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Having Fun with Food Ideas

Unleash the creativity in your kids by letting them create their dinner into a Picasso design or animal. Use vegetables, shredded cheese, chopped nuts, cornflakes or whatever you have that goes with your dinner.


Many times I arrange the food into a funny face depending on what we're having. For example, create mashed potato hair or beard, meatball or hard boiled eggs for eyes and green beans for hair. Kids love the surprise and they enjoy being able to eat the face a little at a time.



Make homemade pizzas and let kids decorate faces with the toppings or making artful creations. Or cut cheese slices out with mini cookie cutters and place on the pizza.

Stock up on fun cookie cutters. Cut whatever you can into fun shapes. Kids love this and it is so simple it is worth implementing in your meals.


Do theme dinners or international dinner nights. Create a menu and make a "big" deal out of dinner.


Create homemade taco salad bowls or scoop out the inside of a roll for a bread bowls for soup.


Serve meals in a cup with these cooking in a cup ideas and recipes.


Try making some simple smoothie recipes. They can easily be made into a fun drink by pouring in a decorative glass and top with a umbrella toothpick or fun straw.


Try some fun picnic ideas and recipes. Picnics are a great way for kids to get involved packing and preparing.


Let kids create decorative snack platters. These work great for holidays or just for dinner/snack time. Use a variety of vegetables, fruits and/or small snacks. Let them decide on how to arrange them. You'll might be surprised what they come up with. I was!


Using fruit kids already love and changing it a little to suit a theme or holiday is a simple way to make food fun.


Create added garnishes and fun touches to your meals to ramp up your food presentation.
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5 Ways to Make Cooking with your Kids Fun

1. Have a Theme

Choose a favorite movie, color, animal, etc and plan dinner around that theme.

Use these pages for help planning:
Theme Dinners
Movie and Cooking Theme Night
Animal theme ideas
A-Z cooking ideas

2.  Have an International Night

Choose a country and try some new foods from the country. Dress up and create a dinner menu for fun.
See our international section for different countries you could highlight.

3. Have Leftovers for Dinner

Don't want your leftovers to go to waste? Have the kids be the waiter/waitress and include all the options (leftovers in your fridge) of what the chef is preparing tonight. (warming up) You could even write up a menu on a wipe board or print up your own restaurant menu with 'Today's Special'.

Need some ideas of what to do with your leftovers?

4. Family Chefs

Let each member of the family choose their favorite dish and prepare it for a family feast. If you'd like to keep from having 5+ main dishes, assign a category to each such as vegetable dish, main dish, appetizer, dessert, etc.

See our recipe index for a category of menu recipes.

5. What's in the Cupboard Recipe Creation

Have each member of the family choose an item from the cupboard or fridge and as a family figure out how and/or what to make for dinner with the items.

15+ Fun Finger Foods

Vegetables combined with a Dip. Think of ways you can combine dip with your vegetables; mini peppers with dip inside, small vegetable sticks inside a mini glass and dip on the bottom or these cucumber cups.

Or serve the dip in a fancy or small serving dish.

Fruit Kabobs- give kids cubed fruits and let them build a fruit stick.
 

Deli Kabob- build a ham or turkey kabob with cheese and fruit. Find the recipe in our non reader recipe section.


Banana Pops- roll bananas in a tasty treat.


Spider Crackers- make crackers more fun with creating them into spiders.


Chicken Drumsticks- add a tasty marinade to chicken legs and grill or bake and you have a kid friendly finger food for dinner.


Rice Cakes- An easy snack that kids can eat with their hands and create how they like is to add a spread to rice cakes and top with diced fruit. Make animal faces like these.
 

Mini Hamburgers- anything miniature size means kids can eat it as finger foods as well as have a lot more fun eating. Make mini versions of dinner. If you are making meatloaf, for example, make mini loaves or shape your meatloaf into fun creations. I have several mini pans shaped like stars, hearts and trees. These work great for meatloaf but you don't have to have mini pans to create. Meatloaf will shape well and then can be placed on a tin foil lined cookie sheet for the easiest cleanup. Meatloaf is also a great recipe to include pureed or finely chopped vegetables. Other mini versions could be mini meatballs, small taco shells or mini pies.


Add a Fruit Dip to sliced fruit and kids just might be more willing to dip and eat.


Bruschetta- You can make a fruit bruschetta with cheese (cottage or cream) and chopped fruit or jam. Another method is to try a Tomato Bruschetta recipe


Meat Kabobs- Marinade meat. Shred meat and vegetables on metal skewers and grill. Make chicken or beef kabobs into caterpillars. Use a tomato or mushroom for the head.


Ham Roll Ups- You can make lunch meat roll ups easily by adding different fillings.


Mini Quiches- Take your favorite quiche recipe and bake little quiches with a mini muffin pans.


Caprese Bites


Deviled Eggs- Most kids will love deviled eggs for snack or lunch time.

Making Fun with Food by Color

A variety of colors gets kids attention so make sure you have a colorful food plate. Choosing foods that look good together is a big part of making food appealing. It may be something many people don't think about but if you make the plate of food look appetizing kids will be more interested in eating it.

Find out what color has to do with making food appealing?

This goes for yummy food on the plate as well as colorful and exciting food. Serve a balance of different colored foods to your family. Seeing a single color on the plate isn't going to get anyone to eat their dinner.

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