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Mimi’s Cucumber, Watermelon & Halloumi Salad Sticks

Mimi Spencer

Featuring:
Cucumber
Cucumber
Effort:
Complexity:
Cost:

Serves: As many as you like!

Prep time: 5 mins

Ingredients:

Cucumber, cut into bitesize chunks

Watermelon, balled or chopped into bitesize pieces

Halloumi, chopped into bitesize pieces

Veg Portions / Serving: 1

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Recipe and photography by Mimi Spencer.

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.

This is a really good combo, with the sweetness of the watermelon, the salty squeakiness of the halloumi and the cool crunch of the cucumber. The colours look so pretty – and it’s a great idea to add a little protein (from cheese) to a salad stick to make it a more satisfying snack.

Method:

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

Serve as is or better yet, with a favourite dip.

Still got ingredients leftover? Toss the remaining chopped ingredients together for a more ‘traditional’ salad and drizzle with dressing and fresh chopped herbs or a little dried oregano 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. Chopped peppers, feta cubes in place of halloumi, cherry tomatoes, croutons/torn bread or cooked chicken are all great additions if you have them.

Engaging Kids

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 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.

Activities

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

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

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.

Mimi Spencer

Mimi Spencer and Sam Rice met at the school gates and became firm friends through their mutual passion for healthy great food. They are co-authors of the best selling cookbook THE MIDLIFE KITCHEN.

midlifekitchen.com/

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