What's Cooking With Kids

Mar 12Polenta Bean Pies and Pear-Ginger Crumble

Our most recent of 5 appearances: March 12, 2008 Healthy Dinner - Polenta Bean Pies & Delicous Pear Ginger Crumble Personal Polenta Bean Pies 2 Tbs olive oil 1/2 small onion, chopped 2 garlic cloves, minced 1 can black beans, rinsed 1 can white beans, rinsed 2 large ripe red tomatoes, diced 1 tube plain prepared polenta 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro 1 cup shredded jack cheese Preheat oven to 400. In large saucepan, heat oil and sauté onion and garlic until soft. Add...

Mar 7Cakey Cookies – Did I do something wrong?

Last night, as I was settling onto the sofa to watch home improvement shows (we are moving soon), the phone rang. The voice on the other end asked me if I could bake something to sell during the intermission of the play that my kids are in tonight. Okay, okay...there were better things I could be doing with my time than putting a dent in my sofa. After digging around the freezer and kitchen cabinets for a little while, I found that I had all of the ingredients that I needed to make a recipe that...

Mar 6Ethnic Foods for Kids – How?

Our our family's recent trip to Panama and Costa Rica, my children loved tasting tropical fruits that they hadn't seen before. It got me thinking about how eager kids can be to taste foods that are sweet and those that are similar to foods they already like. Fruits there come in fantastic shapes, sizes and colors, and were a joy to try...even if the outcome was a surprising burst of sour flavor or if the texture was reminiscent of raw oysters! Okay, so it was easy to get my kids to taste fruit....

Mar 4Organic Tortilla Chips are Still Chips

I caught myself doing something today that I hear other people talking about all of the time - Stress Eating! It's not that I have never done it before, I just never noticed. My hand was in mid-air, filled with organic blue tortilla chips from Trader Joe's, heading towards some green salsa...I could barely pause long enough to swallow the former bite - and then the phone rang. It was a relief, really. I immediately noticed what I was doing and told my friend that I was pigging out... Being the...

Mar 2Special Expeditions...Fruit Expeditions, episode...

...Continued from episode 3 We truly enjoyed tasting the variety of marmalades that were available with breakfast each day. Their flavors were bright and fresh, and were a wonderful change from the predictable flavors of jam we can find at home. Naranjilla (Lulo) with sugar: This marmalade comes from a greenish citrus fruit and contains small flecks of zest. It was sweet and slightly tart at the same time. Most of us thought it was too sweet and gave it a 2. Amelia loved...

Feb 28Special Expeditions...Fruit Expeditions, episode...

...Continued from episode 2 Watermelon has always been a favorite in our family. We were amused to discover that it is also a favorite of the white faced capuchin monkey, who steals it from the visitors to Manuel Antonio Park whenever possible. Sadly, stealing food is simply an opportunistic behavior that these animals have adopted in response to the plethora of human visitors to their habitat. These monkeys can also be found sneaking into the recycle bins on the park grounds to consume Coca-Cola...

Feb 25Special Expeditions...Fruit Expeditions, episode...

...Continued from episode 1 To recap...On our family adventure with Special Expeditions, we journeyed through the Panama Canal and to Costa Rica on a 60 passenger cruise ship, staffed by naturalists. Inspired by a friend from the blogosphere, who has been engaged in a culinary vegetable challenge with her children, we decided to have a series of taste tests with the plethora of tropical fruits on our voyage. We decided to score fruits on a scale of 0-3, with 3 being the best and 0 the worst. ...

Feb 23Special Expeditions...Fruit Expeditions, episode...

On our family adventure with Special Expeditions, we journeyed through the Panama Canal and to Costa Rica on a 60 passenger cruise ship, staffed by naturalists. Inspired by a friend from the blogosphere, who has been engaged in a culinary vegetable challenge with her children, we decided to have a series of taste tests with the plethora of tropical fruits on our voyage. We decided to score fruits on a scale of 0-3, with 3 being the best and 0 the worst. Amelia wanted to begin the ranking with...

Feb 12When Do We Get To Taste Test More Foods, Mom?

One of the benefits of cooking with kids for a living is that people often want to know what I think of their products. Our cooking classes for children and our bustling household are both good venues for testing products and ingredients: How do snacks taste? How do tools work with kids, inexperienced and potentially clumsy cooks? When we arrived home from school with friends this week, the kids found a package next to the mailbox. They were thrilled when they discovered that it contained "something...

Feb 6Photo Contest - Get Dirty and Get Clean (in the ...

I am excited to tell you about a photo contest going on over at Shutter Sisters. It is sponsored by my friends at Clean Well, a hand sanitizer company that uses natural ingredients. While there are several categories, I would of course like to see my readers enter into the Cooking category. I am sure you can't imagine kids getting messy in the kitchen ;-) The winner will earn a bunch of Clean Well products, which your family will LOVE! Be sure to let me know if you join - I can't wait to see...