Cakes aren't the only foods we offer at celebrations. Use this recipe for a festive and healthy vegetable treat.

Materials:

• Cream cheese or yogurt
• Vegetables -- cabbage or lettuce wedge, cucumber, mushrooms, red pepper, carrot sticks, radish, broccoli, parsley, cherry tomatoes, celery
• Heavy duty toothpicks

Directions:

In a glass baking dish, make the base from cream cheese or yogurt, flavored as a dip. On that base, you and the children can use different vegetables to make a scene like these:

1) Clown

• Use a cherry tomato for the nose
• Olive sitting on a radish slice for the eyes
• A red pepper strips for the mouth
• Celery strips for the hat
• Cherry tomatoes as decoration on the hat.

For decoration on the clown costume, you could use red pepper, carrot strips, and mushroom slices.

2) Dinosaur

• Make the body from a half of a cabbage or lettuce wedge.
• You could use a cucumber for the head
• Mushrooms for eyes
• Red pepper like big fins off its neck
• Carrot sticks for horns
• Radishes for feet.
• Broccoli standing up could be trees in the scene, parsley could be grass.

Use heavy-duty toothpicks for connecting pieces together.

Being creative with these "scenes" or others of your own can give children a reason to celebrate each other's ideas -- and have fun eating healthy foods.

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