Hello, “taste trays!” Taste trays are a stellar opportunity for introducing new/familiar foods to kids – and exposing our littles to food is one of the most important things we all do!
A taste tray typically has over three varieties of a food in different states. For example, if you had an apple taste tray it might include raw apples, applesauce, and dried apples. If you had a coconut taste tray it might have coconut chips, fresh coconut, shaved coconut, and coconut milk. Alternatively, a taste tray could be 3+ variations of a type of food, such as 3 varieties of fruit, 3 varieties of veggies, etc.
On this particular day we had a “green food” taste tray with green five foods: mint, an apple, a bell pepper, a cucumber, and broccoli. Now, it’s first important to remember that often kids will try more foods while at school in front of their friends than they will at home. A child who might refuse to taste raw broccoli at home might be more inclined to taste it at school if they see their peers doing so (this is called “positive peer pressure”). So, what do you think happened? The kids gobbled everything up that you see and asked for more.
The mint was my favorite part. We activated all senses with mint (smelling, touching, looking, tasting) and after eating a few leaves right off of the stems we added the mint and cucumbers to the kids’ water bottles (we called it “spa water’“ ha!) and the kids thought it was SO fancy!
Eat all the things with the kids, friends!
