Ants on a Log: Get your 1 year old involved

I say, let children be children and if they want to play with their food, let them! It’s all a part of the learning process. In our household ‘we live to eat’, rather than ‘eat to live’ as they say. Food should be fun for all ages, even 1 year olds.

Since this is my first post in kid-friendly recipe section (and currently my daughter is 16 months), I wanted to post about something she can make with me. I do a fair bit of baking (see my baking blog here) and have been working on some vegan dessert recipes for a friend (and have recently thought about becoming vegan – i know, i know… more about this in the future),  so this recipes has a bit of both of what I am into right now. Can you guess what it is?!?

That’s right! Ants on a log! Ants on a log! Ants on a log!

Not the craziest recipe in the world but with some imagination and the help of little hands, good old classic Ants on a log can be new again. Plus they will create memories with you and the little ones for years to come.

So basically, you need 3 basic ingredients. A stick vegetable, a sticky topping, and some little treats to top it all off.

Classic Ants on a Log

Classic Ants on a Log recipe:

INGREDIENTS

• 5 peeled stalks celery
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 1/4 cup raisins

DIRECTIONS

1. Cut the cleaned celery stalks in half. I like to peel my celery stalks or use celery hearts so that they aren’t stringy for the kids to eat. (I saw this trick on Jon&Kate+8 when Chef Emeril cooked for the family! Great advice)
2. Spread the with peanut butter on the curved side of the celery.
3. Top carefully with raisins.

CREATIVE VARIATIONS

• Instead of celery try: any cut vegetable slices such as carrot sticks, red peppers, blanched green beans, sliced brown toast or bagels.
• Instead of peanut butter: try cream cheese, cheese whiz, honey or even cottage cheese.
• Instead of raisins: try dried cranberries (or any small dried fruit), mini chocolate chips, granola or their favorite cereal, mini-marshmellows or sunflower seeds.

GET KIDS INVOLVED

Put out different containers of the toppings and let them decorate their own logs for a snack. Create variations and teach them that food is fun!

• All babies and children develop motor and learning skills at different paces. Always watch what you feed your baby/child in case of allergies & choking hazards. When in doubt, it’s best to wait.

• The first recorded mention of celery in France was in 1623.
• It takes just one ounce of celery seeds to produce an acre of celery.
• One stalk of celery contains only about 10 calories.
• It takes four pounds of fresh grapes to yield one pound of raisins.
• It takes about 550 peanuts to make a 12 ounce jar of creamy peanut butter.
• Peanuts are technically legumes (like beans), not nuts.
• There are over 10000 known species of ants exist in the world.
• An ant is able to lift about 20 times its own body weight.
• Ants appear in shades of green, red, brown, yellow, blue or purple.

Tagged as: ants, ants on a log, celery, cheese whiz, food, kid friendly food, peanut butter, raisins, vegan