Spooky season is almost here.
Au Pairs find out quickly that Halloween is a really, really big deal in the USA. It’s a fun day and a great way to generate ideas for activities to do with children.
You can also avoid your kids having a complete sugar overload by giving them something healthy and wholesome to eat before you go out trick or treating or start chowing through their haul of candy. Here are a couple of our ideas…
Witches Broth: you can make green soup made from spinach and broccoli or bright orange soup from carrot and potato. Lots of chopping and stirring and muttered spells are required to make this dinner magical.
Zombie Pudding: rustle up apple and blackberry crumble, get the children involved peeling, chopping and cutting. Restrict the amount of sugar and let the children weigh out the ingredients so they can see what actually goes in.
Spooky Buffet: Bake carrot cakes, granola bars, rice crispie cakes or cup cakes with raisins and other dried fruit. Homemade, low sugar meringue ‘ghosts’ are fun to make too. If you are baking, put in half the sugar recommended and try to use good quality, high cocoa chocolate in muffins and cakes. It’s good to make kids realize how much sugar is in things and let them get used to other flavours and tastes. Make hummus from scratch with carrot and cucumber or bread stick wizard wands to dip in.
You don’t need to be hard line about healthy eating all evening, but explain that if you eat something savoury first, the sweet stuff tastes better later. Just don’t let them catch you eating Halloween candy before you have eaten dinner… you have been warned!
