So, we try to keep a healthy diet: whole grains, low sugar, lots of fruits and veggies, but then comes the holidays. Not so bad when you're a grown-up: have a cup cake or a few pieces of chocolate and call it good, but when you're a kid there are treats galore!!! Eli's daycare is having a Valentine's Day party. On the food sign up list there's cookies, cupcakes, brownies & candy, plus punch (read: Hawaiian Punch and 7-up. Very healthy.) Now I'm all about Valentine's Day: pink and red hearts, making special cards, I can't get enough! But do I want my kids full of food coloring, refined sugar and white flour? Not really. So I started looking for fun, healthy-ish treats for my kid and his daycare friends. Some I found included strawberry yogurt (have you ever looked at the sugar content of strawberry yogurt?) mixed with strawberry cool whip (yummy red dye #479) as a dip for graham crackers, pretzels & fruit. Might as wall give them another cupcake!
Some I thought of included Strawberry “Mousse:” Cream cheese, thawed strawberries (no sugar added), a little honey blended with enough milk or or yogurt to make i dippable. Yes, cream cheese has fat, but for the average active kid, no big deal. Find some whole grain graham crackers, fresh fruit, etc, and you've got a special (pink!) treat, that won't send them bouncing off the walls. Plus, they get to DIP. What kids doesn't like food that involves dip. Or use it as a filling for mini-cream puffs.
Strawberry smoothies seems like another fun V-Day treat, but I can't quite figure out how to make them in advance. Ooooo. Maybe freeze them into and ice cube tray with a little red popsicle stick… VDay popsicles!
Or what about pretzels, raisins, nuts and a FEW m-n-m's, in a little Valentine's dixie cup. What kid wouldn't love that?
Heart shaped cheese slices seems perfectly, well, cheezy. And kids like cheezy.
Rice crispy treats cut out with a SMALL heart shaped cookie cutter seems reasonable, too.
100% juice w/ sparkling water… now that I can get behind (even 100% juice w/ “pop”).
In the end, I guess I just can't imagine being 2 years old and being offered a full size cup-cake, a brownie, psycho-sugar punch, candy and heaven knows what else, and feeling good at the end of the day. Bring on the treats, but only a few, and make 'em small. Just enough to make the day celebrating love and friendship a little bit special.