Archive for February, 2011

Fun Food Saturday: Winter Rainbow

Saturday, February 26th, 2011

If you think winter vegetables have to be either beige and white or else frozen, think again. There are so many bright, vibrant colors in the spectrum of winter veggies that there’s no excuse for boring dinners. The good news for your kids? They don’t have to get saddled with bland or frost-bitten veggies.

We do have one advantage here in Los Angeles that others might not have: farmers’ markets that bring growers from across California to showcase their most beautiful specimens. For a great slide show on what’s available in L.A., click here (via L.A. Times food section). Check out this brilliantly hued watermelon radish, for example. Who knew that was one of winter’s treats? But even if you’re not near a farmers’ market, you might still be able to find some great varieties of winter vegetables at local ethnic markets or organic or specialty grocers.

To prepare for this week’s Fun Food Saturday, we drafted our 7-year-old to come with us to the Santa Monica farmers’ market and serve as arbiter of all things cool. He immediately latched on to the watermelon radish and even tasted it willingly. He was thrilled by the multi-hued carrots and gladly sampled one of each. He picked out beets in four different colors. He begged to buy another romanesco (even though he didn’t want to eat it) just because it is so cool to look at. He even enjoyed picking out different varieties of potatoes, plus some oregano as the herb we would use for roasting. Unfortunately, his open-minded spirit faded before the potatoes were finished and he lost any interest in eating them (note to future self: Give him credit for trying as much as he did, rather than giving him a hard time for losing momentum).

Most of the produce we picked (carrots, radishes) was at its best when served fresh and raw. For the potatoes and beets, we cubed them, tossed them with extra-virgin olive oil and fresh oregano, and then roasted them at 375 degrees for one hour, giving them a good stir at the half-way point. For the greens like kale or Swiss chard, we chopped them and roasted them (alternatively, you can saute them in olive oil with garlic on the stovetop).

And then we quizzed the kids: How many vegetables can you name that are pink? How many vegetables can you name that are purple? How may colors can you eat in one meal? Did you know that winter could be so colorful?

Fun food Saturday: Because food should be fun.

Posted Under: Just For Fun, Nutrition | Tags: , , , , , ,
This post was written by jollytomato on February 26th, 2011

Friday Food News Wrap: Feb. 25

Friday, February 25th, 2011

Getting kids to eat more healthy foods is the theme of the week – both in the larger world, and in our household, where the kids have decided that Chex snack mix reigns supreme. Sigh. Moving on…

Got Veggies?: Vital Health Zone offers this helpful chart of how many veggies a person needs based on age. Is your four-year-old getting 1.5 cups of veggies per day?

Sugar Obsession: Maryann of Raise Healthy Eaters gives 10 strategies for ending kids’ sugar obsession. One great hint: Spoil them with the good stuff (i.e. high-quality treats) so that they learn to pass on the truly awful stuff. We’ll be trying that out soon.

Young Lawyers: Are you raising your kids to be negotiators at the dinner table? Dr. Dina Rose has a thoughtful piece on what parents teach their kids when they negotiate about food.

Healthy Lunch?: The Chicago Tribune reports that since the Chicago Public Schools have launched an effort to improve school lunches, school lunch sales have gone down by five percent, or more than 20,000 lunches per day. Hang in there, Chicago.

Cricket Meat: If the Chicago kids don’t like veggies, would they prefer…insects? Two professors write in the Wall Street Journal that as the global population strains the world’s meat resources we may need to turn to better sources of protein, like, say, worms, crickets, and mealworms. Uh…we’ll take the veggies.

Grow a Good Eater: Jenna of Kid Appeal has revised her Food Tips 101 page for growing a good eater. There’s tons of good information in there, on everything from baby food to cafeteria food.

Join the Hive: The online magazine Slate has opened a discussion forum on childhood obesity. You can read up on all of the proposals people have submitted, or chime in if you have your own solution.

Pancake Week: Did you know it was Pancake Week? Neither did we. To celebrate (or not), Fooducate lets us know that Aunt Jemima’s “original syrup” has no actual maple in it. But if you’re looking for an alternative, FujiMama has a recipe for buttermilk syrup (“breakfast crack”) that she’s adapted to replace the corn syrup with honey. Sounds like one for our pancakes this weekend.

Happy Friday to all!

Posted Under: Childhood Obesity, Nutrition, Parenting | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
This post was written by jollytomato on February 25th, 2011

Fun Food Saturday: Popcorn

Saturday, February 19th, 2011

If your only experience with popcorn is something coated with yellow granules that comes out of your microwave, you are really missing out. Fresh-popped popcorn is a whole-grain, low-fat food that’s a good source of fiber (check out the complete nutritional picture here) and it’s been eaten and enjoyed in its purest form for thousands of years. You don’t need a microwave; you can use an air popper or a pot on the stovetop to pop corn to your heart’s content, and then eat it plain or flavor it in countless different ways to taste. You can even make it into your own building project (more on that in a minute). So in other words, there’s far more to popcorn than that wrapped-up microwave bag.

We love popping popcorn for movie night but to be honest, we never think much beyond a little bit of butter and salt for the toppings. So for Fun Food Saturday, we decided to branch out a little bit. We started with our favorite stovetop popcorn recipe from The Popcorn Book by Tomie dePaola: Heat a heavy saucepan on the stove on high heat for two minutes. Pour 1/4 cup of oil into the pan. Turn the heat down a little bit; add two or three kernels of corn. When they pop, add more kernels to cover the bottom of the pan, up to 1/2 cup. Turn the heat down to low, cover the pan, and shake the pan back and forth very fast over the heat. When the popping stops (2 to 3 minutes), remove the pan from the heat.

Once we made up that basic popcorn recipe, we tried the following flavoring mixtures:

Cinnamon/sugar: Toss popcorn with butter, cinnamon, and a small amount of sugar. The kids decided that this one would be their new breakfast cereal.

Pizza: Toss popcorn with olive oil, dried basil, dried oregano, and grated parmesan cheese. One of the boys called this “dinner popcorn.”

Chili: Toss popcorn with butter, chili powder, cumin, a dash of lime juice, and some dried red pepper if your kids are willing to tolerate a little spice.

Bombay: Toss popcorn with butter, curry powder, salt, sugar, and dried coconut, golden raisins, and/or almonds as per this recipe on Popcorn.org.

Black Sesame Mustard: Toss popcorn with dark sesame oil, yellow mustard powder, black sesame seeds, and salt, also from Popcorn.org.

Popcorn Bowl from http://www.popcorn.org

In fact, Popcorn.org (the web site for The Popcorn Board ) inspired us with all kinds of recipes, including some for bread and muffins that call for processing the popcorn in a food processor until it is finely ground and using it as sort of a cornmeal. Who knew? But our biggest inspiration came from the Popcorn Board’s recipe for a popcorn bowl that you can make and use to serve, well…popcorn. The bowl is created by tossing the popped corn with a candy syrup that hardens into the shape you create. And although the recipe calls for food coloring, we got a nice pink color with a few drops of beet juice. Who knew that popcorn could be a snack as well as the bowl you serve it in?

Fun Food Saturday: Because food should be fun.

Posted Under: Just For Fun | Tags:
This post was written by jollytomato on February 19th, 2011
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