The most useful in the world is buckwheat porridge.

Rice porrige.

Semolina.
(due to the high gluten content, children under 3 years of age are not recommended)

Mashed potatoes "Cat"

Spider web mashed potatoes

Curd inbaskets .
Portion dishes in baskets easy to prepare and always attractive to children.

BOUQUETS AND CANDY ARRANGEMENTS
will always be a welcome decoration of the children's table
And of course, involve children in making them.

DECORATION OF CHILDREN'S DISHES
Use all your imagination!

Crocodile pie is easy to prepare.

See also Piglet roll and other recipes.

"Birdie" from yeast dough

3. Salad, eggs, tomato halves, sour cream.

4. Stuffed tomato.

5. Mouse made of eggs, radishes, carrots.
Such eyes for the mouse can be made by filling the jelly with raisins in chocolate, raisins, eggs, berries, pieces of vegetables, etc. Use plastic packaging from tablets as molds for filling.

7

8. Eggs and caps of salted or pickled mushrooms. You can use boiled mushroom caps.

9. Piggy buns from yeast dough.

10. Cheesecake pigs (inside curd filling, closed with a "patch", eyes - raisins)

11. Decorating porridge with jelly gravy

12. Decoration of salad or pâté.

13. Gingerbread house.
Details are glued together with very thick sugar syrup ... Better yet, use fructose syrup.

14. Gingerbread house with cream .

15. Decorated gingerbread house glaze .

16. Gingerbread house with sprinkles icing sugar

17. For baking gingerbread house parts, see Gingerbread dough products .

18. The gingerbread house is thickly covered with protein dough for Merengi cake and dried for 25-30 minutes at 110-120 ° C.
The figurines are made from marzipan and set after baking.

19. Wrapping the dish in foil gives an unusual look.

20. Small yeast dough bars for the roof should be baked and placed shortly before serving (so as not to become stale). The cream should also be prepared and set aside before serving. Details from marzipan are prepared in advance - marzipan is perfectly preserved for several months.

21. Ice cream with waffles

22. Lemon mouse

23. Cake-shoe from the mass for the cake "Potatoes" drenched chocolate icing, decorated with cream. The overlay on the top is made of glaze poured over the foil. After cooling to plasticity while still warm, it is applied to the "boot" (after complete cooling the film is removed).
NOTE. Mass for the cake "Potatoes" allows you to sculpt various figures, make baskets for filling with berries, mousse, curd mass, cream, and even create whole structures - houses, towers, palaces, etc.

24. Piglet- kulebyaka .

25. Pie -piggy.

26. Sandwich.

27. Boat, mast - toothpick (skewers and toothpicks should not be used in dishes for very young children)

28. Cake "Potatoes" in the form of a hedgehog.

29. The plastic flowers fixed on the hedgehog should be removed after serving.

30.

32. Use decorations around the dish.

33. If there is no special frying pan, use molds of the most varied shapes, independently made from cardboard folded in several layers of foil, tin, etc. The mold is oiled from the inside, placed in a pan and an egg is driven into it.

34. Children's gift mom!
A similar gift can be prepared for a child.

35. Serpentine cucumber snake.
Or you can just fold it from circles.

36. Draw funny faces on tangerines or oranges.

37. Stuffed tomatoes(filling - salad, pate, etc.). Sliced ​​cheese legs.

38. Stuffed eggs

39. Vegetable salad.

40. Stuffed egg boats.

41. The town of cookies. Build it with your child, expecting a large group of guests.
Such complex structures do not have to be built in one day.

42. Pastry made from yeast dough.

43. Scary spider cutlets for fearless kids.

44. Inside the structure may sweet cake(decoration with cream) or unsweetened pate, for example, liver pate (decorated with thick sour cream or mayonnaise).

45. Decoration on top mashed potatoes.

46. ​​Boat sandwiches with sails and paper decorations. Make jewelry and glue it together with your child.

47.

