Green Food Face Dinner

October 4th, 2011 by justJENN

This weekend I am on a panel at Geek Girl Con about parenting, and the question people always ask me is how I get my kids to try different foods. The answer is easy – make dinner fun and engaging!

A good friend who knows how to have fun – gave the kids these cool Fred and Friends Food Face plates as a gift. I knew they’d be a perfect vehicle for an entertaining, healthy dinner where I could introduce some new foods.

I decided to go with all one color, green. Just because there are so many healthy green foods and it was also a nice palate to work with.

Here is what we used for our ‘green’ meal:

Green Tea Udon Noodles
Spinach Tortillas
Seasoned Seaweed cut into strips
Edamame (shelled)
Sliced Cucumber
Green apples

Once the kids got into it they started thinking of other foods that would make good hair, accessories, facial features – and they got really excited about planning our next meal. As the Baby said, “every dinner should be like this!”

The Baby went for the obvious with noodle hair while the Kid thought seaweed was the way to go. Apples became ears, edamame became eyes.

I tried to stay away from the obvious greens (broccoli, beans) and try different textures and flavors but also go for good ‘shapes’ that would help them be creative. My fave was the seaweed unibrow – courtesy of the Baby, of course.

The plates became a great way to get kids to be imaginative and creative and also get them involved in planning and eating a variety of foods. The empty plates don’t lie – they ate everything and had a great time!