Sometimes I have what I think are brilliant ideas to simplify my programs. Then sometimes I don't plan ahead and I don't have what I need to do said program. Sometimes that happens with the same program. This was that program.
When I went through and did my list of books that had food in them, there were several that had LOTS of foods, and I thought, "What better way to incorporate kids helping than to do snack plates?"
I had it all planned out, and then a week or so before the program, I realized that one of the books had been on reading lists for school during the summer. Curses! I put myself on hold for it, but it didn't come in until AFTER I did my program. Figures. I had to scramble the day before and try to find a replacement book/recipe that I could use to fit the theme of snacks. Here are the books and recipes I wound up using:
Heckedy Peg by Audrey Wood. This is about a mother who has to go to the market, and has to leave her 7 children at home. She very specifically tells them - "Don't do the thing". A stranger comes up to the door, and what do they do? The thing. Stranger is a witch who turns them into food and takes them home to eat them. Mom finds the witch and eventually the witch will give her children back if she can figure out which one is which. She does so by what they asked for from the market. There's a LOT of food mentioned in the book - most of which a lot of children probably wouldn't eat, but cheese and crackers are mentioned, and so we decided to do a ploughman's lunch. You can get really fancy with it, but we didn't - we buttered some crusty bread and had an array of cheeses the children could choose. My grandmother used to have a cheese slicer I used all the time as I kid, but I don't have one now. I could have had a kid come up and sliced it with a butter knife, but we were trying to be mindful of time.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. Again, lots of food mentioned, especially at the end of the book, but we decided to focus on the fruit. (I'm not going to go through the plot - this book is so famous, you *must* know it). We made little fruit kabobs, but we needed something for the kids to do, so we decided to make a dip for the fruit. Super easy because all you have to do is mix, so I think I asked a three-year-old to come up and help me. And they did such a good job! I think a lot of kids skipped tasting it though because they had no idea what it was - which is weird because they normally LOVE sweets.
The Beastly Feast by Bruce Goldstone. Sooo this was not the book I had originally planned on doing that day. It's cute though, with bears bringing pears, parrots bringing carrots, mosquitoes bringing burritos, and so on. I figured that carrots would be the best bet, since a lot of kids eat that for a snack anyway. But we couldn't just give them carrots. I mean we could, but this is a cooking class. So I decided to make homemade ranch dressing. Again - this is something that's not *too* hard - a lot of mixing and measuring. There's some herb cutting, but that can be done with scissors. And there's the garlic mashing, but I have a mortar and pestle and so that helps make short work of that. It was delicious, but way different than the bottled stuff. The kids seemed to enjoy it.
In case you're wondering, the book I originally intended to do was Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett. It talks about drifts of cream cheese and jelly sandwiches, and I thought that would be a perfect recipe that EVERYONE could make. That's ok though. There were other books I didn't get to do in this series, and there are other foods mentioned, so I may be able to work it in some other time.
