I don't know about your kids, but my two boys say they are "starving" as soon as they walk through the door from school. Usually they request the most desirable snacks, however they quickly get brought down to earth after making those unrealistic demands. What we have started to do is get the boys involved with making and clearing away their own snacks; from fruits bowl and dip and go veg, to Nutella on toast or mini homemade pizzas, we like to get our hands dirty and our tummies full.

Well this week we have had the chance to mix it up a little, as we have partnered up with Gautier Semences. A family-owned and independent company who have challenged us to come up with our own UK grown piccolo tomato based after-school snacks. For those of you not familiar with Gautier Semences, for more than 60 years, they have been specialised in breeding, producing and retailing high quality vegetable seeds, their seeds are used in UK nurseries so they’re locally grown, so you would have probably tasted produce at some point in your lives.

So the boys and i sat down and took a deep dive on pinterest to look for snackspiration and we came across ladybird snacks. So here is our attempt at creating ladybird afterschool snacks:

Ingredients for making ladybird snacks

• 500g of British Piccolo tomatoes
• 1 pot of black olives
• 1 pack of ritz crackers
• 1 cucumber 
• 1 bunch of chives 
• 1 tub of hummus 
• 1 block of cheddar cheese
• 1 tub of soft cream cheese
• 1 pack of poppy seeds or sesame seeds 

Instructions  

1. Get yourself a sharp knife, chopping board and small teaspoon
2. Remove your British piccolo tomatoes from the vine and wash
3. Cut the tomatoes in half, then cut the halves two-thirds of the way across and pull gently apart
4. Cut the olives in half 
5. Cut two small sticks of chive from the bunch for the antennae
6. Pull out as many crackers as you would like to make
7. Spread your chosen filling on top of the crackers
1. Hummus
2. Cream cheese
3. Squeezey cheese 
8. Once the cracker is top, place to the two-third cut half tomato on to of the cracker and position like wings
9. Add on the half olive in front the tomato to use for a head
10. Gently add in the chive antenna in to the whole in the olive 
11. Either brush the piccolo tomato with olive oil or water to secure the sesame or poppy seed to create the spots of the ladybird

I have put together a short video in the hope that the little ones will find it useful:

We also got a bit creative with the leftovers and went a little bit crazy, as we made these little tomato men, using cream cheese, black olives and British Piccolo Tomatoes and some epic hot air-balloon inspired snacks with cheese, crackers, piccolo tomatoes and cucumber.