Honey I Shrunk the Kids Dinner and Movie Night
The Honey I Shrunk the Kids Dinner & Movie Night That Made Me Feel Nine Years Old Again
I had a crush on Russ Thompson when I was a kid. Not Nick. Russ. The older one. Quiet, brooding, wearing a baseball cap in the backyard like he had somewhere better to be. I am not embarrassed about this. I was nine. It made complete sense.
When Matt and I sat down to rewatch Honey, I Shrunk the Kids for the first time in probably two decades, I was fully prepared for it to be a nostalgia trip with aged special effects and a plot that didn’t quite hold up. What I got instead was a legitimately great movie that still works. The practical effects are charming. The stakes feel real. The ant is still devastating. And Russ Thompson is still, objectively, a lot. This movie holds up in a way that genuinely surprised me, and we loved every second of it.
The menu, though. Figuring it out was a mission!
I knew from the beginning that the giant oatmeal cookie was happening. That was never up for debate. But building a full cohesive dinner around a movie where the main event is “children are very small” is harder than it sounds. I went back and forth on this one for weeks. And then we rewatched it, and Wayne accidentally turned an apple into applesauce with his machine, and my husband looked at me and I looked at him and the entire meal wrote itself in about forty-five seconds.
All of it is in the Rewind & Dine cookbook, including the mocktail version of the cocktail 👉 [Get Rewind and Dine Here] but stay with me because this one is worth the read.
The Honey I Shrunk the Kids Menu
Drinks: Don’t Eat Me!
Appetizers: Honey, I Shrunk the Spuds
Entrees: We’ve Come Up with an Interesting Way of Making Pork Chops & Applesauce
Sides: Backyard Grass Blades
Desserts: Bigger than a House Oatmeal Cookie Cake
Every single one of these recipes is in the Rewind & Dine cookbook. 👉 [Get Rewind and Dine Here]
Don’t Eat Me!
The scene where Nick ends up swimming in a bowl of cereal while Wayne nearly spoons him into his mouth is one of the most stressful and funny moments in the whole movie. It was also the exact inspiration I needed for the cocktail.
This is a cereal milk cocktail, and it is exactly what it sounds like, and it is incredible. The base is milk that has been steeped with cereal until it tastes like the best part of the bowl at the end. The result is creamy and lightly sweet with this nostalgic quality that is hard to describe but impossible to miss. Cheerios skewered across the top of the coupe glass are the finishing touch, and yes, they are intentionally supposed to look like Nick clinging for his life.
A mocktail version is in the cookbook too, so nobody gets left behind at this date night.
Honey, I Shrunk the Spuds
My whole concept for the appetizer was to play with size, since the movie is quite literally about scale. We were going big for dessert, so we went small for the starter. Baby potatoes, baked until tender, split open and loaded with cheddar, sour cream, and fresh chives.
They are adorable. They are also genuinely delicious, which matters more than adorable, but the adorable helps.
These were one of those dishes I almost overthought and then realized the simplest version was the best version. The cookbook has everything you need.
We’ve Come Up with an Interesting Way of Making Pork Chops & Applesauce
This is the dish that unlocked the whole menu and I am still proud of myself for it.
When Wayne accidentally shrinks the apple and it collapses into a pile of applesauce, he delivers that line so casually, like he isn’t standing in the middle of a disaster. It is one of the funniest moments in the film and it gave me the exact direction I needed. Pork chops and applesauce is already a classic. Making the applesauce from scratch and centering the whole dish around that movie moment made it feel like it belonged here specifically.
The chops are thick-cut, heavily spiced, and seared with serious intention. The crust on these things is real. The homemade applesauce is chunky and warm and deeply apple-forward in a way that no jar can replicate. I served everything alongside lemon garlic green beans I called Backyard Grass Blades, because when you’re a quarter inch tall, the backyard is a forest and the grass is enormous, and I thought that was funny.
Bigger than a House Oatmeal Cookie Cake
There was never a world where this chapter didn’t have a giant oatmeal cookie. The moment in the film where the kids find it in the backyard and go to town is one that lives in your brain from childhood and never fully leaves.
My version is two enormous oatmeal cookie rounds sandwiched with marshmallow cream cheese frosting. It is thick and chewy and has that deep, slightly crispy edge that makes a great oatmeal cookie actually great. The frosting in the middle is generous. It looks dramatic on a cake stand and somehow also looks exactly right for this movie.
The Full Honey I Shrunk the Kid Spread
Getting this whole table set up and pressing play was one of those nights that reminded me why I started doing this in the first place. Everything from the cereal milk cocktail to the cookie cake felt intentional and connected, and the movie delivered every single time. This one hit differently because I grew up with it. Matt grew up with it. It felt like we were both nine years old again, just with better food and wine.
make this meal for your family
Get the Full Menu in Rewind & Dine
Every recipe from this chapter is in my Rewind & Dine cookbook: the Don’t Eat Me! cereal milk cocktail (plus the mocktail), Honey I Shrunk the Spuds, We’ve Come Up with an Interesting Way of Making Pork Chops & Applesauce, Backyard Grass Blades, and the Bigger than a House Oatmeal Cookie Cake. This whole meal comes together faster than you’d think and it is genuinely one of the most fun nights we’ve had.
And if you want everything, the Epic Bundle has it all. Every Disney cookbook, every holiday cookbook, every Flashback Blockbuster hit we’ve ever done, in one place at one price. Ten cookbooks. One bundle. It’s the move.
Tag me when you make it. Russ Thompson would be impressed, and that is the highest compliment I can give.