48. Unsweetened curd mass (curd paste) or Olivier salad, topped with slices of pickled or pickled cucumbers.

49. Swans and lilies from eggs.

50. Children are always happy colored eggs... Prepare them as a goodbye gift for every child who comes to visit.

51. Boil hard-boiled eggs, peel. Paint in different colors in hot colored liquids - tea, cocoa, brightly colored juices (beetroot, currant, cherry, etc.). Wrap in pretty foil and serve on the kid's table. It will be a pleasant surprise for children that the eggs are not white.

52. Snake salad. Glued together with thick sour cream or mayonnaise from slices of fresh cucumber and other vegetables, meat, sausages, etc. Everything to taste and fantasy.

53. Crocodile Cucumber

54. Decorating salad or pâté.

55. "Cake" of Olivier salad or hot mashed potatoes, garnished with herbs and small mushroom caps.

56. Meat "cake".

Recipe

Ingredients:
- Ground beef
- eggs
- potato
- greens - dill, parsley, cilantro
- onions (for example, leeks)
- salt, spices to taste

Preparation

1. Season the minced meat with salt and spices, add eggs. Mix well.
2. Cut the peeled potatoes into slices
3. Chop the onion into rings
4. Place in a greased shallow saucepan in layers:
- bow, well distributed along the bottom
- put a layer of minced meat on the onion
- put potato slices on the minced meat,
- on the potatoes again a layer of minced meat
- again potatoes for minced meat
- then alternate minced meat - potatoes
- our sandwich should end with minced meat
- then cover everything with onions
- and put in the oven at a temperature of 180-200 o C for about 1 hour (depending on the size of the saucepan and the thickness of the layer.
At the end of cooking, let it stand for 5 minutes so that the juice is absorbed. Then turn over onto a dish, decorate on top according to your imagination, sprinkle with herbs and serve.
Serve hot or cold.
NOTE. Can be prepared from cold prepared foods by stacking sliced, jacketed or baked potatoes and a meat, liver, or fish paste in layers. Instead of potatoes, you can use boiled rice mixed with béchamel sauce or mayonnaise.
Useful to pad and layer grated cheese mixed with mayonnaise or sour cream. In general, use your taste and culinary imagination more.

57.

58.

59. Jelly Eggs

Wash raw eggs thoroughly, cut off the tops, pour out the contents and use for various dishes. Rinse empty eggshells, boil in boiling water for 2-3 minutes and dry.
Then lubricate the inside with vegetable oil (there should be no excess oil).
Pour in the prepared cooling jelly, then pour and place in the refrigerator for 15 minutes to freeze the layer on the inner surface of the shell. This will prevent food from appearing on the surface itself. And to make the outer layer even thicker, you can repeat the rinsing with the jelly solution. Then put various foods in the eggs, pour over the jelly and refrigerate in the refrigerator. When it hardens, peel the shell and serve. If the shell sticks to the jelly, briefly - 2-3 seconds - rinse with hot water before cleaning.
Note. To simplify and speed up cooking, you can not pre-rinse the shell with a solution of jelly, but immediately lay the food and pour in the jelly.

60. A gingerbread palace for a large number of guests.

61. This is how you can serve sweet curd mass. For brown coloring, add cocoa.

62.

63. The house is covered with glaze.

81. With slices of sausage, egg white and olives, a regular bun can be easily made into the face of a cute pig.

82. Use more often tartlets or other dough baskets filling them with various salads and pates.

83. Creamy fruit basket. On the base, composed of layers of biquite with an interlayer and impregnation, figuratively deposit from a confectionery jig bag butter cream... Put different berries on top.
The handle of the basket is made from a thick strip of biscuit and attached before depositing the cream. For simplicity, you can do without a handle.
On the sides, the goat can simply be greased with cream and sprinkled with biscuit, rusks or chocolate chips, and apply the cream only along the upper edge. It will still be nice and tasty.

84. The darkened room and the setting with candles create a particularly festive atmosphere. The room is shaded (or the light is partially extinguished) when everyone is already sitting at the table. After 1 minute, a dish decorated with candles is brought in and placed in the middle of the table.

85. Figured out a small pumpkin, place a candle or a loosely wrapped flashlight inside a colored cloth, place on a dish covered with leaves (dry or fresh) and place in a shaded room in the middle of the table. Turn periodically so that all children can enjoy the spectacle comfortably.

