Stoplight Veggie Snacks

My youngest son attends a special needs preschool associated with our local school district. There are 12 kids in his class and every child is responsible for bringing in a snack for the class every few weeks. In an effort to help the children branch out and try new foods each school day has a food type assigned. The last time my son was on the snack schedule his day was "veggies". Which, naturally, brought lots of sighs from both my boys. When I asked for veggie snack suggestions neither boy could come up with a single food item they would be willing to eat. What is a busy mama to do? That's right, I turned to Pinterest.

And I found this:

Awesome stop light veggie snacks! The look in my sons' eyes told me everything I needed to know- this snack might just be a hit!

I changed up the recipe slightly- I don't know about other kids, but my boys have a slight salt addiction. This may, or may not, be my fault. I know that they really like savory foods, so I replaced the plain cream cheese with vegetable cream cheese. This was just enough of a change up to really get my boys excited.

I used a 1/2 teaspoon measuring spoon to cut the peppers, rounding them off with a sharp knife. Each boy was given a child's knife and reminded about a thousand times NOT to lick the cream cheese off their fingers. The boys spread the cheese on the celery while I cut the peppers and then all three of us worked on assembling the snacks.

This was a super fun activity with my kids and each one of them ate a bunch of these stoplights- it just may have been the first time I have seen my oldest son eat a vegetable willingly!

Word on the street is that this traffic inspired snack was also a big hit with the preschool set as well- a total win-win!



Stoplight Veggie Snacks

celery
cream cheese- plain or veggie flavored
red, green and yellow peppers (one pepper each color made approximately 12 stoplights)

cut celery into 2-3 inch pieces. spread celery with cream cheese- add enough so that the cream cheese comes to the top of the celery and use your knife you level it off so that the surface of the cream cheese is smooth. cut each pepper into small circles. (I used a 1/2 teaspoon measuring spoon, pressing the spoon into the flesh of the pepper. I then used a sharp knife to cut around the circle so that it actually looked like a circle.)
place one red, green, and yellow pepper circle onto each celery stalk. easy peasy!

I placed two stoplights each into a snack sized plastic bag and made one bag per preschooler. We had plenty of leftovers, which I stored in the fridge in an air tight container. Everyone in the family loved them and they were gone in no time!