Kidding Around
Chances are, little ones won’t relish the smoked-salmon-and-olive sandwiches you and your partner plan to enjoy on your family picnic. So round out your basket with a few easy, fun options for the most discriminating picnicker of all—your child.
Bring turkey, cheese and gourmet crackers and let kids make their own mini sandwiches. Serve with ready-to-eat packages of baby carrot sticks and sugar snap peas alongside a cooled container of organic ranch dressing for dipping.
Spread celery sticks or sesame breadsticks with peanut butter or soft cheese and top with raisins, banana chips, dried cranberries or dried pineapple, mango or apricot slices.
For added fun with a PB&J, remove the crusts from a slice of whole-grain bread; spread with crunchy peanut butter and fruit preserves, and roll up jellyroll style into a cool tube shape. Secure with a ribbon of organic fruit leather.
Take along small tubs of unusual sandwich toppings: fresh banana slices, granola, cut-up red pepper, kiwi slices, carrot matchsticks and fresh or dried apples. Encourage your child to pick one or two to sandwich between bread with peanut butter or cheese. Which combinations become a new favorite?
Enjoy sandwiches on a stick: Using blunt wooden skewers, thread small chunks of bread; cheese cubes; melon balls; miniature rolls of deli meat; cut-up plums, nectarines and peaches; and berries of all colors.
—Elisa Bosley