The beautiful design of children's dishes is important, but the healthiness of the products is the dominant factor. Mayonnaise is known to be added to many salads. Sour cream is certainly healthier for children, but mayonnaise is indispensable in some dishes. The opinions of doctors about the dangers of this sauce for the child's body differ. One doctor will tell you that mayonnaise is harmful, and you do not need to add it to children's dishes at all, another will assure you that it is possible, but from 3-5 years old, and the third will advise you to give it not earlier than the age of seven. Why? Just in purchased mayonnaise, in addition to harmless products (eggs, vegetable oil, etc.), various emulsifiers, thickeners, dyes and preservatives are contained. There is only one way out: to cook mayonnaise with your own hands at home. Here is a recipe for making homemade mayonnaise with a photo.

1) Homemade mayonnaise
You need to take:
300 g of vegetable oil
150 g fresh milk
1 tsp mustard, ready-made (not dry)
1 tsp each. salt and sugar
Lemon juice - 1-2 tbsp spoons to taste.
In all the sauce that you get about 2800 Kcal, in 100 g about 620 Kcal, i.e. in calories, it is not inferior to the store.
Cooking:
Mix all the ingredients in one container and beat with a blender (a mixer will not work here!).

Then add lemon juice and beat for another minute.
We put it in a jar and store it in the refrigerator for no more than 10 days.

The mayonnaise does not contain eggs, which is good for children prone to allergic reactions.

2)Mashed potatoes.
Potatoes - 110g.
Butter - 3g.
Milk - 40g.
Calorie content per 100g - 115.
Potatoes for baby puree it is better to steam. So all the nutrients and vitamins are stored in it. Can be boiled in peel, but peel hot potatoes. Rub the peeled potatoes through a sieve and, whisking with a mixer, add warm boiled milk, salt and put butter... You can decorate with sausages, sausage, red pepper, egg whites or fresh cucumber, lettuce and radish, as you can see in the pictures.

This is a carbohydrate dish (about 17.2 g% in 100 g), fats 3.7 g%, and protein 2.5 g%.

3) Boiled rice.
Rinse the sorted rice in hot water and cook until half cooked (salt water). Then discard on a sieve, rinse warm water, wait for the glass to water and heat slightly by adding butter. For 300 ml of water, take about 35 grams of rice and 5 grams of butter. Calories per 100g - 48.7, fat - 4.3g, protein - 2.3g%, and carbohydrates - about 23.6g%.

You can decorate, as shown in the picture: sausage, ketchup, dill stalks, pickles, olives, etc.

4) Semi-viscous rice porridge.
Add water (20ml) to boiling milk (70ml), and gradually add rice washed in hot water. Cook with constant stirring until the cereal is boiled. Then put on water bath to cook. Add salt, apples (50g), sugar (1 tsp without top) and boil again for 4-5 minutes, remembering to stir constantly. Add oil (3g). For very young children, this porridge is rubbed, and for those who are older, they spread it and decorate it with raisins. Calories per 100 g are about 133.7, fat - 4.9 g%, protein - 2.9 g%, carbohydrates - 17.6 g%.

5) Loose buckwheat porridge.
Buckwheat kernel - 40g.
Water - 80 ml.
Salt
Butter -3g.
Cooking:
Pour the sorted cereals into water, salt, cover tightly and cook over medium heat. When the water has evaporated, reduce heat to lowest and simmer for about 30 minutes. Then put in the butter and stir. 100 g ready-made porridge(without decorations) contains 152 Kcal, fat - 3.2 g%, carbohydrates - 25.4 g%, and protein - 4.3 g%.

For decoration, you need 3 halves of sausages. Least of all calories in beef sausages (226 Kcal). Cut them as shown in the figure.

