Mom, can I have some more of those screaming alien heads?

I love it when something mundane turns out to be unintentionally funny, it changes the course of my day for the better.

I have a nine year old boy who never eats. He's growing, but I don't know how. I was the same type of child. If I could find a way to hide things on my plate to make it look like I'd eaten them, I would. He is me all over again.

We shop at Big Lots whenever we can. A lot of stuff that ends up at Big Lots is discontinued products or various oddball things. I found some elbow macaroni that are pinched closed on one end, and open on the other, and since they were made in Italy and priced under a buck, they landed in my cart. Pasta that little guys can easily get on a fork is always welcome in our home.

Last night I was dog-tired and disinclined to spend much time in the kitchen, so I went for the pasta. When I opened up the bag and dumped it into the pot, I noted again that they were odd-looking, but I was when I spooned one out of the pot to test it for done-ness that I burst out laughing. The pasta had puffed up into a little screamy-face, like these guys:

The sauce I used with these was rather thin and unremarkable, and didn't look very appealing.
But when I showed the meal my nine year old, he said "Cool! Screaming alien heads!" He cleaned his plate and asked for seconds. That never happens, ever.

This blog post is silly, but alien head pasta wrought an unexpected miracle at the dinner table, and I wish I had bought more.