Kids can make healthy no-cook summer recipes: from the Parent Powerline

Kids can make healthy no-cook summer recipes: from the Parent Powerline
Friday, July 26, 2024 by Becky Cerling Powers

no-cook

Children can create healthy, no-cook recipes for summer

Even when it’s hot, kids love to help out in the kitchen.

These snacks are great for teaching children kitchen skills and kitchen independence. They require no cooking, and they are easy enough for a 2-year-old or 3-year-old to help and 5-year-olds to manage most of the steps with assistance. Responsible older children can make them easily by themselves.

Toddlers need assistance, but it’s essential to let them help and learn when they want to do it. If you keep shooing them away while working in the kitchen, they absorb “Go Away” messages. And that often makes them resist learning to help when they are older. A 2-year-old or 3-year-old can learn safe-cutting skills if you teach them to cut something easy, like slicing banana rounds with a dinner knife.

That said, in these recipes, cutting with sharp knives and using an electric mixer are jobs only for adults and older children who have had a lot of practice under supervision and have proven themselves to be responsible.

The no-cook recipes

Graham Cracker Faces: Spread graham crackers with peanut butter and make funny faces on the crackers with raisins, chocolate chips, carrot curls, coconut, etc.
Apple or Banana Slice Delight: Spread apple and/or banana slices with softened cream cheese or peanut butter.
Ants on a Log: Cut celery in short lengths, spread the cupped side with peanut butter and add “ants” (raisins)
Fruit kabobs: Gather and prepare an assortment of fruit and place each kind in a bowl – pineapple chunks (cut fresh or from a can, drained), cantaloupe or honeydew melon balls or chunks, sliced bananas, and washed grapes with the stems pulled off. Push one piece of each kind of fruit onto a bamboo skewer. Repeat your pattern until the skewer is full.
Toothpick treat: No bamboo skewers? Arrange the fruit on a plate and let kids eat it with toothpicks. Add chunks of cheese, pieces of cooked cold meat, or sandwiches cut up in one-inch squares to make this a whole, balanced meal. Toothpick meals are fun for kids to prepare and eat as a special treat. Somehow, spearing food with toothpicks makes ordinary food special.
Cereal balls: In a large bowl, thoroughly mix ½ cup peanut butter, 1/3 cup honey, ½ cup flaked coconut, ½ cup of your children’s favorite cereal, & any popular extras you have on hand, like raisins or banana chips. Pour another 1 ½ cups of your children’s favorite cereal into a second large bowl. Shape spoonfuls of the first mixture into balls and roll them in the cereal in the second bowl. Chill and eat.
Homemade popsicles: Pour fruit juice into paper cups. Place a clean plastic spoon into each cup for a popsicle holder. The spoon will freeze at an angle, but that just gives juice popsicles a little more character. Freeze. When the popsicle is frozen, tear off the paper, or if you want to recycle the cup, run it under warm water and gently pull it on the spoon.

Let your children experiment by combining juices—cranberry and orange are tasty combinations, for example. You can also try other things, such as chocolate milk-flavored yogurt. A great yogurt combination is 2 cups plain yogurt, a 6-oz. can of undiluted frozen orange juice, and 1 teaspoon vanilla.

Even plain water works in a pinch. It makes a true icicle and cools you off marvelously when the temperature soars.

Frozen yogurt pie: In a mixer, whip together two 8-oz. cartons of yogurt and one 8-oz. carton of Cool Whip.™ Pour into a prepared graham cracker crust and freeze until set. This is especially tasty when made with lemon or berry-flavored yogurt. You can spoon the yogurt and Cool Whip™ mixture into paper cups for lusciously rich popsicles instead of making this recipe into a pie.
Personalized trail mix: Visit a natural food store or the natural food department at a supermarket to buy your ingredients: nuts, dried fruit (raisins, apricots, dates, apples), granola or muesli, and carob or chocolate chips. Mix everything in a big bowl and spoon it into sandwich bags. Take it along on a hike or set it out for a snack. Somehow, trail mix that kids make themselves tastes better to them than what you buy for them already mixed in the store.
Frozen bananas: Slice bananas in half and insert ice cream sticks in the cut ends. Freeze on a cookie sheet or pan and store in ziplock bags. When you want to eat them, allow the bananas to thaw slightly, and dip them into different toppings, such as peanut butter, finely chopped nuts, flavored yogurt, coconut, or caramel ice cream topping.
Frozen banana drink: Peel a banana, wrap it in plastic, and freeze it. Blend the frozen banana with ½ cup half-and-half, 2 tablespoons honey, and 1 teaspoon vanilla in an electric blender until smooth.