Kiddipedia
By Children’s Nutritionist Simone Emery
Get creative with nutritious food this Halloween!
Here are 4 ideas to try with your little monsters, fairies or skeletons. Halloween is a time for fun and creativity – fruit and vegetables don’t have to miss out on the fun.
- Scary Vegetable and Dip Platter
My favourite activity each year at Halloween is to take a scary drawing that my children draw and turn it into a vegetable and dip platter. I set them up with paper and veggie-coloured pencils – dark green, brown, red, light green, yellow and orange. They draw a scary monster and then we cut and dice a range of raw vegetables of the corresponding colours onto a white platter. You can use beans, snow peas, roasted cauliflower florets, capsicum, baby corn, carrot, celery, broccoli, roasted potato sticks, sweet potato wedges or cucumber sticks. For the face or as a side dish, we make a dip and put it in a ramekin. You could try a roasted carrot hummus for orange coloured haunted pumpkins. Black bean dip can be used for a witch’s cat. For green Frankenstein-esque monsters, try a basil and cashew dip. The kids love seeing their creations “come to life”.
- Floating Eye Ball Jelly
Slice a handful of grapes length ways. Make a jelly from fruit juice and gelatin. The ratio for gelatin to juice is 1 tablespoon to 2 cups of juice. Warm one cup of juice in a saucepan, dissolve and whisk in the gelatin before adding the second cup of juice. Pour it into your mould. Let the jelly set for about 20 minutes before adding in the grapes to different depths, so that they look like they are floating in the jelly. The eye ball effect works best with a clear juice (like apple or apple and blackcurrant). You can also try it in small individual bowls and have a pair of eyes in each bowl.
- Monster Eggs
Soft boil eggs in water with a tsp of vinegar added to it for 5 minutes. Plunge the eggs into cold water with green food dye added to it. Allow to sit and absorb the colour for 5-10 minutes. Remove from the dye bath and air dry for 1-2 minutes. The eggs will take on a murky green colour, and you can open them up for usual dippy egg goodness. Raw green beans make great “monster fingers” to dip in the egg yolk!
- Witch’s Fire Toast
Every witch needs a fire underneath her cauldron, right? Cut flame shapes from a piece of wholemeal bread using kitchen scissors and pop them in the toaster. Top with passata and finely grated cheese. You can use the off cuts of crust to make the logs underneath the fire. A very fun afternoon snack for your hubble, bubble, toil and trouble!
Embrace the creativity of the Halloween season!
