Child friendly recipes can be fun to create. Fruits and vegetables can be used in recipes for kids. These ingredients can provide a fun element to children’s meals. Finding child recipes that children can create for themselves gives them a feeling of accomplishment. Let the children select the fruits and veggies that you utilize for the child recipes listed below.

Getting kids to eat fruit can be easy when we make it adventurous and entertaining. Since fruit should be a constant in every family’s menu, let the kids choose which fruits they need to create a cool and exciting fruit pizza masterpiece.

You may be surprised by the fruits they pick at the farmer’s market.
Let the children choose which fruits and veggies they would like for their at
home project.

Select interesting or colorful fruits at the store or farmers’ market,
then turn the little ones loose making imaginative faces on this tasty fruit pizza.
Odds are, they’ll snack as they go–and love what they taste.

Select fruits in a variety of hues and sizes. Let the children decorate the pizza with fun faces or create other shapes on this colorful and fun pizza.

Ingredients.

*Ready to bake piecrust

Filling
*1/2 cup fat free or low fat cream cheese
*1tablespoon sugar
*1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
*1/4 teaspoon lemon juice
*1 tablespoon 1% milk

Toppings
Select strawberries for the nose, kiwi fruit or seedless grapes for the eyes, a banana for the mouth. The choices for making shapes are only limited by their imaginations. The kids can opt for pineapples, mandarin oranges or any fruit they like.

Instructions:
1. Let the piecrust come to room temperature per the package instructions

2. Unfold it onto a large cookie sheet or pizza pan.

3. Roll up edges of the crust, crimping them slightly so that they’ll stay rolled up.
4. Prick the crust lightly with a fork in about 20 places(allowing air to escape).

5. Bake the crust in a preheated 450 degree oven for about 9 minutes or
until it’s lightly browned.

6. Remove from the crust from the oven

To Prepare the Filling:

1. Whisk together cream cheese ,sugar, and vanilla extract, lemon juice
2. Add just enough milk to the mix to make it spreadable onto the crust.

*Allow the crust to cool.
*Smooth the cream-cheese mixture with a rubber spatula,
*Smooth to the edge of the crust

Now its time for the children to get involved.

*Let the children to arrange the fruit onto the cream cheese mixture.
Don’t worry if it is not perfect. It is perfectly nutritious and fun.
Children may opt to add sprinkles. Let their imaginations go wild.

Home-made soups are so good for you - all that nourishing stock and chock-a-block full of vitamins and minerals.

But … who on earth could face boiling bones for hours on end during the scorching Spanish summer weather, not to mention preparing the soup once the stock is made? I don´t think it would tickle anybody´s fancy to then have to tuck into a piping-hot soup!

For this reason, the Spanish came up with their wonderful, ice-cold soup - gazpacho - beautifully colorful, packed with goodness, cheap and simple to prepare, no cooking and … most important of all, an absolute delight to drink.

Traditional gazpacho originates from romantic Andalucia - that large, exotic southerly region of Spain which is home to such extensive Arabic influence.

The chilled, raw soup was originally made by pounding bread and garlic with tomatoes, cucumber and peppers but, nowadays, your electric blender renders this effortless! Olive oil endows it with a smooth, creamy consistency and vinegar adds a refreshing tang - just what you need when life gets too hot to handle!

The spicy soup should be served in true Spanish style with small bowls of accompaniments - finely chopped peppers, cucumber, onion … even hard-boiled eggs and croutons, if you feel up to it! Guests will then sprinkle what appeals to them on the soup.

Traditional gazpacho is tomato-based, with most Spanish families having developed their own, unique recipes. However, nowadays, you will also find gazpacho recipes that have nothing to do with tomatoes - white, almond-based gazpachos, fruit-based gazpachos, etc.

Do you suffer from insomnia? Could be that drinking gazpacho is the answer, for in Pedro Almodovar´s 1987 film “Mujeres Al Borde De Un Ataque De Nervios”, various characters help themselves to the soup and promptly fall asleep!

However, don´t fall asleep just yet as you haven´t read over the recipe!

Ingredients for 4 servings:

- 4 ripe tomatoes
- 1 onion
- ½ red pepper
- ½ green pepper
- ½ cucumber
- 3 cloves garlic
- 50 g bread
- 3 dessertspoons vinegar
- 8 dessertspoons olive oil
- Water
- Salt/pepper
- ¼ chilli pepper (optional)

Garnishings:

- 2 hard-boiled eggs
- ½ finely chopped onion
- ½ finely chopped red pepper
- ½ finely chopped green pepper
- ½ finely chopped cucumber

Method:

1. Break up bread and soak in water for 30 minutes.

2. Skin tomatoes, remove seeds and stalks from peppers.

3. Peel cucumber, onion and garlic.

4. Chop onion, garlic, tomatoes, peppers and cucumber.

5. Place in electric blender.

6. Squeeze out excess water from bread and add to blender.

7. Add oil and vinegar.

8. Blend well.

9. If necessary, add sufficient water for soup-like consistency.

10. Pour into a bowl with ice cubes.

11. Fridge for a couple of hours.

12. Serve in bowls, with garnishings in separate dishes.

“We commend the culinary commitment of the staff of Jurgielewicz for the excellence and innovation of their product lines. We applaud them,” commented Jesse Sartain.

