How We Eat Clean + Kids Birthday Parties

Happy #minionmonday ?. Today I wanted to share how we navigate our kiddos’ birthday parties with our Paleo family lifestyle. We have THREE April birthdays, so this is birthday season for us! We used to always have a meal at our parties – Little Caesar’s pizzas #cheappartyfood, chips, soda, and cake. Pretty par for the course in kid party food.
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But…how does that translate when you eat clean as a family? We have done several variations. For our Halloween party, we still served a meal, but did it #paleo. This meant making mini corndogs and funnel cakes from @predominatelypaleo Paleo Kids Cookbook as well as fruit, homemade paleo chocolate chocolate chip muffins, and paleo compliant chips + corn tortilla chips (we are ok with some corn for our kids). It was successful and all the kids enjoyed it…but it was a lot of work and not the cheapest to make for 12-15 kids.
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Since then, we have just stuck to party snacks and birthday cake, as there is no written party RULE that you must serve a meal at a party, especially a kids one. The snacks are usually fruit (my kids love forming into the kabobs!), often with the fruit dip from the Paleo Kids Cookbook, chips, @izzeofficial, and cake. If you haven’t heard of Izze, it’s been a huge help in celebrating with my kiddos while #cleaneating! It’s basically sparkling juice – just juice + sparkling water (*disclaimer – the Izze fusions are NOT as clean and we don’t use those), and even #whole30compliant (but if you are using these sweet drinks as a sugar fix, I wouldn’t recommend them for your #whole30 ?). We have Izze at parties and on trips, not on the daily.
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Let’s talk the cake – it’s @simplemills cake mix with @simplemills frosting. Just as easy to buy and make as regular cake mixes and canned frosting, with SUCH better ingredients. We love the chocolate @simplemills cake mix, but don’t recommend the vanilla. This is a case where we let good enough be good enough. Yes, there is some sugar in the frosting. But I can pronounce all the ingredients, there are less than 10 of them, and it is #glutenfree and #dairyfree. This has been a happy middle ground for us on special occasions.
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Special occasions can be rescripted!