6) Beet cherries.
This dish is perfect for children who have problems with stool (or, to put it simply, it helps well with constipation).
Ingredients:
Boiled beets - 90g.
Prunes - 30g.
Sour cream (or homemade mayonnaise, see above for its recipe) - 10g.
Peel and grate the beets. Pour washed prunes with hot water for 10 minutes, then chop. Strongly dry prunes should be doused with boiling water, allowed to drain, cover with a lid and let stand for an hour and a half. Add sour cream, form balls with wet hands, decorate with parsley sprigs and put in the refrigerator to freeze a little. 100 g of a dish contains 163.4 Kcal, fat - 8.5 g%, carbohydrates - 24 g%, protein - 3.3 g%.

7) Squid salad with corn.
You need to take for 6-8 servings:
Squid (boil for 3 minutes) - 1 kg.
3 small onions
Boiled eggs - 5 pcs.
3 tbsp. tablespoons of chopped walnuts
1 tbsp. a spoonful of vegetable oil
1 cans of corn
1 tbsp. a spoonful of mayonnaise
Salt.
Caloric content 100 g - 185
Preparation:
Squid and cut into thin strips. Leave 2 squirrels for garnishing, and cut the rest of the eggs into strips. Dice the onion and fry until golden brown. Mix all ingredients and place in a salad bowl. Rub the whites on top.

Decoration: sun and butterfly - boiled carrots, reeds and around the ducklings - black olives, ducklings and flowers - cheese. Calorie content is given without decoration.

8)Simple Olivier:
Canned peas, boiled sausage (can be replaced boiled meat), pickled cucumbers (fresh), onions, mayonnaise or sour cream, a little salt, eggs and potatoes. Cut and mix everything (except the peas), seasoning with mayonnaise. Lay out with hands soaked in water, giving the shape of a mouse.

Make eyes and nose from olives, ears - rolled thin slice boiled sausages, from it - legs and tail, whiskers - dill stalks. Calories per 100 g are about 198 Kcal. To decorate the bunny, you need to rub the squirrel on top. It will turn blue if you stain the protein with red cabbage juice.

9) Cheese salad.
For him, you can take 2 types of cheese: processed and suluguni (you can use any other), a couple of boiled eggs and garlic (if children like it).
The more garlic, the spicier the salad. Grate everything on a fine grater and season with mayonnaise.
There are about 185 Kcal in 100 grams.
Lay out in the form of a hedgehog, wet hands in water. Make the eyes and nose from black olives, and the needles from purchased salted straws.

Can be laid out in the form of a cow, garnished with sausage and cheese.

10) Turtle Tortilla salad.
There are a lot of cooking options for this salad. Any “layered” recipe will do. Here is one of them:
150g. Boiled chicken fillet
1 apple
4 eggs
1 onion
100g. walnuts
100g. cheese
Lettuce leaves for garnish and leeks.
Salt
Mayonnaise
Caloric content 100 g - 196

Peel the eggs by separating the whites from the yolks. Grate the apple on a coarse grater, cover the nuts, but leave a few halves for decoration. Chop the onion with a knife and pour boiling water over for 10 minutes. So bitterness will go out of him. Grate the cheese on a fine grater. Put lettuce leaves on a flat dish and collect layers, which we coat with mayonnaise: grated egg whites, fillets cut into cubes, onion, apple, cheese (leaving a little for decoration), yolks, nuts. We make a mesh of mayonnaise. You can use a syringe. We put leeks cut across the cells, or you can tightly roll a roll of lettuce leaves and cut it also across. Paws - halves of nuts, head and tail - boiled egg... Eyes can be made from black peppercorns, glued with mayonnaise, or cloves can be used.

11) Crab salad.
Many kids love this salad. It consists of crab sticks, corn, boiled eggs, boiled rice(or grated boiled potatoes), sweet apple and mayonnaise. Chop and mix all ingredients (except corn), adding mayonnaise. The calorie content of such a salad will be 184 Kcal per 100 grams.

You can spread it in the form of a bunny or the sun, decorating it, as shown in the pictures.

12)Funny mushrooms.
Composition:
Fresh or pasteurized mushrooms-600-700 gr.
Eggs-4 pieces
Leeks (you can also use regular, onions)
Chicken breast - 1pc.
Mayonnaise
Calories - 158 per 100 g.
Chop the mushrooms, but not too finely, and fry them with onions. Boil the breast and cut into cubes, as well as the eggs. Mix all ingredients, seasoning with sauce. We spread the mixture on a flat dish, soak our hands in water and form a fungus. Decoration: mushroom leg - egg white grated on a fine grater, seasoned with mayonnaise, at the bottom of the leg - chopped dill.

