Part 4-The 5Ss That Make My Kids Eat More Vegetables

in Foodies Bee Hive3 years ago

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Butterfly-arranged Salad (made with cucumbers, carrot, lettuce and tomatoes)

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Vegetable bowl with carrot sticks, tomatoes from the garden, spirals of carrot and bits of lettuce.

Hi foodies and fellow hivers.
I’ve been off the hive for a while. It’s so good to be back. I look forward to catching up to posts here @foodiesbeehive.
Though it’s summer time and I’m off from work, I’m occupied with my kids.
I’m overseeing homework, running errands, managing our little balcony garden and mixing in some recreation. I’m certainly cooking more often as my boys often need to replenish their energy. If my sons’ school cafeteria staff is reading this post, I just want to let you know, “I love and appreciate you and I’m looking forward to my sons being back with you.”🤣😂
I’m seriously grateful for some family time. It’s a wonderful time for bonding. As hot and humid as summer is, it’s still one of my favorite seasons.
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Tomatoes by the balcony garden ( from balcony to table).My kids helped to plant, care for and harvest these tomatoes.

Part 4

Welcome to part 4 of a 5-part series of “The 5Ss That Make My Kids Eat More Vegetables”. It’s been a while since I posted part 3 so I’ll post it below:

https://peakd.com/hive-120586/@fruityfruitz/part-3-the-5ss-that-make-my-kids-eat-more-vegetables

So the first S was Stir fry.
The second S was Stew.
The third S was Soup.
The 4th is Spirals and Sticks(of vegetables and fruits)

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Fresh Salad

Though stir-fry, stews and soups are great ways to include vegetables and encourage kids to have them, I really like the idea of serving fresh vegetables. Spirals and sticks of vegetables 🥕 and fruits 🥒 somehow encourage my kids to eat their veggies.

For the salads in this post, I used:

-2 medium sized carrots
-3 Japanese cucumbers
-a small head of lettuce
-9 mini tomatoes from our balcony (1 tomato used for the butterfly)

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2medium-sized carrots and 3 Japanese cucumbers(2 in photo but one more was added afterwards to complete the arrangement).They were washed, the carrots were peeled. Though not pictured here, 9 mini tomatoes were used.

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Vegetable curler/sharpener used to make spirals of cucumber and carrot. It’s used similarly to how a sharpener is used to sharpen a pencil.
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Cucumber spirals.

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Carrot spirals.

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Rosettes made by coiling the spirals by hand.

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The cucumber coils are used to make the outline of a butterfly. The carrot coils make the centre of the butterfly.

Actually, the original plan was to put the coils neatly on a plate. While doing that the idea of making a butterfly popped up. During the process, I called my son and asked,”What do you see here?” His response was, “Are you trying to make a butterfly?” Though it wasn’t spot-on, the fact that he recognized that was enough. Lol!

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The lettuce leaves are broken into small pieces and used to fill the wings of the butterfly.
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The cores of the cucumbers(left after using the curler) were used to make the antennae of the butterfly. Though two mini-tomatoes are pictured beside the cores, only one was used to create a design on the butterfly. It was cut in quarters.

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A knife was used to make sticks with the remaining carrot.

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To a bowl, the remaining lettuce, carrot coils, tomatoes and carrot sticks were added.

The kids enjoyed having the salads with dinner. Wing by wing, coil by coil, spiral by spiral, stick by stick,the butterfly and vegetable bites disappeared. They were enjoyed by the family in general.

Thank you for joining me for part 4. Please stay tuned for part 5.
😃Have a great day.