Dr. Seuss Fun with Food

Do you ever play with your food?
Do you find it puts you in a good mood
to make gravy volcanoes out of beef that's been stewed?

Then look no further, my chap
because here's a plan with a map
for ways that aren't rude
to play with your food.

For Breakfast, Green Eggs and Ham:

An oldie but a goodie! Use food dye to color scrambled eggs green. Add cubed ham, or make them into a ham omelet. It might be a good idea to include the kids in the coloring of the eggs. Some kids have an aversion to foods died strange colors, and it might help if they are the ones doing the dying!

For Snack, Cat Hat Stacks:

I came up with this idea last minute in the grocery store when I had one child begging for bananas and the other one begging for strawberries. Wash and slice a strawberry, discarding the stem and leaves. Slice a banana, and reassemble the strawberry slices, placing a banana slice between each strawberry. Hold the stack up with a tooth pick. It was harder than I thought to find strawberries and bananas that were near enough to each other in circumference for this to work. If this is a major problem for you, these would be cute as fruit kabobs as well!

For Lunch, Cat in the Hat Sandwich and his trusty sidekick "Fish":
I am very proud of this. It took me a while to plan and execute, and I am very pleased with the results.

For the cat's face- I cut a piece of white bread  into a squat oval. Then I trimmed a piece of white american cheese to be just as long as the bread, but a but more narrow. I also cut triangles to use for the ears from the scraps of cheese. I placed the cheese on top of the bread and toasted it in the toaster oven until the cheese had melted and the bread was starting to brown on the edges. I had hoped for the bread to get a bit darker when toasting, but didn't want the cheese to get beyond the "just melted" stage. After placing the cheese-bread onto a plate, I added raisins for the eyes and nose, very thin carrot sticks for whiskers, and a small piece of apple peel for the mouth. You'll see where I got the apple peel from in a second.

For the cat's hat- I cut an apple in half from stem to bottom. Then I scooped out the core and removed the stem and blossom. Using a butter knife, I scored horizontal lines across the apple skin. I then very carefully used the butter knife to peel the skin from the apple on alternating stripes. Because the Cat's hat is never empty, I put a spoonful of peanut butter into the hole where I scooped out the core.I placed this on the plate, right up against the top of the cat's face. I cut a second apple horizontally so that I had a round slice. I then cut the slice in half, to make a half circle, cut out the seeds, and placed this slice skin up, for the brim of the hat.

Serve with goldfish crackers.

Dessert, One Fish Two Fish Jello:

Prepare a box of blue Jello as directed. Pour the Jello into custard cups for chilling in individual servings. Once the Jello is set, or after dinner, the kids can choose which gummie fish to "swim" in their fish bowl. Simply push the tails of the gummie fish into the Jello. This is extremely simple, but brings so many smiles! Tip: I got the frothy sea look in the two pictured on the right by using a fork to whisk air bubbles into the liquid before chilling, or you could gently pour it into each bowl for a more glassy look.