Fun Food

I'm not a good cook. So... the few things I do make, I try to make fun. My kids go crazy over my peanut butterfly and jelly sandwiches. When I'm feeling especially ambitious, I also slice pickles to look like grass and cut green grapes in half and line them up to make caterpillars. Sometimes I serve their butterflies with "ants on a log"- celery with peanut butter and raisins. (My mom used to give us that as a snack when I was a kid and I remember loving it!) Another simple thing they go nuts over is my octopus hot dogs. I make the ketchup look like waves on their plates and add some goldfish crackers. Sometimes I cut their cheese into stars to make starfish or I put a toothpick into a pickle to make a ship with a triangle of cheese on the other end for the sail. (The "octodog" looks pretty cute on top of a bowl of mac and cheese too.) When the girls are feeling daring, I slice their hot dogs into "worms." They love to pretend to be disgusted. Sometimes just changing the name of a food they are hesitant to try or serving it in a creative way makes all the difference.