Hedi's Summer Veg & Strawberry Salad Sticks with Tahini Dressing

Hedi’s Summer Veg & Strawberry Salad Sticks with Tahini Dressing

Hedi Fountain

Featuring:

Peppers

Radishes

Effort:

Complexity:

Cost:

In season now

Serves: As many as you like!

Prep time: 5 mins

Ingredients:

Strawberries

Yellow pepper, chopped into bite-size chunks

Spinach leaves

Radishes, topped-and-tailed

For the tahini dressing:

3 tbsp tahini, runny

1 clove garlic, minced

1 tbsp soya sauce

1 tsp maple syrup

1 tbsp water (to thin out the dressing, add more if needed)

Pinch of salt

Veg Portions / Serving: 1

Recipe and photography from Hedi (www.hedihearts.com)

Salad sticks are a fun, attractive and engaging way to get kids more excited about veg! Perfectly portable, they are great for summer campouts, travel, picnics, lunchboxes and BBQs. Get the kids making these salad sticks this summer – it’s as fun to make as it is to eat. Why not come up with your own favourite combinations and share them with us on social, tagging @VegPowerUK and #SaladSticks.

Method:

Thread prepped ingredients onto skewers to make salad sticks, alternating the ingredients whichever way you like.

For the dressing: mix all ingredients together and drizzle over the salad sticks or serve on the side for dipping.

Still got ingredients leftover? Toss the remaining chopped ingredients together for a more ‘traditional’ salad and drizzle with the dressing (and fresh chopped herbs if you like – mint is lovely here) just before serving. To keep it portable, make sure you keep the salad ingredients (and herbs, if using) in a separate container to the dressing and add at the last minute to keep everything fresh and crisp. Grilled halloumi or feta or cubed hard cheese, croutons/torn bread or more veg like olives or chopped celery are all great additions if you have them.

Engaging Kids

Kids who engage regularly with veg through veg-themed activities, such as arts and crafts, sensory experiences, growing and cooking are shown to be more likely to eat the veg they engage with. Encouraging kids to engage and play with veg is the handy first step to them developing a good relationship with veg and life-long healthy eating.

Kids in the kitchen

Kids can really take charge here, which is part of why salad sticks are so popular with them! Make sure to prep any chopped ingredients for them, and keep an eye on their fingers around the sharp end of the skewer, but otherwise let them build it themselves. Help them with any harder ingredients. They can also mix the ingredients for the dressing together to serve.

Activities

While getting kids to interact with veggies for real and using their senses to explore them is best, encouraging hands off activities like arts & crafts, puzzles & games or at-home science experiments can be a great start, particularly for those who are fussier eaters or struggle with anything too sensory. Use these veg-themed activities as a stepping stone to interacting with the veg themselves. We have loads of crafty downloads here, puzzles here, and quirky science with veg here.

Sensory

Once you feel your child is ready to engage a little more, you can show them how to explore the veg you have on hand with their senses, coming up with playful silly descriptions of how a veg smells, feels, looks, sounds and perhaps even tastes. Find ideas, videos and some simple sensory education session ideas to get you started here.

Serving

The moments before food is offered can be a perfect opportunity for engagement that can help make it more likely a child will eat it! Giving children a sense of ownership in the meal can make a big difference to their feelings going into it and the pride they take in it. You know your child best, but if you aren’t sure where to start, we have some fun and simple ideas for easy roles you can give them in the serving process over here.