The kids are on their summer break at last! Now that those little hungry mouths are home all day long, here’s some yummy and (mostly) healthy snack options that kids and moms will both love.
Eat the Rainbow
While it seems many kids’ two favorite food groups are sugar and salt, we know that making better food choices will benefit them now and as they grow. If healthy options are easily available and presented in an attractive way, there’s a much higher chance they will choose them. Having a refrigerated box of ready-to-eat fruits and veggies in all colors will help them do just that.
Apple Fries
It’s amazing how cutting a fruit in a certain shape causes it to quickly disappear. And this trick works with adults, too! I use a crinkle cut knife to cut apples into this cute shape. I put a tablespoon or so of lemon juice in a bowl of water and dunk the ‘fries’ in it to prevent browning. You can store the ‘fries’ in a zipper bag in the refrigerator until ready to serve.
Frozen Yogurt
Making your own popsicles with your child’s favorite yogurt is super simple. You can freeze yogurt tubes, put popsicle sticks into small containers straight from the store, or use popsicle molds. If you don’t have a fancy mold, you can use any small cup, put a few pieces of any fruit on the bottom, fill with yogurt, and cover the top with foil or plastic wrap to help hold a stick in place until frozen. If you don’t have popsicle sticks, just use a plastic spoon instead.
Frozen Fruit
Nothing tastes better when you’ve been sweating out in the hot sun than pieces of frozen fruit. Watermelon is my personal favorite and it’s the perfect way to use up those last pieces that you tend to throw away because they’ve gone soft. Other great fruits to freeze are grapes, cantaloupe, banana slices, peaches, and blueberries. Even if a fruit is a little hard at first, it quickly begins to thaw and is easy to eat. If you freeze fruit pieces in a single layer on a plastic covered cookie sheet, you can later put them in a zipper bag and they won’t stick together. For a special treat, you can pour a little cream over a small bowl of frozen fruit for a healthier alternative to ice cream.
Road Trip Trail Mix and Snack Bags
Summer is the time for road trips and I’ve certainly done my share over the years. I’ve found one way to keep the kids happy and not arguing as much with each other is to give each child their own treat bag with portioned bags of their favorite treats. This way they don’t have to share with a sibling and they get to decide how and when to enjoy their goodies. Kids learn that when they finish up their treat bag, that’s it; no seconds. So they aren’t pestering you every five minutes…about more snacks, at least! And YOU get to decide how much of each snack they get, instead of handing back a full bag of chips and seeing it disappear in five minutes. I’ve had kids swap and trade with each other (“I’ll trade you my red gummy bears for your orange ones”) but that’s part of the fun. I like to include treats we don’t normally have, which isn’t hard to do because we save them for special occasions.
Sometimes I will make a ‘trail mix’ of a favorite breakfast cereal along with other treats, like pretzels, nuts, mini marshmallows, candy coated chocolates, etc. Just be mindful about which treats are appropriate for your child to eat on their own. A word of advice on chocolate: it’s summer. It gets hot in parked cars. I’d stick to M&Ms to keep messes to a minimum!
Foil Dinners
When my children have friends over for birthday party sleepovers and the like, I don’t usually cook for them. I have them cook for themselves, by providing what they need to create their own meals. I do this for several reasons: 1) This provides a part of the entertainment for the party. It gives them a shared experience where they are creating and interacting together; 2) It gives kids a feeling of satisfaction to know they’ve cooked their own meal; 3) It exposes kids to foods they might not be as eager to try at home; 4) It’s less work for me and I’m not treated as a waitress, but more as a mentor.
One of the meals I use to accomplish this is a foil dinner. I take chicken breast meat and slice it very thin, along with all sorts of veggies: potatoes, carrots, onions, broccoli, bell peppers, mushrooms, etc. I put the ingredients in individual bowls and set out olive oil and a variety of seasonings. Kids are given a large piece of heavy duty aluminum foil and put down a thin layer of olive oil in the center, then layer whatever meat and veggies they want on top. They sprinkle with a little more olive oil and whatever seasonings they want, then place the outer edges of the foil together. They roll and fold up these ends, then fold over the other sides until they’ve made a nice foil packet. They take a Sharpie and put their name on the packet then we cook it. Depending on the weather and what we’re doing, we’ll either put the packets on a grill, over hot coals on a fire, or together on a sheet pan in the oven. Time to cook with depend on how hot your heat source is and how full the packets are. In my 375 degree oven, it takes about 15 to 20 minutes. The key is to slice veggies thin, especially the potatoes, so they will cook quickly.
We’ve had great fun with this meal at our house. One time I remember a boy guest who would never eat broccoli unless it was smothered in cheese sauce. After he tried ‘plain’ broccoli in his foil dinner, he decided he really liked it. All the boys that evening made seconds, using all sorts of veggies. Success!