Hat - boiled carrots, which should be grated on a fine grater, also slightly greased with mayonnaise. Ladybug - cherry tomato and a slice of olive, along the edges - leeks. You can make a hat from canned chopped champignons.

13) Smile salads.
Boiled liver any 250g.
Boiled eggs. - 3 pcs.
Carrots 1 pc. large
2 medium bow
Canned sliced ​​champignons 400g.
Cheese 200g.
Mayonnaise.
For decoration: olives, bell pepper, egg white and yolk.
In 100 grams of lettuce (without decoration) - 173 Kcal.

Rub the protein, coat with mayonnaise. Then cheese, liver, onion, egg. Pre-cut the onion and fry. Coat all layers with mayonnaise.

Sponge's sponge pants - chopped olives, then white, grated on a fine grater, yolk, tie - red pepper, eyes made of eggs. And in the sun - grated boiled carrots, parsley stalks and cucumber.

The penguin contains olives, protein, red pepper. In a funny face, the top layer is chopped protein with mayonnaise and red pepper.

14) Fish salad.
Would need:
Potatoes - 3 pcs.
Pickled cucumber - 2 pcs.
Chicken fillet - 200g.
Onions - 2 medium
Cheese hard varieties 100g.
Eggs - 3 pcs.
Carrots 1 pc.
Mayonnaise.
100g - 196 Kcal
Preparation:
Boil eggs, potatoes and fillets. Fry onions. The salad is stacked in layers in the form of a fish: grated potatoes, pickle, cut into small cubes, fillet in small pieces, fried onion, grated cheese, boiled eggs through a grater (leave a couple of yolks for the top) and carrots cut into thin slices. Salad "Goldfish"

You can also decorate with kiwi slices.

15)Chick.
Cut a neatly boiled egg across, but not evenly, but in a zigzag pattern. Mash the yolk and mix with the grated processed cheese and butter. You can add chopped walnuts and a little garlic. Season with mayonnaise, but slightly so that the filling does not blur. Form a ball from the yolk-cheese mass and "plant" it in one half of the protein, and cover with the other. Calories per piece - 130.

16) Salad "My carrot".
Chicken fillet-1pc.,
Fresh champignons -200g,
Mayonnaise-150gr,
Onion -1pc.,
Potatoes-2 pcs.,
Carrots-2 pcs.,
Sunflower oil - 2 tablespoons spoons,
Eggs-2 pcs.,
Dill, salt
Caloric content 100g - 187.
Boil potatoes, carrots, chicken (in salted water) and eggs. Fry the diced onion in sunflower oil... Cut the mushrooms into thin slices and fry as well. Grate boiled potatoes and place on a flat dish. Soak your hands in water and form a carrot out of it. Smooth out, add a little salt and grease with mayonnaise. Then - mushroom layer, which does not need to be greased with mayonnaise (in it vegetable oil, on which mushrooms were fried). Cut and lay the chicken meat, greased with mayonnaise, the next layer is grated eggs. The last layer is carrots grated on a fine grater. Decorate with black peppercorns, or strips of olives, dill. A bunny made from a boiled egg sits next to it. Ears - cheese, mustaches - raw spaghetti, eyes - peppercorns.

17)Pie "Goldfish".
Yeast-free puff pastry - 1 pack.
Filling:
Chicken mince- 250g.
Bulb onion - 1pc.
Mushrooms - 150g.
100 g - 260 Kcal
Fry mushrooms, onions and minced meat. Roll out 2 layers of dough as shown in the picture. Put the filling on 1 layer, cover with the second, give the shape of a fish, pin the edges. From the remaining dough, cut out circles in a stack, make an eye and a tail.

Brush with protein and bake for about 15-18 minutes (temperature 200 degrees).

