Octopus Hot Dogs!

Since it's Monday madness, I basically make all the cute stuff I want and hope it works in a lunch . And this week I wanted to do something cute with hot dogs. 

Enter the octopus hot dog. Super easy to make, you just need to time it right because they take a hot minute to cook. I like to cut them and let them cook while I am making the bento fillers and then doing the dishes. Makes me feel like less time is wasted 

I used my new Goodbyn box from Target and decided to go nuts. A really wanted a hot dog and I really wanted to make a soot sprite sandwich. We both won. He also got some applesauce and left over birthday cake in the 2 cup container. In the main is the hot dogs with ketchup to dip, grilled cheese sandwich, heart cucumbers, and mandarin oranges.

See that grilled cheese? Totally used all the cheese scraps that have been accumulating in my fridge. 

See? Leftover as it's finest. Lil A got the scraps from cutting the sandwich for his lunch. Double score

Now, on to hotdogs. 

You will need

- Hot dog(s)

- Sharp knife

- Pot of boiling water

First, you are going to cut the hot dog in thirds. You could also do halves. Whichever

Then, take your ends and cut them about 2/3 of the way up into fourths. Confused? Me too. Here's a picture. 

This is what we are going for

Then, you are going to cut each section again. You can either cut from the bottom or the top. I like going from the top better. When I cut from underneath one of mine had 9 cuts. No clue how that happened 

Over 

Under 

Now that the cutting is done, we have to cook the hot dogs so the legs curl and look cute. 

You can do this in 3 ways. 

You can pan fry them - with or without water

Boil them in a deep pot

Deep fry them in hot oil - This works best for me, but I don't have a deep fryer anymore ;(

 Pan with water - takes FOREVER 

Boiling in a deep pan. Takes about 5 - 7 minutes 

So when your hot dogs are done, they should look something like this, or even a little better. 

I took the middle of the hot dog and cut it into slices to lift the pretty ones up in his lunch. 

I was in a rush to get them done so I only boiled them for about 3 minutes. We had a date with the horsedog and our backyard this afternoon. 

Go conquer the octopus hot dog and see how amazed your kids are. 

 Lil A hanging out in the backyard

Big A hanging out with the horsedog that we were watching this weekend!