I know this sounds nutty, or maybe not. we just got my son a toy kitchen from a thrift store and now are on the search for a bunch of toy food...:chef: so far he is the naked chef and is "cooking" real potatoes, water, and magnetic letters. but as i began thinking about it i thought i don't want him to have toy meat. we don't even eat meat. it's too bad there's not some toy vegetarian food. y'know, tofu, tabouli, falafel, i dunno what else,

anyhow, see the poll and discuss. alas, i didn't do the poll...maybe later.

my son has a toy microwave and we have tons of play fruits and veggies and bread for him...(we got his microwave at a thrift store, too)...i got the play food at a teacher-supply store where they had some packs with just fruits and veggies...no, i didn't like the idea of play meat either...

Do you eat meat analogs ever?
Why not say it's a veggie burger/sausage/hot dog?
You might be able to pretend the fake tacos are falafel, they sort of look like brown blobs in folded bread. :)
Mary

How about some of the Montessori style wooden veggies and stuff that have velcro and you can pretend to cut??

Check out this website (I googled).. they have a neat assortment of wooden foods, and some of them don't have meat. The fruit and veggie bowls are cool, so are some of the things in tins. (The wooden sushi on page 4 is hysterical, albiet fish-full)

http://www.orientaltrading.com/application?namespace=browse&origin=catalogProducts.jsp&event=link.itemDetails&sku=58/4007&tabId=TeacherSupplies

some of those wooden fruits and veggies with velcro--inexpensive and pretty nice, too...our friends have a set and i'm thinking about ordering some...

This item http://www.simplycheap.com/guidecraftg317.html is similar to a set we use in our center... I'm not totally crazy about it, because everything looks like it's "prepackaged" but it does add variety to the plain old "plastic toy fruits and vegetables" that you can buy anywhere...

In my experience, my kids preferred "real" items. I purposely bought small packges of items (like small cartons of soymilk or single-serving boxes of packaged foods) and after we used the real food up, I washed the container, crammed it full of newspaper to make it sturdy and taped it shut securely with several layers of clear packing tape. Yeah, it's a little work, but these "play foods" became my kids' favorites and they still talk about them... OH! And I took some small blocks and painted them white and brownish and wrote "T-O-F-U" and "T-E-M-P-E-H" in bright letters... Sometimes I'd "make" smaller packages by cutting down a box to make it small enough for their little hands (and little kitchen set) to handle.

But I was a little obsessive about their toys, so ... yeah...

it might be a fun project to make some play food out of some sort of clay or foam and paint it. Tofu's idea of using real food containers is also brillant.

This isn't a solution to your problem, but I thought it was interesting that when my nephew was around 4 he would run around with the plastic chicken from his food set and yell about "ewwwww chicken". He hated the fake chickens. The poor boy is a natural vegetarian, but my brother of course forces him to eat meat. But that's another discussion.

Cindy

great ideas.

i really wanted to attach a poll to see who objected to toy meat food and who didnt' alas. i don't know what happened...

i love the little wooden food with velcro. also, i was thinking of the food boxes idea too. 3 potatoes and some magnetic letters seems a bit minimalist but we've only had the kitchen 3 days so...

mary, i get what you're saying about the meat analog thing.


we're really in this phase with him now of explaining what a vegetarian is and that we don't eat meat. i ask him, do you eat cows, pigs etc. and he looks really serious and says no, just people...:lol:

i know that what he means is just other people eat those critters but it cracks me up every time.

Hmmm... Peacecat, would you rather have a carnivore or a cannibal for a son?

I was flipping through the catalog for the oriental trading company this morning and came across toy vegetables. They have a pretty big selection of toy foods available, all veggies (at least all in their catalog). Some even have velcro so the kids can pretend to cut them in half with a plastic knife.
Just a suggestion. It's not tofu but, hey, whole foods are healthier right? ;)
Mary