The protocols of “triple blind” judging include the following ground rules to ensure accurate and fair judging results.  Evaluators do not know:
Who the manufacturer is.
What the product variety or appellation is.
What the other evaluator’s scores and comments are.

The judging was a part of the ongoing U.S.A. Taste Championships founded in 1989 with the establishment of the Chefs In America Awards Foundation, whose professional Board Members gather weekly to conduct taste tests on a myriad of foodservice and retail grocery products.

For a natural and tasty way to improve your health and boost your healing capacity, add fresh pineapple and pineapple juice to your diet. Pineapples are nutritionally packed members of the bromeliad family. This delightful tropical fruit is high in the enzyme bromelain and the antioxidant vitamin C, both of which plays a major role in the body’s healing process.

Bromelain, a natural anti-inflammatory with analgesic properties, encourages healing, promotes well-being and has many other health benefits. Bromelain is very effective in treating bruises, sprains and strains by reducing swelling, tenderness and pain. This powerful anti-inflammatory and analgesic effect can also help relieve osteo- and rheumatoid arthritis symptoms and reduce postoperative swelling. Additionally, bromelain can relieve indigestion. The enzyme contained in fresh pineapple helps break down the amino acid bonds in proteins, which promotes good digestion.

Pineapples also provide an ample supply of vitamin C, a commonly known antioxidant that protects the body from free radical damage and boosts the immune system. Vitamin C helps build and repair bodily tissue and promotes wound healing. The body uses vitamin C to help metabolize fats and cholesterol, absorb iron, and synthesize amino acids and collagen. Collagen is one of the primary building blocks of skin, cartilage and bones. Vitamin C also decreases the severity of colds and infections.

Furthermore, due to its high vitamin C content, pineapples are good for your oral health as well. Recent studies have found that vitamin C can reduce your risk of gingivitis and periodontal disease. Besides increasing the ability of connective tissue to repair itself, vitamin C also increases the body’s ability to fight invading bacteria and other toxins that contribute to gum disease. Periodontal disease, which destroys gum tissue and underlying jaw bones, has been linked to heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes.

So if you are searching for a natural way to enhance your body’s healing mechanisms, promote overall good health and tantalize your taste buds, pineapples are the way to go. Choose the fresh fruit because it has the most healing properties. Unfortunately, most of the bromelain in canned pineapple is destroyed due to the heat used in the canning process.

When choosing a fresh pineapple, do not judge ripeness solely based upon color. There are several varieties on the market that range from green to golden yellow. The most important factor in determining ripeness is smell, let your nose help you decide. Ripe pineapples give off a sweet, fresh tropical smell. Avoid pineapples that give off an unpleasant odor or have any soft spots or areas of dark discoloration. Once home, let the pineapple sit on your counter at room temperature until ready to use. This will preserve its sweet and tangy flavor.

To prepare pineapple, you need to peel it, remove the eyes (the thorny protrusions within the puffy squares of the skin) and the fibrous center. One way to do this is to remove the top of the pineapple with a sharp knife. Then cut the pineapple lengthwise into 4 wedges (quarter it) and place each pineapple wedge horizontally on a cutting board. Carefully cut the fruit from the outer skin, and cut out the eyes and fibrous center core.

Another way is to cut off the top and bottom of the pineapple, place the pineapple vertically (upright) on a cutting board and carefully slice off the outer skin. With a sharp paring knife or the end if a vegetable peeler, remove the eyes. Don’t cut too deep, just enough to lift out the section that contains the eye. Then, slice the pineapple crosswise and remove the fibrous core individually with a cookie cutter.

Organic Valley was selected as a superior product in the “Organic Pork” category for both foodservice and retail.  Superior Gold winning products included their “Organic Pork”.  The judging was conducted “triple blind” in Napa, California by a panel of Masters of Taste. The Chef du Jury was famed Mâitre du Goût (Master of Taste), Jesse Sartain.

“We commend the culinary commitment of the staff of Organic Valley for the excellence and innovation of their product lines. We applaud them,” commented Jesse Sartain.

The protocols of “triple blind” judging include the following ground rules to ensure accurate and fair judging results.  Evaluators do not know:
Who the manufacturer is.
What the product variety or appellation is.
What the other evaluator’s scores and comments are.

