Part-time Poppins:

Food For Thought

The "Food Play Part" of the art and science of being a professional nanny includes attending to adolescent epicurean delights and ensuring that your young charges have enough healthy food in their systems throughout the day. Young children are often "picky" or "choosy" eaters and frequently experience eating phases where some foods, and even entire food groups, can suddenly become unappealing, thus eliminating many healthful choices and narrowing the possibilities for balanced eating. The recipe for finding healthy choices requires equal parts of "super sleuth," chef, opportunist, and artist. For the baffled nanny, there are solutions that will satisfy the child, the parent, and the caretaker who has unwittingly accepted the challenge of becoming the gourmand.

A nutritious meal is the best beginning for a young child (or anyone, for that matter). As the saying goes, "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day," and nutrient-rich foods are the foundation for mental and physical performance. The children in your care don't know that these foods are essential for their proper development, nor would most children give the nutritional values of their food a second thought, so a little bit of "food play" is like a "spoon full of sugar" to ease that nutrition down the pipes. With a diet balanced in all of the nutritional groups, including fresh and canned fruits, fresh and canned vegetables, grains, proteins (including items like peanut butter, fish, eggs, fresh meat, etc.), and enough water to hydrate their little bodies, the children you look after can have a healthy advantage by having the fuel that they need to avoid exhaustion and susceptible immune systems.

I have learned that children need certain nutritional ratios for proper mental and physical development. Zachary, the four-year-old that I take care of, has a sweet tooth after my own. He'd prefer a ratio of 70/20/10 (that's 70% candy, 20% cookies and 10% "healthy" food, including steamed broccoli and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches). A healthier balance would be closer to 50 to 55% from carbohydrates, approximately 30% from fats and approximately 20% from proteins. While these figures don't sound ideal for most health-conscious adults, children need their carbohydrates for added fuel, and the high ratio of fats is vital for proper brain and body development. In addition, as protein isn't stored within the body, it is essential to re-fuel with protein every day. Using a nutritional recipe close to this one will provide the child with a healthy foundation for their day--and for their lives.

How do you ensure that the children in your care receive anything even remotely resembling the "ideal" nutritional ratios? It might sound simplistic, but one of the ingredients for healthy eating is making the meals fun: sometimes the incentive in eating a "healthy" snack or meal is all in the presentation. Make a meal unexpected, fun and colorful, and the food itself becomes enticing. Fruits and vegetables can be transformed into a myriad of faces, animals and designs. Instead of being greeted by crackers and cheese, the child can be greeted by a favorite character, or by the first letter of their name. A cheese stick can turn into a "funny nose," blueberries can be "eyes," and potato chips can be large ears. Who could resist such a face? Well, so far, neither Zachary nor Justin have been able to say "No" to this comical edible caricature.

Orange You Glad... ...You decided to use bananas? This versatile fruit can be mashed, used as dried banana chips (although the nutritional values are altered), and cut with the peel still on and displayed on the peel slices in a variety of designs--but just forewarn them that the slices are NOT edible--I ran into this problem when I forgot to tell six-year old Justin, and he bravely ventured to allow one of those peel slices into his mouth before suspiciously asking me what he was eating!

Other foods that are good with decorating and creating decorative meals include:

Fruits: Oranges, apples, cantaloupe, watermelon, peaches, nectarines, tomatoes, grapes, blueberries, raspberries, applesauce, strawberries and pears;

Vegetables: carrots, celery, broccoli, cucumber, olives, potatoes (chips, mashed potatoes, fries, etc.), green beans and corn; Proteins: chicken strips, peanut butter, eggs (scrambled or in fried strips), nuts, fish and beans; Carbohydrates: crackers, bread or toast, waffles, tortillas, rice, etc., with some overlap into the other food groups;

Fats: cheese (which also overlaps into the dairy category), avocado and items such as cookies, which can be used sparingly;

Other dairy items: sour cream, yogurt and cottage cheese;

Condiments: ketchup, salsa, cool whip, etc.

Other helpful items include licorice (for whiskers or eyebrows), lemon drops, spaghetti noodles and pasta in a variety of shapes, cinnamon candy, meatballs and raisins.

While this is by no means a definitive list of all of the items that can be used for child-intended decorative food presentation, most of these foods meet certain nutritional requirements while offering a diverse array of colors, sizes and textures...and this is ideal for any "food art." The best way to prepare yourself for your "Piece o Picasso?" Making a menu in advance can provide a basic guide for nutritional requirements at each setting. Using a device such as a nanny log, and meeting with the children's parents regularly, can reveal whether the children are eating their ideal ratio of food groups, as well as help plan for upcoming meals and snacks. For the extremely artistic, sparingly using food coloring and cake decorating tools can add an extra "oomph" to any work of culinary art.

A Piece O Picasso: Recipes for Success

A few of the food art ideas that I have successfully used include:

* Fish: Use melon slices shaped in an oval as the body, with "Pringles" chips as the inner "scales," blueberry or raspberry eyes, a strawberry cut in half for the fish lips, orange slices for the dorsal fins and cantaloupe slices faced in opposite directions for the "fish tail." A larger plate does need to be used for this dish, as a smaller one doesn't allow enough room for the entire concoction.

*Monkey or Lemur: Cut an apple in half and carve out the middle to use it as a "bowl." fill it with blackberries and place it in the middle of the dish. Use the other half of the apple and make thin, circular slices for the outside of the eyes--the inner areas of these slices can be filled with blueberries or blackberries. A mouth can be created with a strawberry cut in half and faced inward with both larger areas faced toward each other and a "lower lip" of a half-circle apple slice. This animal isn't complete until you add the Cool Whip hair--which can be arranged in a variety of creative coifs!

Other possible ideas are as follows:

Cat or Dog Face (Happy, Sad, etc.) Flowers or leaves Intricate designs "Letter of the day" / letter of the week to correspond with school or home lessons Something significant spelled out, i.e., "Boo!" for Halloween The first letter of their name or their initials Number(s), i.e., for an amount of books read in one week, or for a birthday

The ideas are limitless, but fortunately, their appetites are not. The one problem that I have run into? The children have told their friends about the "creative" dishes that await them after school each day...and when their friends come over, any dish that isn't made in the shape of a superhero, face or frightening insect is met with a disappointing "That's it?!?"

Creative and colorful food presentation might not exactly be the "spoon full of sugar" that helps the "nutritional medicine" go down, but it's just what this "food doctor" ordered!