Toy Story Dinner & Movie Night

Before I start I’d like to point out that in our house we actually call our evening meal ‘tea’! However, in the interest of not confusing anyone, I decided to opt for ‘dinner’ (which is what we call lunch!) for the purpose of this blog.

And now I’ve managed to confuse myself! Probably best if I just get on with it!

During lockdown we have tried to make the weekends a bit different to the weekdays to give the girls (and us!) something to look forward to and as a way of separating the days out because they can have a tendency to blur together! We’ve had takeaways from local restaurants who are trying to offer new services whilst their premises are shut to customers, cooked fancy meals and had late nights watching TV together (well, 8pm, but that’s as late as our two ever get!!) but this week we decided to try something new, a Disney themed dinner (tea!) and movie night inspired by the lovely Serena at @livingbydisney.

The girls chose Toy Story as their theme as it’s a family favourite (Polly’s love for Lotso is very real, as is her soft toy collection!) and they quickly set about designing a menu. It didn’t take them long to come up with two dishes:

Main: Pizza Planet Homemade Pizza

Dessert: Snake-in-my-Boot Brownie (inspired by the Pumba’s Grub dessert at Animal Kingdom Lodge that they love).

The girls love making brownie and the recipe we have is so simple that I left them to it (well, apart from putting them in the oven!!) We also split the mixture in two and added extra flour/ cooking time to one half to make it slightly crumblier but actually we didn’t need to as they both turned out almost the same!

Once the brownies were cooked and cooled the girls got to work assembling them. They put a jelly snake in the small glass boots I’d bought from eBay ages ago (no idea why!) before crumbling the brownies up and adding them to hold the snake in place. Easy as that!

For the pizzas the girls kneaded they dough and set it aside before working on the sauce and toppings.

The sauce is the same basic sauce we use for pasta/ meatballs etc; garlic oil, cook off some tomato purée, add passata, basil and black pepper and salt and the job’s a good ‘un! Now in terms of toppings the girls are definitely Kevin McAllister types who only like cheese, but as it was their night to cook they prepared the toppings for our pizza as well.

Once the dough was ready they rolled/ stretched it out before adding the sauce and toppings. 20 minutes later they were cooked to perfection!

Once the dough was ready they rolled/ stretched it out before adding the sauce and toppings. 20 minutes later they were cooked to perfection!

The meal was lovely, and Winnie managed 3 helpings of Snake-in-my-Boot brownies! However, as soon as they’d finished tea they both declared that they were ready for for bed despite it being 6pm and couldn’t stay up to watch the movie! Off they trotted upstairs leaving the toys to enjoy the film in peace. 

We had a great afternoon together preparing the meal, and I think the girls enjoyed it more because it was all their ideas (I may possibly have a tendency to take over!!) We’ll definitely do it again for a different film, although may have to move the meal forward so that the two sleepy heads actually get to watch it!

What films would you create a Disney dinner/ movie night for? And what food would you make?