Shark Week Food Fun

Watermelon Shark!

So we had a Shark Week soiree to attend, and I decided to Google "shark week recipes" and found the watermelon shark.  My gut reaction was "I could never do that!" but then I read a post by someone who said he'd never carved watermelon before and couldn't believe how easy it was.  I began to believe, despite never having carved a watermelon before either.  It was easy.  All I needed was a big sharp knife, a small sharp knife, some black grapes, and a big spoon to scoop out the innards.

Directions:  Find an oblong watermelon - this may be harder than you think.  I found a lot of fat near-spheres.  The end without the big scar should likely be the nose, so lop off the other end at an angle.  Cut mouth cavity, then switch to small knife and score a line for teeth.  Others suggested a dry erase marker to pre-mark this.  Run knife just under the green skin - between the green and white layers.  Peel off strip of green for teeth region, cleaning up any little .  Scoop out innards, leaving a couple inches on the bottom for a base, but cutting pretty close to the white right by the teeth.  Cut teeth - I was sure I'd be pretty bad at this and I was, but it doesn't matter, does it?  Carve out small eye holes and stick in black grapes, then use a toothpick to secure a triangle of rind from the piece that was cut off as a dorsal fin.  Fill shark mouth with chunks of melon from the scooped/sliced off melon and grapes and serve.  I put mine on a bed of kale since it was all wavy and I thought it looked like ocean water (hey - if a watermelon can be a shark, kale can be water).

I made awesome "Life's a Beach" cupcakes, too.  Again, I found these by Google, so I'm not too original.  I did labor over what flavors to use, though.  I opted for a caramel cake mix from the grocery store (I do cheat sometimes) with homemade cream cheese frosting.  The sand is just graham cracker crumbs.  Frost half, dip in crumbs, frost the other half in blue.  Add "shark fin" chocolate chip.  The flavors worked very well together!

When the party is over and the fruit is eaten, lure a cat to stick its head into the watermelon shark with a treat.  It's hilarious.