Lunch Money

This isn’t a recipe so much as a way to bring some fun into your kids’ lunch hour. Instead of giving then cash to buy junk food, give them coins they can actually eat—that is, offer a balanced meal of round, coin-shaped edibles (organic, of course!). Here’s a range of possibilities.

Ingredients:

  •  Organic Prairie Beef Hot Dogs, cooked, cooled, and cut into coins
  •  Organic Prairie Italian Chicken Sausage or Bratwurst, cooked, cooled, and cut into coins
  •  Organic Prairie Pepperoni
  •  Organic Valley Stringles, cut into coins
  •  cucumber slices
  •  green or yellow zucchini slices
  •  thick asparagus spears, blanched and cut into coins
  •  broccoli stems, peeled and cut into coins
  •  radishes, sliced
  •  carrots, peeled and cut into coins
  •  dried banana slices
  •  dried apricots
  •  fruit leather, cut into coins
  •  kiwi, peeled and sliced into coins
  •  oyster crackers
  •  small round pretzels
  •  small round corn tortilla chips
  •  round ravioli, cooked and cooled
  •  garbanzo beans*

Directions:

1. Let your child choose his or her favorites from the array of finger foods above. Pack the little piles of “coins” into a rectangular container to make a lunch-size treasure chest.

* Call these “gold nuggets” instead of coins—and offer nuggets in other colors, too (think peas, blueberries, grapes, etc.)