With Halloween lurking around the deserted street corner next to the shadowy castle on the hill, there are many fun, simple ways to channel the better spirits of All Hallow’s Eve while staying away from the ones that will rot your teeth. With the popular trend of schools taking charge in encouraging good eating with healthy school lunch programs provided by The Lunch MOB, parents can maintain this sentiment through the inevitable candy hauntings and sugar scaring.

Tangerine Jack O’Lanterns

Jack O’Lanterns can get messy, time-consuming, and a bit frustrating to deal with. However, there’s a way to keep the amusement of those smiling pumpkins while simplifying matters by making them smaller. With a marker, you can make small jack o’lantern tangerines or oranges by drawing faces on the peel as a small surprise for your child and a bit of additional incentive for them to eat it.

“Boo” Nana Pops

In addition to vitamin C, healthy school lunch programs make sure to give a well-rounded nutritional basis for kids to follow. Naturally, this would include potassium, and this aspect of your child’s diet can be filled with “boo”nana pops, created by Skinny Taste. Terrifying puns aside, you can fix this snack hassle-free by dipping bananas into liquid white chocolate, decorating to make them look like adorable ghosts, and freezing them overnight to be packed for tomorrow. They each only have half-an-ounce of chocolate per pop, making them much healthier than a standard chocolate bar from that shady haunted house next to the dim lamplight down the crooked street.

Pizza Fingers

Pizza doesn’t really grant a sense of healthy eating to many, but with new, innovative recipes and clever placement of vegetables, pizza can get as healthy as brussel sprouts doused in fish oil while actually being edible, and wonderfully so. With The Lunch MOB’s healthy school lunch programs, you can find a cauliflower bread substitute. Turn this into a splendid Frankenstein pizza creation with tomato sauce and some toppings of choice, and it becomes a lunch your children will assume to be you spoiling them because it tastes so nice. Keeping in touch with Halloween, you can theme the meal by slicing them into finger-shaped portions and tagging the top with a fingernail-shaped tomato slice, turning your kids into zombies that obtain 80% of their daily vitamin C with every serving.

Spooky Fruit Spider

Using a plum, three dozen grapes, and half-a-dozen toothpicks, you can spend some time connecting the fruits into a spider, with the plum sitting in the center and eight grape legs extending from the sides. The eyes can be made out of white chocolate with small raisins in the center, resulting in another harrowing snack, though this one might actually scare some people if they really don’t like spiders. Great idea from Kitchen Fun With My 3 Sons

Cheesy Witch Brooms

Grains are an important part of healthy school lunch programs, and you can inspire a bit of Halloween spirit by turning pretzel sticks into witch brooms, created by Cocinanda Con Catman. Take a piece of cheese, cut it into a square, wrap it around the end of a pretzel stick, and keep it in place with chives as string. They look great as a party snack too, as you can lay them on a flat plate at a costume party.

Of course, it proves difficult to be creative with snacks and lunches with busy schedules and lots to do at home.The Lunch MOB can help you keep your children healthy with artisan, tasty meals delivered every school day — put together from scratch using ingredients from local growers — and it’s sure to free up a bit of time for your clever ideas, regardless of the season.