Betty Vasquez: Spooky Halloween Sandwiches

Maybe it’s because of my past life as an elementary teacher, but I love celebrating holidays.

I’ll take any opportunity to be festive.

For Halloween, I have a fun little food activity that will work for little and big kids. You can make this something that you do together on a weekend, or surprise them by packing this spooky sandwich in their lunch.

Here’s what you’ll need:

sandwich bread
turkey or cream cheese
peppers
multi-colored carrots
cucumber
olives
colored chips

Step One:

Spread some cream cheese or your favorite lunch meat on the bread. This actually more of an open faced sandwich, so don’t put too much on so the bread won’t crumble.

Step Two:

Cut up your vegetables. Peppers work great because they are curved at the top. This works well for smiles and frowns, as well as eye brows. I love to use multi-colored peppers.

You can also add cucumbers in thin slices or matchsticks. Multi-colored heirloom carrots can be purchased at health food stores. The purple carrots are especially scary because of the yellow center.

Step Three:

Open your other ingredients, like olives and chips. I like to use the colored chips (it’s easy to find blue corn chips, but if you look hard, you can find red and green chips too).

Step Four:

Lay out your cut vegetables and other ingredients. If your kids are helping you, let them play around with shapes and colors to create spooky faces on the bread. If you are assembling the sandwiches for a school lunch, make sure to use enough cream cheese that your items will stick to the bread.

You could also make this a family activity. Dads are great at coming up with creative uses for the different vegetables. As you use various vegetables or ingredients, try places them different ways.

The kids will get a kick out of all the silly faces you can make. And eating more vegetables is always a plus!