We were catching up on our Tivo’d reality shows last night when we spotted the latest “Top Chef” episode. It wasn’t just devoted to healthy family cooking, it had pint-sized chefs helping the contestants too. Top Chef uber-judge Tom Colicchio called them “the greatest group of sous-chefs in the history of this show.” Certainly the most adorable. They were all from Common Threads, a Chicago non-profit that teaches kids from some of that city’s poorest neighborhoods about cooking, nutrition and cultural diversity. We loved that the kids actually sliced, diced, pared and cooked, and the repartee was pretty darn cute, particularly between Chef Tom and the kids. Maybe we could get them back. They were a good deal more lovable than some of the contestants.
The show repeats pretty much every night this week so there’s still time to catch the youngsters in action as they — and Dale, Antonia, faux-hawked Richard and the gang — whip up chicken paillards, pasta puttanesca and Antonia’s challenge-winning pasta stir fry. Inspired yet? Then here’s the recipe… Read the rest of this entry »
It was just a few years ago that the Berkeley-based Clif Bar company came out with its line of ZBars for kids, a smaller, nutrient packed energy bar whose kid-pleasing flavors included chocolate brownie, peanut butter and honey graham. So we were intrigued when a Clif Bar care package, loaded with new fruity ZBar flavors and twisted fruit ropes, landed on our desks earlier this week. According to a recent National Public Radio report, only a quarter of the nation’s kids eat enough fruit. So Clif is trying to make it easier to get fruit into children’s diets via twisted fruit rope that equals one fruit serving, and fruity ZBars.
Got any Rachael Ray fans out there? The queen of EVOO has been whipping up kids’ recipes lately and this one sounds pretty darn tasty. And it’s adaptable, so junior can keep his own Chicken Taco Burger (Ray calls ‘em Chicken Taco Patties, but they’re baby burgers) tame and spice dad’s to incendiary levels. Here’s Ray’s recipe… Read the rest of this entry »
While sleepily packing lunches this morning, we remembered all those great lunchbox ideas you guys supplied a few weeks ago - the cream cheese, turkey and cranberry sauce sandwich; the rolled PBJ sliced sushi-style into rounds; the simple turkey slice wrapped around string cheese; and the fruit leathers and freeze dried “Just Peas” and “Just Bananas” with no added anything. Fantastic ideas!
We don’t normally tout summer camps - partly because there are a million of them and partly because the very words “summer camp” remind us of that Martha Stewart column about her daughter Alexis, then six and off to sleep-away camp for the entire summer. The little girl was so homesick she wrote home every day … and Martha corrected the spelling and sent the letters back. Ahem. What is it with East Coasters and 8-week summer camps, anyway?
But Karen Rogers’ “Culinary Kids” is very, very cool, and it comes with a side of lemony, garlicky hummus. (Plus, the recipe.) So we’re making an exception. This UC Berkeley junior and her chef buddies from Chez Panisse, Caffe Venezia and other chic Bay Area eateries launched the day camp in Berkeley last summer and it sold out instantly. So Karen added more dates. Whoosh. Now Karen’s doing it again, so here’s the 2008 scoop - before it sells out. Plus, did we mention a recipe? Read the rest of this entry »
It was only a matter of time before the Berenstain Bears, the fuzzy, fictional characters who’ve weighed in on everything from the gimmes to treehouse etiquette, got around to childhood obesity. (My husband had high hopes they’d do a book on sex ed too. He’d even picked out a title: “Brother Bear Gets Laid.” Sad to say, Random House wasn’t interested.)
So it was with a feeling of “oh there you are!” that we opened this morning’s mail and found “The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Junk Food” (not new, but timely), and “Sensible Sippers” boxes, an organic juice and water combo whose, er, spokesbears are none other than Brother and Sister Bear. And the flavors? Apple, berry, punch and - oh dear lord - banana.
Parents will love it, says the juice company, because it eliminates “the need to ’cut’ their children’s juice with water.” Um, yeah … because adding tap water is so complicated … not to mention free. But OK, we like the juice box idea, so we popped open a couple to taste. Banana Juice? Nastiest. Thing. Ever. Imagine the smell of that banana you forgot in your sixth grade locker for two months. Now imagine that in juice form. We’re still wiping our tongues on the carpet. Mixed berry is better - well, it would have to be, wouldn’t it? - but we kinda want to dilute it with water.
We all love the idea of culinary kids, but finding decent recipes that don’t threaten kids’ fingertips or our palates can be a challenge. It’s not that we’re picky parents, but a salad face out of cottage cheese, canned pears and carrot curls? Um, do we really have to eat that? So we were delighted to discover Spatulatta, the James Beard Award-winning web site and cookbook by tweenage sisters Belle and Liv Gerasole, who whip up hummus, lemon basil chicken and key lime (or lemon) bars with aplomb. Hmmm, maybe we’ll have that for dinner tonight. The chicken and lemon bars, not the aplomb.
Anyway, point is, each online recipe is accompanied by a video of the girls whipping up their specialties, and frankly, you can keep your Emeril. The Spatulatta girls are wayyy more charming.
Ah Thanksgiving… the aroma of roasting turkey, the sweetness of pumpkin pie … the high-pressure panic of trying to get an elaborate feast cranked out Thursday morning with kids underfoot. But if you put those pint-sized helpers to work in the kitchen, they’ll learn new and delicious skills and have fun, while taking a little of the heat off you. Besides, you can always get the cranberry sauce off the ceiling later with a pressure washer.
Parents have been abuzz over the latest cookbook (Jessica Seinfeld’s “Deceptively Delicious”) that claims to have the secret to getting kids to eat their vegetables.
I got a sneak preview of fellow blogger Jackie Burrell’s story on that topic (running online and in the newspaper Monday), and I SO identified with a dad quoted in the story about his children’s uncanny ability to detect even the most microscopic amount of anything different or healthy in their food.
My daughter could sniff out a single pea at the bottom of a huge vat of spaghetti. Sorry, Mrs. Jerry Seinfeld, but your spinach-filled brownies would not fool her bloodhound snout. And besides, how will any child learn to like vegetables if they CANNOT TASTE THEM?
Toddlers, it turns out, don’t always do what you expect.
Take my 14-month-old daughter, who until quite recently refused to consume any sort of vegetable.
This is, I know, a very tired cliché. But it was still a shocking one for me, since I’m mostly vegetarian, and the vast majority of the food consumed in our home originates from some sort of non-animal source.
I had assumed that after being bombarded with plant matter in the womb, my offspring would arrive in the world with an inherent tendency to enjoy all sorts of fresh produce.
But, um, no such luck.
Each green thing that I managed to poke into Rosie’s mouth resulted in a horrified grimace, followed by an open-mouthed dribble, and finally a tight-lipped head-shaking which said clearly said the words she could not: no, no, NO, NO!
All this changed a few weeks ago, though, after some tips from my friend, science reporter Betsy Mason, who happens to be a “supertaster” ….
