Family Fun Day of The BFG Activities and Food

The BFG

If you’ve been following along my blog this week, you’ll notice that I’ve been posting foods inspired by the British story The BFG. The movie came out yesterday, and let me tell you, it was absolutely amazing. I felt it was the pinnacle of family fantasy-adventure movies. Having been a fan of Roald Dahl most of my life, and collecting almost all of his books, I couldn’t wait to see Spielberg’s interpretation of the story.

I have kept my collection over all these years to pass down to my daughter. For now she loves looking at the pictures, and I can’t wait for the day that we can sit down and retell the stories to her. The BFG is particularly wonderful, as it speaks to the childlike dreamer in all of us. I also find it fascinating that it was written in 1986, since Dahl passed away in 1990. Even in his old age, he was creating incredible stories, proof that it wasn’t just a career but was his life’s passion.

We had such a fun time creating our last themed day inspired by Finding Dory,  so I decided I wanted to make it a new tradition to do a themed day of food and activities for each Disney new release! Not only are themed days family-friendly fun, but it really makes us get creative in expanding our imagination of the wonderful universes Disney & Pixar have created.

Our Morning

I was telling the abridged version of The BFG to my daughter, and she loved looking at all the wonderful illustrations…another reason I love Dahl’s books. They contain such rich story-lines, but are full of pictures. The perfect combination making his readings fun for any age group, whether you developed a love for his books as a child or are just discovering them as an adult.

Telling her the abridged version of the story (since my daughter has a toddler’s attention span) and narrating all the pictures to her was the perfect start to our morning and relax and bond. So often we start out our mornings watching TV , which I also do enjoy, but this was a nice change-of-pace from screen time.

Breakfast

If you’re not familiar with Gobblefunk, it’s the unique language of giants, a fun playing with words that Dahl created in his writings. I love the way he toys with language, and creates new words just for the fun of how they sound, much like Shakespeare did. The BFG, in his Gobblefunk vocabulary refers to human beings as “human beans”….I’m sure partly because it’s hard to hear human language clearly from way up high in giant country :).  To make reference to this, we had beans on toast for breakfast! It is of course a very popular dish in England, but I had never had it, and was actually a bit wary to try it. To my surprise though, it was quite good! A perfect sweet and savory breakfast dish, and I of course made a clean eating version of it.

It was super simple to make an all-natural ingredient version of the dish. Instead of baked beans, I bought a can of regular pinto beans. I simmered the pinto beans in a pan with two tablespoons of raw honey. Using two slices of 80-calorie Dave’s Killer Bread, I cut holes in the center, placed them in a greased pan, and cracked an egg in each of the bread holes. Once the eggs were near cooked, I flipped them over and cooked lightly on the other side. Once those were done, I took the beans off the stove and placed them on top of my bread slices!

Our Afternoon

Time for British-inspired dish number two! I made an all-natural clean-eating Bangers and Mash recipe, that you can check out here. I normally do something a little more grab-and-go for lunch, but since we had the day free we decided to make something that involved some cooking, yet was still simple to make. And as always, my recipe is all-natural and has a vegetarian option.

Frobscottle Recipe

Living in Southern California in the summer also requires a refreshing beverage, so I wanted to make my version of Frobscottle. Frobscottle is a green, fizzy drink from The BFG. Since I use all-natural ingredients, I didn’t use any food dye to make my Frobscottle green, but instead kiwis! The beverage tastes like a kiwi-lime creamsicle! And has the yummy fizzy bubbles Frobscottle is known for. The Frobscottle recipe I created is quick and simple. You need one kiwi, lime juice or lime, diet tonic water or club soda, and coconut milk:

• Cut up a kiwi into chunks (skin removed), and put half of the kiwi in the bottom of a tall glass, along with a large squeeze of lime juice. Muddle them at the bottom of the glass.
• Add ice, and fill 3/4 of the way with your diet tonic water or club soda.
• Add in 1/4 cup coconut milk, the rest of your kiwi chunks, and stir.

It tastes just like a lime creamsicle, is refreshing and smooth, but also slightly tart and fizzy!

Our Evening

The BFG’s job is to harvest and create dreams, and he goes around at night distributing them. My family and I decided to make our own dream jars, and do most of our activities in the evening since that’s when the most magic happens in The BFG.

Dream Jar Craft

To make our dream jars, we first soaked pieces of paper (about the size of business cards) in tea for five minutes, using the tea bags as weights to submerge the paper. This will make our labels for our jars look just like the ones from the movie!

After soaking for five minutes, take them out to dry on a paper towel till all the excess moisture is absorbed. Then place in the microwave on a plate for 1-3 minutes, checking each minute. You want them to look yellowed, but still have the soft texture of paper.

Next, on the backside of our “scrolls” we each wrote a dream of ours that we hope to come true someday. On the other side, we wrote our name’s:

Now time to do some dream jar alchemy! To make your glowing jar, you will need two glow sticks per jar. An adult should do the next step of using scissors to cut off the tip of a glow stick, and let the liquid ooze out into the jar, using the stick to spread the liquid along the bottom and sides of each jar. We even turned out the lights in our kitchen to see our progress along the way.

Repeat till you’ve emptied two glowsticks per jar (it can also be helpful to wear gloves so you don’t get stain on your hands). Then add a lot of white glitter in each jar, seal tightly with a lid, and shake. They are now ready to display outside!

Dinner

For dinner, we had the perfect summer evening meal: Spaghetti Squash Casserole. It is the perfect blend of hearty and healthy, making you feel comforted but not too full! I wanted to make a dish with spaghetti squash since this squash reminds me of the Snozzcumber, the main crop of Giant Country.  To utilize the look of the Snozzcumber even more into my recipe, I baked my casserole right in the squash! You can check out my recipe here.

Shadow Puppets

The dreams the BFG creates are shown to Sophie through silhouettes on the wall, re-enacting the dream he has created. We thought it would be perfect to make shadow puppets outside to complete our BFG day. We have a small projector screen we have in our backyard, that we always love using to watch old Disney cartoons (the perfect thing to have on in the background of a BBQ):

Our BFG-themed day was amazing, to say the least. And one of my favorite themed days we have ever done! I can’t wait to start brainstorming the theme day for Disney’s next release, Pete’s Dragon. Movies filled with fantasy and magic are always the most fun to interpret and get really creative with, and the perfect inspiration to create everyday magic in your children’s lives.