OK, so here we are approaching April vacation. We've held the healthy supper, school lunches, snacks thing together all year, but the kids just keep eating! In the interest of keeping a growing, dairy-free boy fed, we had a lot of pasta, breads, chili, and chicken over the course of the winter. For a while it was all about volume, volume, volume (just wait till your kid turns 13), but now that seems to have evened off at a steady pig trough level. It used to be that a pound of pasta fed the whole family, with leftovers for lunch the next day. Now it's a pound and a half, with barely enough left over for scant lunch for the three kids.
Now things are warming up and it's time to keep the input up, but without heating up the kitchen (special dispensation for cool, rainy days). So the question is, what do you do for filling, healthy meals and snacks? Smoothies, burritos, potato salad, and spring rolls are always on our list. What else do you do to keep the hunger pangs away in the warmer months? The first five to share thoughts and/or recipes will receive a packet of sunflower seeds.
Here's a quickie for you. In Brazil, kids grow up on these and they are called um vitaminas: In a blender, place a banana, some ice cubes, milk (for our DF boy we use coconut milk, available in half-gallon cartons from Whole Foods), unsweetened cocoa powder to taste (in Brazil they use Nesquik but that 's way sweet and industrial), and a splash of orange juice(optional). Give it a whirl.
