Halloweenie Spiders – from Tina MacDonald

This is a fun recipe that is just perfect for a Halloween cookout, either outside or in your own fireplace. Take hot dogs and place flat on a cutting board. Leaving 1 1/2 inches in the middle uncut (an easy way to do this is to hold them down with two fingers in the middle of the hotdog), slice each hot dog in half from the edge of your fingers to each end. Then rotate the hot dog 90 degrees and slice in half again. The result should be a hot dog with an uncut central section, and with the ends cut into fourths. Place a hot-dog roasting fork in the middle uncut section, and toast over an open fire or barbecue.

As they cook, the ends curl up and all the edges crisp slightly, resulting in an eight-legged “spider” (the degree of curl depends on the brand and the make-up of the casing).

Dip each leg into “blood” and then bite the legs off, one by one. When the legs are all gone, consume the “body” the same way. This step is particularly popular with bloodthirsty little boys.

For the “blood”, I use plain canned tomato sauce, spiced up with garlic powder, onion powder, Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco.

Kids love these, and for low-carbers, the best news is that there is no possible way you can fit these eight-legged creatures on a bun!