“Mom, I have nothing to do!” They couldn’t wait for school to be out so they would have all summer to do those fun things that school deprived them of doing, and now they have actually run out of things to do!

Well Mom, be prepared. Do some creative grocery shopping for some special items and let them play with their food. Yes, you read it right. Let them create salad masterpieces that they can then eat or present to a special friend or family member for an “I made it myself” treat.

I have some ideas and descriptions for you to get their imaginations going. You’d be surprised what they can come with on their own, too. In fact, let them do the shopping (under supervision, of course) for what they think they’ll need for their own unique artwork. You might get them started by encouraging them to use stuff you already have on hand, and as one thing leads to another, they can ask you for suggestions as they make up a shopping list for future salads.

Then prepare all the ingredients, lay out everything on a clean work surface, supply a plate or bowl as a “canvas,” have them scrub their hands, and let them go to it.

Hopefully with a little luck and occasional words of praise and encouragement from you, they will come up with some salads worthy to be photographed and e-mailed to their friends and then stored in the computer for future ideas.

And just maybe, they will be happily occupied with this activity for a good chunk of a day. What a great way, too, to get your offspring to make a nourishing lunch themselves!

One more thing- get them to help you with clean up. After all, isn’t that part of the fun?

Here’s how to get started. First, you need a background for your salad “painting.” For instance, a bed of lettuce or cheese slices makes a good base. You can also use bean sprouts, coleslaw or cottage cheese.

Kids love to make faces out of lunchmeat. Remember chewing holes in a bologna slice to make eyes? We kids then would poke our fingers through the holes to make tentacle monster eyes. Of course, we got scolded for playing with our food. So let’s make faces! Provide slices of lunchmeat, peach or pear halves or halved hard boiled eggs.

Lay in a supply of olive slices, or raisins for eyes, cherries or whole olives for noses, cottage cheese, sprouts, carrot curls or shredded coconut for convincing looking hair, bushy eyebrows or beards. Pimento bits can add fun details.

On hand you may also want cherry tomatoes, radishes, broccoli, celery stalks, carrot sticks and whole carrots, green onion tops, asparagus spears, cheese strips, cucumber slices, pineapple rings and parsley.

A thick mayonnaise makes an excellent “glue” for fastening small bits to the picture.

After I present my suggestions for food pictures, you’ll see how those various foods become a new art form.

Too, you’ll be delighted with your child’s is willingness to taste a new food when he or she has used it so creatively in a salad plate.

So here goes!

Elephant Face Meat and Veggie Salad

For each salad you will need:

Face: 1 round slice, 3-4 inches in diameter, of bologna, salami or ham or Provolone cheese

Ears: 1 cucumber slice, halved; one half for each ear

Trunk: 1 stalk celery, wide end toward top of face

Eyes: olive slices

Tusks: asparagus spears

Feet: carrot sections

Eyebrows: pimento strips

Top Knot: carrot curls or shredded cheese

To assemble salad, center slice of meat or cheese on a bed of lettuce. Put one cucumber slice on each side. Lay the trunk vertically with the wide end of the celery almost at the top of the face. Put one asparagus tusk on each side of the trunk.

Arrange olive slice eyes, pimento strip eyebrows, and on the underside of the slice, put in 2 carrot feet. Put a few carrot curls right at the top of the head for a top knot.

Hard Boiled

Chick in a Nest

Body: 1/2 hard boiled egg (cut in half from top to bottom)

Nest: cottage cheese, cherry tomatoes

Eye: olive slice

Beak: Carrot tip

Feet: Strips of sliced yellow cheese

Wing: Yellow cheese to cut into wing shape

To assemble salad, line plate with lettuce leaves. Mound about 1/3 cup of cottage cheese in the center. Make a hollow in the center of the cottage cheese; position the egg half with pointed end at the top.

Press the carrot tip beak into egg. Position the olive slice eye toward the top of the head behind the beak. Glue on with a bit of mayonnaise.

Cut a triangle from the cheese slice to make a wing; “glue” on with mayonnaise. Make legs and feet from cheese strips.

To outline the nest, surround cottage cheese with halved cherry or grape tomatoes.

Hard Boiled Egg and Asparagus Donkey

Body and Head: 1 hard boiled egg (cut in half from top to bottom)

Neck: 1/2 inch diameter section cut from a regular carrot

Legs: 4 whole baby carrots

Hooves: 4 whole black olives

Mane and Tail: about 12 very thin asparagus spears

Ear: olive half

Eye: olive slice

Assemble salad on a bed of lettuce, position the half egg for head; the wide end of the egg is the nose. With mayonnaise, “glue” on the olive slice for the eye and olive half for the ear.

Arrange neck on the underside of the head.

Position other egg half for the body, the narrow end facing forward. Press the tips of the baby carrots into the underside of the egg to make legs. Stick the free end of each carrot into an olive for the hoof.

Lay asparagus spears, pointed end facing outward, along the top of the head and the neck and to make a mane; and on the end of the body for a tail.

Fruit Salad

Clown Face

Face: canned peach half

Hat: canned pear half

Smile: curved piece of canned pineapple slice

Eyes: raisins

Nose: cherry

Eyebrows: shredded coconut

Hair: shredded coconut

Ruffled collar: cottage cheese

Pompons: cherries

Assemble salad on a bed of lettuce center the peach half. Using mayonnaise, “glue” on coconut eyebrows, raisin eyes and a cherry nose. Position the piece of pineapple slice for the mouth.

Lay the pointed end of pear half above the face to make a peaked clown hat. Cut the wide part of the pear half to fit the contour of the peach half. Top with a cherry.

Make frizzy, bushy tufts of hair on either side of the face using shredded coconut.

Spoon cottage cheese below the face to make a collar. Use cherries to add pompons.

Free Form House and Garden

This is my favorite, not that I ever play with my food!

Grass: coarsely chopped fresh parsley

House: cheese slices

Trees: broccoli and cauliflower spears; asparagus spears

Shrubs: broccoli and cauliflower flowerets

Flowers: grape tomatoes or radishes

Clouds: cottage cheese

Sun: 1 whole or half (for setting sun) orange slice

Line a plate with greens. Use a cheese slice for the house and a diagonally halved cheese slice for the peaked roof. Sprinkle chopped parsley for the grass. Place the orange slice sun in the sky; make small clouds with cottage cheese.

Position the broccoli, cauliflower, and asparagus spears for trees, and the stem less broccoli and cauliflower flowerets for shrubs. Cut grape tomatoes or radishes into flower shapes.

Have fun little kiddies of ALL ages!