18)
"Crocodile".
We take yeast-free puff pastry, one pack. We roll it out and cut it with a curly knife, as indicated in the photo recipe. We put any filling. You can make a sweet crocodile by adding cottage cheese or jam, berries or fruits. We carefully fold it.

Rich in vitamins and minerals, proteins, carbohydrates and fiber, porridge is very useful for the child's body. Rice porridge is famous for B vitamins, as a result of which it has a beneficial effect on the formation of the nervous system of a growing organism. Rice porridge is also useful for schoolchildren, as, according to studies by Japanese scientists, it increases the intellectual level. Rice absorbs salt well, so it contributes to good joint function….

Ingredients

• rice__NEWL__
• milk__NEWL__
• butter__NEWL__
• egg__NEWL__
• sugar__NEWL__
• salt__NEWL__
• olives__NEWL__
• tomato__NEWL__
• a piece of wide sausage__NEWL__

Can a child be forced to eat?

Often young mothers ask the question: "How to get a child to eat porridge?" In some cases, it is not tasty enough to cook it. Today we will show you how to decorate a regular rice porridge so that the child eats it to the end and the process of eating it gives him pleasure. And this is very easy to do, you just need to decorate ready meal... Take the time to please the child. We will decorate the rice porridge with the cartoon character from "Smeshariki" Barash.

First, let's cook rice porridge in milk. We take 1 glass of cereals, 2 glasses of milk. Rinse the rice, add milk, bring to a boil, salt and add sugar. Cook porridge for about 15 minutes, add butter at the end of cooking. Put one serving on a plate.

While the porridge is cooking, let's prepare for the dish. Cut out the arms and legs of Barash from a piece of sausage, as well as eyebrows, ears, eyes, nose.

From the top chicken eggs cut out the whites for the eyes, from the olives - the eyes and horns, from the tomato - the mouth.

First, lay out the details made from sausage on the porridge, then we will decorate the horns, mouth and eyes.

Of course, every mother wants to come up with something unusual on the day of the child's birth.

and especially this article:

From experience (I have two children) I know that nothing unusual should be prepared for a children's birthday... Children always eat their usual dishes and are very reluctant to experiment. I advise you to offer little guests the most ordinary treats (mashed potatoes, rice, chicken cutlets or chops, etc.), but you can decorate dishes in some unusual way.

There is another unspoken law - not everything beautiful is tasty... Now, looking at the pictures, you yourself will draw this conclusion. Don't make too many edible decorations. Children will be happy to consider several vegetable and fruit animals on the table, and then they will start tasty food, even if it is not decorated with ladybirds and bees.

To decorate the table, there are gorgeous sets of disposable tableware and room decorations, matched in the same style.

Here's a selection of mine that I hope will be a source of ideas for you:

Sandwiches

There are many examples of fantastically decorated sandwiches on the internet, but ... Let's be realistic... Not all mothers have high skill with a knife, and, as a rule, there is very little time. There would be time to prepare the main dishes, and even before decorating, hands do not always reach. I chose the simplest options, and they also require patience, skill and creative energy.

Here are a few sausage-cheese fantasies with vegetable "zest".

You can make your sandwich bread curly with cookie cutters!

For the lion cub's mane, choose "marble" cheese

These are already 3D sandwiches. A corner is immediately cut out of the bread. The phone buttons can be peas, corn kernels, and olive slices.

Bees deserve special attention. Alternate between rings of green olives and pitted black olives, stringing them on sticks hard cheese

Canapes

Tiny sandwiches and egg and vegetable figurines. How the hand of the craftswoman connected large black olives and mozzarella cheese, as a result, getting very pretty penguins, is a mystery to me. Can you do it?

Lion cubs: Under a bright layer of carrots - grated cheese with mayonnaise and garlic.

Figurines

This, in my opinion, is the most difficult "food art" (literally translating from English "Food art"- decoration of dishes). Some figures remind me 3D constructor(goby from bell pepper and a tomato cat). What can I say ... Add up!

