At VSA arts of Nevada, we are always thinking of unique ways to incorporate art into our everyday lives. This month it is nutrition and art. This may be just the way to inspire your children to eat more salad. They will have the chance to create their ULTIMATE salad! Children will think about their favorite salad combinations and maybe develop some different ones to taste themselves.

Salads can consist of many vegetables, fruits, and nuts. Just about every food group can be used in a salad. Chefs consider not only the taste but the look of the salad, making sure that it is colorful. Attention is paid to the arrangement of the ingredients to be appealing to the eye as well as the tummy!

YOU WILL NEED:

A variety of papers

Tissue paper – especially green for the lettuce!

Old magazines

Wallpaper scraps

Construction paper or stock

Scissors

White school glue

Crayons or markers

Paper plate

White paper for the recipe

Real fruits and vegetables to examine

Pictures of fruits and vegetables

PROCEDURE:

1. After discussing possible salad ingredients, have your child write a recipe on the piece of white paper. They can design it to look like an over-sized index card or draw a fancy border around it.

2. Your child can name their salad to reflect the ingredients or design their recipe for someone else and name it in honor of that person. Encourage your child to think of a creative name. We named our salad "Jack’s Jivin’ Jumble" with a combination of red onions, mushrooms, radishes, swiss cheese, raisins, carrots, hard boiled eggs, sunflower seeds and watermelon. Children will have fun making up some interesting and unusual combos that can include types of pastas, meats and more. Bow-tie or rotini pasta shapes can be added. Have fun cutting the corkscrew and bow shapes out of paper.

3. Make your salad. If you have fruits and veggies available, let your child examine the items for inspiration to create ingenious ways of re-constructing the foods’ colors, textures and shapes. Pictures of different fruits and vegetables will also help. Encourage and explain over-lapping and layering in the creation of the salads to make them look appetizing and beautiful.

We wadded up black tissue for the raisins and did the same with torn pieces of green tissue, re-opening the green to use for lettuce leaves.

4. Once they have all of the ingredients made, they will arrange them on the paper plate, remembering to layer and overlap.

5. To add to the project, make paper silverware to go along with their paper salad or allow children to make side dishes to go along with their salads. These can include bread, cheese, cold-cuts, or maybe a chicken leg.

6. Take your child’s recipe to a local farmer’s market or grocery store and start filling your basket with all these healthy and beautiful ingredients so that you can make the "real deal" later. Who new just how fun and creative healthy eating could be? Compare the real salad to the art salad and see which one looks more appetizing!

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