Guest Post: Making Food Fun - Healthy Snacks and How to Make Them

This guest post comes to you from the lovely Lily Helitzer. Full of great ideas for getting kids into different sorts of food, this article covers breakfast, lunch and dinner. Hope y'all enjoy! Will let you know how we get on with the 'pancake pen'.

With the summer holidays upon us, many parents are faced with the task of doing two things that their children’s teachers and dinner ladies are usually responsible for: occupying them and feeding them. However with a little bit of initiative and forward planning, you can combine these two by enlisting the kids help in creating their own meals. This will keep them entertained whilst simultaneously teaching them basic cooking skills and giving them an understanding of healthy, nutritional foods. Here are some ideas to give you inspiration on how to make meal times more fun, how to make healthy foods more appealing and how to enable your little ones to create culinary masterpieces that they can enjoy making as much as eating.

Breakfast
Presentation is everything so to make a healthy breakfast seem more enticing to your little ones by layering granola and yogurt into a Sundae glass. Top with chopped fruit and sprinkles to make their healthy breakfast look just like a sweet treat.

To encourage the kids to help prepare pancakes, why not let them create their very own ‘pancake pen’ instead of using a traditional ladle. By putting the pancake batter into an old ketchup bottle (or another similar squirty bottle) they can draw letters and shapes onto the griddle to make customised pancakes. When they’re done they can even decorate them with syrups, sauces and fruit. Voila!

Breakfast wraps are also great for kids to enjoy on the go. Spoon scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon into a tortilla and let them take them outdoors to enjoy. It’s an easy way to give them a filling, cooked breakfast on the go.

Lunch
Homemade pizzas are great fun for kids to make and whilst they’re perhaps not the healthiest meal in the world, you can certainly adapt them to include a variety of vegetables as toppings. To make pizza prep fun for the kids, encourage them to see their pizza base as a blank canvas that they can decorate with all of their favourite toppings. Spinach could become trees, ham slices could become a goofy smile and pepperoni could become a football. The possibilities are endless. The only problem is that they may not want to eat their pizza paintings after all of that hard work!

Alphabet noodles are cheap, easy to prepare and a great way of making a variety of soups more fun. Simply boil them up and add them to chicken, beef or vegetable soup and let the kids go wild with their spelling.

Sometimes the easiest thing to rustle up for lunch is a simple sandwich. But don’t just stick with boring cheese or salad. Why not try a ‘fruit’ sandwich by mixing chopped pineapple and dried fruits into cottage cheese for an exciting, different taste that gives the kids at least one of their 5 a day.

Dinner
Let the kids stare in amazement (and horror) as you coat their steaks or chops in blackcurrant jam or marmalade. They may think it looks disgusting but when they are grilled the fruity flavours work brilliantly alongside the meat. Serve with vegetables and mashed potatoes for an interestingly, healthy dinner.

Encourage the kids to use their initiative and the knowledge they’ve learnt about cooking to create their own twists on culinary classics. Start with a base dish (such as stew or macaroni cheese – these are suitable because almost anything can be added to them and they’ll still be edible!) and give the kids free reign about what they want to add. Anything from sea food, to fruit to red meat can be added to macaroni cheese and it can also be served in a variety of different ways – in a cocktail, a pie or even deep fried. Let the kids go wild and offer a prize for the best creation to spice things up a little!

For those warm summer evenings, it’s great to get the kids interested in salads. There are so many healthy and colourful ingredients that you can add to a salad to make it bright and interesting. Think outside of the box (or bowl in this case) and encourage the kids to make salad on a stick by adding feta cheese, cherry tomatoes, olives and celery to a stick in a kebab style. Using strawberries, blueberries and exotic fruits within salads can also add colour and flavour.

Refreshing Snacks
The kids will love watermelon carving which is, unsurprisingly, just like pumpkin carving. Only unlike pumpkin carving, they’ll probably be a lot more eager to eat the leftovers!

Homemade ice lollies are also a summer favourite and can be made from a variety of fruit juices and fizzy drinks. You can even buy lolly moulds that allow you to make multi flavour lollies!

Finally why not try making your own lemonade by squeezing the juice of 3 lemons into a mixture of five cups of water and one cup of sugar. Then add ice and leave to refrigerate for a fruity, refreshing drink.

Lily Helitzer is a health and nutrition writer who works on behalf of Kwikmed, an FDA-approved pharmacy which offers an accessible and safe outlet to buy Cialis and other prescription medication.