Tomato variations

Cars, crocodile, palm trees and a frog are constructed using toothpicks

These figures are simpler. The crocodile turned out to be charming, agree! This one is enough to decorate a salad. I don’t know how compatible a pear and a cucumber are, but the frog consists of these products. A bouquet of tulip tomatoes stuffed with feta cheese could also decorate an adult holiday. Stems and leaves are from green onions.

I like these little mice in the big ones cheese holes!

Decorating salads and side dishes

A pile of rice offered to guests as a treat can turn into a penguin (plus olives, plus carrots). And myself wet hand processed rice becomes a malleable sculptural material. How do you like a sleeping bear and a kitten (legs made of pieces of cheese, black parts - dry sheets of seaweed for making sushi)?

Two wonderful fish! It is quite simple to shape the salad, but you will need to work on the scales ...

The lady's box in a flower meadow will decorate any mayonnaise salad

Boiled carrot goldfish among seaweed and olive stones

Do not put pickled cucumbers in the Olivier salad, but rather decorate the salad with them on top. I like this magical snake with a crown!

I would give this cat the Audience Award! Cut out the black parts from nori sheets. Paws - dense feta cheese or hard cheese.

Handsome Ginger cat is made with the help of "strokes" from finely chopped olives, gnome - from whites, yolks, cherry and grated beets; mice with cheese ears decorate "Mimosa", and a sunflower blossomed from chips.

There are not so many happy parents on earth whose children themselves happily run to the kitchen, devour semolina for both cheeks and require supplements. Most were much less fortunate, and their beloved crumbs look at all the same semolina porridge with sad eyes and they flatly refuse to eat breakfast. And then thoughts begin to accumulate in my head that the child is starving, malnourished, and in general will soon completely lose weight. So you have to invent the most different ways to get your child interested in food. Our artistic talents are used in the form of drawing all kinds of faces with the help of strawberry jam, literary skills in the form of persuasion "this spoon is for mom, this spoon for dad, etc.", and some are even more cunning, using cutlery in the form of funny toys ... The essence of all these refinements boils down to the fact that as soon as the children are allowed to play with food, an appetite and a desire to spend a little more time at the table appear. Let's take this fact into account, and with the help of decorating children's dishes, we will try to turn the most ordinary meal into an exciting game.

Let's start with the most unloved, i.e. with porridge. An interesting decoration for children's dishes can work wonders, and instead of a small wrinkled nose, you will see genuine interest on the child's face, and the request to cook porridge with the face of a kitten, tiger cub or any other creature that you come up with will sound more and more often. As always, in practice, everything turns out to be not at all difficult, you just have to start. Put the porridge in an oval shape on a plate, add some more porridge and use a spoon or knife to shape the ears. The sausage on the ears and cheeks can be replaced with meat, fish, or vegetables such as bell peppers or carrots. Smooth cheek mugs can be cut with rigid cookie cutters. Eyes can be made from quail egg, slices of cucumber and olives, you can also make a nose from an olive, and a mouth from a cherry tomato or a slice of bell pepper. Do not forget about the benefits of greens, so we make eyebrows and mustaches from dill and green onions. Such a cute face will not leave indifferent any kid, and eating in the company of a cat will become a fun adventure.

This is somehow quite simple, many parents will say now, who have tried, it would seem, everything possible options decorating children's dishes. Indeed, this option, despite the almost magical power of its influence and the ability to awaken the appetite of even the most fastidious kids, is very simple. If you are confident in your abilities and think that you can cope with more intricate decoration then the next option is for you. Not a single child, especially a boy, will refuse to play with a robot, especially without looking up from food. To design such a dinner, you will have to arm yourself with a fantasy or a real toy for your child. The body and base of the robot can be made of bread, crackers and dryers, one ball of mozzarella cheese and two rings of olives will go to the eyes. Also, to create all sorts of light bulbs, buttons and other entertaining gizmos on the body of the robot, you will come in handy green pea, corn, carrot slices, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, bell peppers and cheese. Surely you will be interested in preparing such a dinner, and the child is unlikely to be able to eat it all!

