Andrew Walker
Serves: 4
Prep time: 2 mins
Cook time: 20 mins
Ingredients:
8 medium to large tomatoes
8 small to medium eggs (ideally free range)
Optional extras for decorating like:
Breadsticks, lettuce, pesto or fresh chopped herbs, raw or cooked veggies grated or cut into various shapes
Veg Portions / Serving: 1
Originally appeared in the Eat Them To Defeat Them 2020 Activity Book | Photography by Claire Wright | addsomeveg.com
Look out tomatoes, we’ve got our eyes on you… for dinner! So easy it’s barely a recipe, these googly-eyed tomatoes are as fun to make as they are to eat and come together in minutes for breakfast, lunch or dinner.
Method:
Slice the tops off the tomatoes carefully. Scoop out the seeds and flesh on the inside, so you just have a thick-walled tomato ‘bowl’. Then place them on a lined baking tray.
Crack the eggs into the tomatoes (if you are nervous about it, crack them one at a time into a cup first, and then slide each one into the tomatoes).
Bake in an oven preheated to 190C/gas 5 for about 20-25 minutes, or until the tomatoes are cooked but still holding their shape.
Plop two googly-eyed tomatoes onto a plate for each person. Then let them decorate the plate to make their own funny food face!
Splodge your spoon or fork in and tuck into the best googly-eyed tomatoes the world has ever seen!
Power Up: Don’t waste the inside of the tomatoes – this is tomato spawn and the best thing to do is slurp it raw!
Watch It: See the video on how to make this recipe here.
Download it: Make sure you download the recipe card, along with the rest of the vegetable files and activities here.
Engaging Kids
Kids who engage regularly with veg through veg-themed activities, such as arts and crafts, sensory experiences, growing and cooking are shown to be more likely to eat the veg they engage with. Encouraging kids to engage and play with veg is the handy first step to them developing a good relationship with veg and life-long healthy eating.
Kids in the kitchen
Activities
While getting kids to interact with veggies for real and using their senses to explore them is best, encouraging hands off activities like arts & crafts, puzzles & games or at-home science experiments can be a great start, particularly for those who are fussier eaters or struggle with anything too sensory. Use these veg-themed activities as a stepping stone to interacting with the veg themselves. We have loads of crafty downloads here, puzzles here, and quirky science with veg here.
Sensory
Once you feel your child is ready to engage a little more, you can show them how to explore the veg you have on hand with their senses, coming up with playful silly descriptions of how a veg smells, feels, looks, sounds and perhaps even tastes. Find ideas, videos and some simple sensory education session ideas to get you started here.
Serving
The moments before food is offered can be a perfect opportunity for engagement that can help make it more likely a child will eat it! Giving children a sense of ownership in the meal can make a big difference to their feelings going into it and the pride they take in it. You know your child best, but if you aren’t sure where to start, we have some fun and simple ideas for easy roles you can give them in the serving process over here.
Andrew Walker
www.youtube.com/channel/UCyu3g1IGSmMJAqGQGOJr7MA
Similar recipes
