I saw a photo of these things on BoingBoing, and I just had to try them. I would have expected this idea to come from the Japanese, who are notoriously competitive in their quest for the cutest food, but apparently the idea originated on some Russian guy’s livejournal.
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Of course my version is GFCF. (That’s kind of my thing. Did you know that? Sorry if it was too subtle.) So we start with a package of Applegate Farms hot dogs. They also make a decent turkey hot dog if you happen to prefer that.
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Slice the hot dog into bite-sized chunks, and jab half-sticks of uncooked gluten-free spaghetti into each piece. I’m actually using this cool new King Soba pasta my store started carrying, made out of sweet potato and buckwheat. Now before you go into palpitations, remember that buckwheat is not actually wheat. It’s a completely different plant, contains no gluten, and is one of the better GF flours to work with, in my opinion. It just has a stupidly inaccurate name, that’s all.
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Speaking of inaccurate, octopuses might not be the best name for these, since most of them end up having more than eight legs. You can call them jellyfish if your anal-retentive kid is gonna call you on it. When they’re still uncooked like this, I actally think they look like little Sputniks (which makes sense, because they’re Russian, remember?)
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Toss them into boiling water and cook according to your pasta’s package directions.
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And voila, we have noodly appendages! Do I think it looks appetizing myself? Well no, not really. But I don’t have a Y chromosome. Little boys think this stuff is hysterical, and they eat it right up. Literally.
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Happy Eating!
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It’s the Y chromosome, that keeps us eating some of our wive’s/mother’s less successful interpretations of things they saw in the paper, but forgot to cut out.
These just need a little blood… er,ketchup.