza for 14 minutes at 450 degrees. This is just long enough to put the dishes in the sink (to wash later) and perhaps make a drink...hmmm...

This pizza is the perfect light pizza to eat while your sitting in sweats watching scary movies on the couch. I put a little fresh basil (which is currently my new obsession) on top and curled up - mainly because I was too scared to keep my feet on the floor... The tomatoes are so juicy and the cheese is so creamy that you should probably make two pizzas because they're so good.

We ended up having the best Halloween. It was perfectly relaxing and I couldn't have asked for anything better. I hope you all had a good Halloween too. I look forward to starting the fall off with you guys. Cheers!