Kale Sesame Chips

I wanted something to go with our pumpkin sauce pork-chop lion, so I decided to make some kale chip "jungle leaves".

A local blogger friend of mine, Emily, has the basic recipe that I used here.  I substituted coconut oil instead of EVOO, and sprinkled mine with sea salt and sesame seeds.  They tasted amazing!

Kale:

+

Coconut oil, salt, and sesame seeds:

=

Yum!!

These really were easy and delicious and they made a great side with the pumpkin sauce lion.

The Grouchy Ladybug Snack

Today during circle time, we read one of the boys' favorite books, The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle.  

Shortly after reading the book, it was time for me to make morning snack for the kiddos and The Grouchy Ladybug was still on my mind.  Mostly because the boys kept repeating, "Hey you!  You wanna fight!?"  So, I used this page from the book as the inspiration for today's food art.

Here is MY version:

The sun is pineapple, the praying mantis is cucumber with tomato eyes, the ladybug is black beans and a cherry tomato and carrots for the ground.  I used a toothpick and some black food coloring to "paint" the dots on the wings and the pupils on the mantis eyes.  I realized later that I probably should have put the carrots at an angle to better imitate the brush strokes in the book and maybe added a few red and yellow  bell pepper strips.  Next time.

Making grain-free and dairy-free food art is a lot more complicated than when I could just cut a "sammy" and some cheese into a fun shape, but I think it turned out pretty good.  Most importantly the boys loved the theme and they devoured this healthy snack!  

Fun Snack Tray

The boys were ready for snack so I decided to put together a fun snack tray.  Something like this would be great for those of you who have picky eaters that don't like their food to touch, it's still fun and different but each food stays with it's group.

I started out just gathering what I wanted to give the boys for snack.  We like to do finger foods for snacks so I decided on grapes, carrots, strawberries, apples, ham, waffle pretzels, cucumber and provolone cheese.

First I cut everything into flat disks and used my fondant cutters to punch out shapes from the food.  For those of you who don't know, fondant cutters are like mini cookie cutters, they also do make mini cookie cutters but they are harder to find.  I found both the fondant cutters I used, and these mini cookie cutters (Noah's Ark Set and Romantic Set) at Michael's.

After I punched everything out and arranged it on the tray, I drew on the provolone with Wilton FoodWriter Pens.  I kept it simple: I <3 U, Gabe, Rique and a bunch of smiley faces.  I've used the pens with great success on other foods, but apparently cheese is too soft because it was a lot harder to use them on the provolone.  I think next time I'll just use food coloring and a toothpick or thin paintbrush.

Here's the finished product:

My boys love fun food, even when it's just one of my simple creations.  My favorite part of snack was watching my boys being sweet with each other and sharing their food.

Happy Eating!