My kids have always loved ramen noodle soup, but ramen has two problems: the kids can see it is finished cooking, but they don't understand that it's way too hot to eat, and it's not very nutritious.

I solved both problems at once by turning it into alligator soup. Grab a handful of frozen stringbeans from the freezer, and drop into the kids' soup. They float just slightly above the soup, among the noodles, like alligators in a leafy swamp, and they cool off the soup. The soup defrosts the stringbeans without making them gushy.

The "alligators" add a bit of nutrition to the soup. We always add food coloring too. Sometimes we add green to enhance the alligator motif, sometimes we add blue and red to make it more of a muddy swamp. We have also used frozen peas and mixed vegetables, but of course, then they don't look like alligators.