Too hard? And we can not always boast of a whole bunch of free time, so we will leave the robot for an emergency or on a weekend, and during working days we will come up with something less complicated to prepare. For example, many children love yoghurts, but not those without dyes and flavors, which we ourselves would not mind feeding them, but certainly some kind of pink or green, i.e. pseudo-fruity. How to replace unhealthy yogurt with good yogurt? Of course, using the reception of decorating children's dishes. Put the yogurt in a deep bowl, take the bell pepper and one olive. Cut the bottom third off the pepper, remove the seeds, set the top in the middle of the plate with the cut down. Cut the remaining third in half and cut into long strips. Arrange the straws around the pepper on a plate so that it resembles tentacles. Cut the olive into rings and use yogurt to attach the two rings to the pepper. A funny and useful octopus is ready! The same decoration can be used to serve cottage cheese or mashed soups.

Decorating children's dishes is a creative and very exciting process, so as soon as you start to invent something or try to repeat what you saw in these photos, your imagination will slip more and more new ideas. You can start with one of the most simple options- from the image of nature. Use greens as a herb, green beans or asparagus, plant bright mushrooms from cheese and cherry tomatoes or the most common mushrooms in this grass. Decorate the resulting mushroom clearing tree, the trunk can be made from meat or fish, and the crown from slices of cucumber, green bell pepper, parsley and any other greens. Well, what kind of landscape can do without butterflies? And again vegetables will come to the rescue, for example, the body, head and antennae can be made from carrots or bell peppers, and the wings, for example, from spinach leaves. With the help of such simple tricks, you can interest the child in proper nutrition.

Often there is not enough time to decorate children's dishes. But what is there for decoration, it would be nice to have time for the cooking itself! Unfortunately, it is not always possible to even cook something useful, and then after work we run into the store, buy fresh buns and then try to feed the child with them. There is nothing surprising in the fact that the case ends with pinching off a couple of tiny pieces and declaring that you do not want to eat at all. You will spend no more than two or three minutes decorating the bagel, and the child will have dinner with great interest and appetite. Imagine, for example, a wonderful crab can turn out from a bagel! Make the legs from carrots or bell peppers, cut out the claws from the pepper, cut a circle from the radish, cut it in half and attach a Hollywood smile to your bakery crab. Cut two squares out of the remaining radishes, place them on toothpicks and attach to the bagel. Cut two rings off the olive and place them on top of the radish cubes. The crab is ready! Now you and your child just have to come up with his story and eat with gusto.

Let's talk about delicious and healthy food... How many times have you had to refuse your beloved baby to buy another chocolate bar, sweets and other such delicious but harmful joys of life! If the child really wants chocolate, then why not please him a little? No, of course, not a whole chocolate bar. You can combine business with pleasure and at the same time bring to life another option for decorating children's dishes. Think about fondue and adapt it for children. Melt the chocolate in a water bath, you can add a little milk to it. Take fruit, such as kiwi, pear or apple, cut them into slices about one and a half centimeters wide, insert an ice cream stick into each circle and dip them in chocolate. After a few seconds, the chocolate will harden and you will have a very tasty and harmless delicacy, and even on a stick. What else can you dream of?

Now let's remember that it is not always possible to feed the child only useful products For example, no birthday is complete without cakes and pastries. But even here you can refuse preservatives and dyes, as well as standard oil roses as a decoration. Decorating children's dishes, including festive ones, can be not only tasty and beautiful, but also useful. From shortcrust pastry bake two thin curved cakes, this is the body of the future snake. Lubricate the bottom cake strawberry jam and top with thin slices of strawberries. Garnish the top crust with whipped cream or egg white and top with strawberry slices. The head of a snake can be made from whole berries by inserting a forked tongue of greens and making eyes from two peas. Children will be delighted with such a dessert!

When all these and many other ideas have been tested, implemented and eaten with gusto, connect your favorite child to decorate children's dishes. Most likely, he has a lot of ideas, and even if it suddenly turns out not so beautiful and appetizing, you will have a great time, and the child will certainly not remain hungry. There is nothing difficult in decorating children's dishes, it is only important to take into account the compatibility of products, their taste and health benefits, and new ideas and images will come by themselves. And let every breakfast, lunch and dinner for your baby be delicious, beautiful and original!

Alena Karamzina