Gearing up for the big night and getting last minute costume details together? As a friend of mine put it "All this work for one night and nobody's even getting married!"

While you are planning your weekend, don't forget to think about food! Most Halloween activities will include some kind of sweets and most likely lots of them. Having a healthy meal before hand will help with your child's mood as well as your guilt as you see them downing more junk than they do all year.

Here is something fun, freaky, and healthy:

Baked Rats

You will need:

• approx 1 1/2 pounds ground meat with your favorite meatloaf ingredients added
  
• tomato sauce: 1 (19 ounce) can of crushed tomatoes, 1 1/2 cups water, 1 T. sugar, 1 T. worcestershire sauce
  
• accompaniment of choice: cooked rice, pasta, mashed potatoes
• uncooked spaghetti noodles, raisins, peppercorns, small carrot slices, etc. for decorating the rats

Preheat oven to 350° F

Make your favorite meatloaf recipe (you can substitute ground turkey for ground beef if you prefer). Taking 1/4 cup or so at a time of the raw meat mixture, shape each into a tear drop shape. The pointy end will be the nose, the rounded end the tail.

Place the rats in in a baking dish, you can perfect the shapes here, pinching together the neck area with your fingers and then add an uncooked spaghetti noodle for the tail. Next, pour tomato sauce over the rats. Cover the dish with foil wrap (or a lid) and place in 350° F oven (180° C) for about 45 minutes. Uncover and continue to bake for another 40 to 50 minutes, basting occasionally with sauce, until rats are cooked through. The cooking time will depend on how big your rats are!

Carefully remove rats, one at a time, from the baking dish and place on a serving platter, they may be served over rice, pasta or mashed potatoes. Use care not to damage the tails, they can be quite delicate. For the ears you can use two small carrot slices and peppercorns or raisins cut smaller will work well for the eyes and nose. For whiskers just break off a few pieces of uncooked spaghetti. Spoon blood sauce around the rats and they are ready to serve!

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CHECK IT OUT BELOW!

Ten children's face paints were sent to an independent lab to test for heavy metals by The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, a national coalition of nonprofit health and environmental groups. They also reviewed ingredient labels of Halloween products sold at a seasonal store. The findings, found in the new report, "Pretty Scary," include:

* Ten out of 10 children's face paints contained lead at levels ranging from 0.05 to 0.65 parts per million (ppm).
* Six out of 10 children's face paints contained the potent skin allergens nickel, cobalt and/or chromium at levels ranging from 1.6 to 120 ppm - far exceeding industry safety recommendations of 1 ppm.
* Snazaroo Face Paint, labeled as "non-toxic" and "hypoallergenic," contained some of the highest levels of lead, nickel and cobalt found in the study.

>>>click here for the full article.

Some helpful links:

safecosmetics.org

HOME MADE FACE PAINTS

LEAD PREVENTION TIPS