The judging was a part of the ongoing U.S.A. Taste Championships founded in 1989 with the establishment of the Chefs In America Awards Foundation, whose professional Board Members gather weekly to conduct taste tests on a myriad of foodservice and retail grocery products.

Every now and then cooks run out of time and suddenly find themselves under pressure, with a meal looming and a hungry family impatient for their baked chicken dinner.

Stay cool. It does not have to take 60 minutes or more to roast a chicken, it just takes a little cunning and a fairly relaxed half an hour.

Well, alright, it will take 35 minutes, but it will still be roasted and will still be the entire chicken.

There are two methods you can use, one of which involves practically no work on your part at all. So let’s start with that one.

You need a 1.5kg (that’s about 3lbs) chicken or smaller. Mix together a little olive oil, some dark soy sauce, a teaspoon of paprika, a tablespoon of mixed dried herbs and two crushed cloves of garlic.

Paint this mix all over the chicken, then put it into a roasting bag and seal it by twisting the end of the bag and folding it under the chicken.

Punch a couple of holes in the bag and microwave on High for 30 minutes. At the end of the cooking time, leave the chicken in the microwave, without opening the door, for a further 5 minutes.

Be careful when you open the bag, just in case there is still some steam waiting to escape. It can burn you.

If you don’t like that idea, or you don’t have a microwave, then you can use a conventional oven preheated to 180C, 350F, but now you will have to joint your chicken.

Don’t worry, it’s easy. You simply cut it into quarters using either a sharp cook’s knife or kitchen shears. Start at the tail end with the chicken on its back and cut down through the parson’s nose. Now stand the chook on its neck with the backbone towards you and cut straight down, using the notch in the parson’s nose as your starting point.

Flatten out the bird, skin-side down, and cut from neck to tail, through the center of the gelatinous membrane that forms the breast-bone.

Finally, cut across the halves between the thigh and breast to make your quarters. You will easily see where to do this. It’s a natural cutting point.

Place the pieces skin-side up in a roasting tin large enough to hold them without overlapping, brush them with the mixture given above, and bake for 30 minutes, basting once.

For the last five minutes turn the oven heat to full, which will help to give a crisper finish. You can miss out this step if you intend to discard the skin.

As always with roasted meat, once the cooking time is over keep the chicken warm but let it stand for five minutes before carving. This lets it relax and allows the juices to spread evenly throughout the joint.

Some interesting history about chocolate and strawberries: The ancient Mayans and Aztecs considered chocolate an aphrodisiac. Strawberries have been considered an aphrodisiac since ancient Rome. But the history of these two delectable treats hardly matters. All you need to know is that the combination is sure to please your lover on Valentine’s Day.

Chocolate Strawberry Cake Squares

The decadent chocolate fudge combined with the sweet flavor of strawberries in this recipe will have your lover wanting more. And the best part is that it’s quick and simple to make. It serves two so it is a perfect treat for Valentine’s Day.

2 slices pound cake
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons hot fudge sauce
2 tablespoons Amaretto
8 strawberries, sliced

2 tablespoons hot fudge sauce, melted
toasted slivered almonds
vanilla ice cream

In a microwave-safe bowl, combine the 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons hot fudge sauce and Amaretto. Microwave on high for 30 seconds. Put half of the sauce on one dessert plate and half on another. Put the cake slices in the fudge sauce. Put the strawberries in even layers on top of the cake. Microwave each cake square on high for 30 seconds. Top with the 2 tablespoons hot fudge sauce, slivered almonds and ice cream.

Chocolate Strawberry Ice Cream Dessert

A delightful treat for your valentine with Oreos, chocolate and strawberries. A perfect chilled dessert to help steam up your romance.

50 Oreo’s, crushed
4 tablespoons butter, softened
1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, softened
1 cup chocolate syrup
1 package (8 ounces) whipped topping, thawed
1/2 gallon strawberry ice cream, thawed slightly
1 pint strawberries, sliced
chocolate syrup

In a small bowl, mix the crushed Oreo’s and butter. Put 1/3 of this mixture into a 9 x 13-inch pan. Beat the cream cheese with an electric mixer until smooth. Add the chocolate syrup gradually to the cream cheese. Fold the whipped topping into the chocolate mixture. Put the chocolate mixture on top of the crumbs and then add another 1/3 of the crumb mixture over this layer. Slice the strawberry ice cream into 1 inch thick slices and put over the chocolate layer. Top this layer with the remaining crumbs. Freeze at least overnight. Allow the dessert to sit out for about 15 minutes before cutting it into bars. Put the sliced strawberries on top of a bar and drizzle with chocolate syrup.