We like to play with our food

So sometimes just to make lunch or snack time more fun I'll let the kids play with their food. This really helps if there is something new (or boring) I'm trying to get them to eat! I wish I had more photos to share but I just don't usually have the camera in the kitchen. I'll try to photograph these more often because they are fun.

On this particular day I found some popcorn chicken in the freezer (yes, I know it's not the healthiest, but I bought it when I was pregnant and didn't have much energy to cook!) and wanted to use it up. And the only veggies I had to serve were bell peppers. So I cut everything up and arranged it into this:

The sun is a sliced up cheese stick, the peppers are a flower, some Ranch dressing for a cloud and the chicken became the dirt. They had so much fun eating this and they used the other slices (not shown) to create their own masterpieces.

This next one is not so creative. But they loved it too. My kids love to eat quesadillas. And on this day they also wanted a hot dog (these are either turkey dogs or the nitrate-free ones, so they are not sooo bad!). So we turned them into butterflies!

And speaking of hot dogs, that reminds me of one we used to make awhile back. Here is the link to the original post.

This is always a fun one to make. Just cut slits in the bottom two-thirds of the hot dog and boil it with the ramen noodles. When the noodles are done just "fish" : ) out the octopus and add some food coloring to the noodles (along with the flavor pouch of course). The boiling water will curl the legs making it look like an octopus. For even more fun I drew faces with some food safe markers and placed it back into the noodles. You could just use ketchup or mustard to make faces or stick some veggie pieces on it too.

This octopus backfired on me though. Because my then 2-year-old just wanted to play with his new octopus friend instead of eat him!

He really carried this thing around for hours playing with it! One of the legs inevitably broke off and he was so distraught about it. I remember that he even wanted to take this thing with him to the store as his toy. But he eventually set it down and I threw it away without him knowing. =D