Take “beef”, “potatoes”, “carrots”, “corn”, and “peas”.

Pour into “gravy” and mix.

Top with a crust, and what do you have?

Not quite beef pot pie - but good enough for these two boys!

I saw this recipe for “Chicken Not Pie” in Family Fun magazine a few weeks ago, and knew I had a mission for April Fool’s Day. Since Z-boy was kind of in a funk as I was working on them, I decided to let him in on the surprise. About 5 minutes later, he went downstairs to inform C-boy that mom was making pot pies with candy and pudding. I was just about ready to throttle him! But the joke was on me - or maybe really on C-boy - because C-boy thought I was trying to fool Z-boy. Follow that? But he tried it nonetheless. And enjoyed it! I wonder if i could make real beef pot pie sometime, and get him to eat it because he thought it was this!

(Personally, I found the contrast of textures between pudding and chewy candies [starburst and jellybeans, standing in for peas, carrots, and corn] to be too off-putting, especially since the cold refrigerated nature of the pudding served to harden the candies. The chocolate [beef] and banana [potatoes], on the other hand, were nice and tasty!)