Posts filed under 'cooking'
My 5 year old starts kindergarten, so I’ve got lots of back-to-school thoughts and supplies on the brain right now (more to come …). Particularly, I’ve been on the hunt for safe, reusable, and plastic-free food containers for packing up breakfast and lunch.
Check out these cool Snack Taxis. Perfect for snacks and sandwiches—even grownup-sized versions—they are water resistant, easy for kids to open, washable and thus reusable. Plus they come in a multitude of cool patterns. Good-bye plastic baggies! The company also makes lunch sacks and reusable napkins. Buy ‘em online or at retail location near you (see they list on Snack Taxi’s site).
Also love To-Go Ware’s stainless steel Sidekicks for snacks, yogurt, etc., and the two- and three-tier Tiffins, great for keeping foods separate. Check out the carrying sacks and reusable utensils, too.
— Mama Kate
August 26th, 2010
Hot off the griddle!
I just nabbed a copy of Bean Appétit: Hip and Healthy Ways to Have Fun with Food, and can’t wait to put it to work in the kitchen with my kiddos.
Dynamic duo Shannon Payette Seip and Kelly Parthen—co-owners of Bean Sprouts Cafe and Cooking School, a kid friendly restaurant serving healthy fare to Madison, WI, families—have filled their book with fun, fun, fun. What grown-up cookbook has instructions that tell you to spin in a circle three times before beginning or to waddle like a penguin around the table or shake your hips while the blender’s a whirling?
The book’s design is bright and colorful, filled with a mix of illustration and engaging “food as art” photography kids will love perusing. The recipe instructions are easy for families to follow together, and feature ingredients lists that are reasonable in length and with easily attainable items. Though they run the gamut from breakfast to snacks to outdoor eats and sweet bites, recipes are organized in clever new ways—food fun for a wintry day, book-themed eats, making music and munchies.
The book’s overriding philosophy: Encourage kids to “play” with their food, and you’ll instill a lifelong interest in preparing delicious healthy foods. It’s good for kid giggles, and frustrated parents. Because they’re engaged in the process and having so much fun prepping food in the kitchen, that should translate to fun at the table for mom and dad, as the kids gobble up the new yummy recipes they’ve helped make—perhaps out of foods their tastebuds had previously rejected. Amen to that.
I also dig the cookbook’s fun extras: questions to inspire table talk, games, crafts, and factoids, like favorite pizza toppings, birthday treats, and table manners from around the world. It’s also got handy conversion charts and tips, on top of its just plain good ideas.
So, get cookin’ with your kids. Pick up your copy at a bookstore near you, or order online.
Our Mom Appeal kudos go out to these two busy and creative mompreneurs, who have got the mojo thing going on! Successful cafe and cooking classes, now the fab cookbook, and also a cooking show that’s in the works! Whew! I don’t know how they do it!
—Mama Kate
March 3rd, 2010
Families!
Get your taste buds out and get ready for some good eats—and play a little game in the process. Bean Sprouts Cafe is looking for VIPea Taste Testers to test out the online recipes that with the cafe’s Bean-GO game!
This healthy twist on Bingo is a great way to get kids to try to new taste (read: fruits and veggies). To play, get out your Bean-go card and let the kids pick a food to try. Together with your kids, follow the provided recipe to make the delicious eats. Cross off each new food after your kids try it, until they get five in a row. Or, play “blackout,” in which each square must get crossed off. Winner gets a reward! (Perfect reward: Make an entire meal or snack of their favorite tastes or recipes! I think my kids will get an extra few Ring-a-Bing-Bing Cherry + Chocolate Chip Cookies washed down with a double-sized Super Star Fruit Smoothie!)
A Bean-go card activated with a recipe for each taste is available on the Bean Sprouts web site. Be sure to rate the recipes—you and your bitty bakers can pass along your expert taste bud and prep chef advice for Bean Sprouts’ new book “Bean Appetit: Hip & Healthy Ways to Have Fun With Food.”
Food IS fun!
—Mama Kate
February 10th, 2010
Even though my kids are not yet school age, as a foodie who’s into eating locally grown organics, and healthy living in general, I’m a little worried about what their hot lunch options will be once they hit grade school. This mama might just be packing lunches for the next 20 years.
So, you can bet it’s on my agenda to check out the movie “Two Angry Moms,” screening in Madison at Whole Foods on Wednesday, September 9, from 6:30-8:30 pm. Discussion follows. It’s recommended that you call to reserve a seat; 608-233-9566. A $3 donation goes to the School Lunch Revolution.
The movie—billed as part exposé, part how-to—highlights the grassroots movement by moms Amy Kalafa and Susan Rubin, who wanted more focus on what kids eat in school lunches, and their quest to get healthy, tasty, real food into the cafeterias.
Check out the organization Rubin founded, in her exasperation regarding school food: www.betterschoolfood.org. You also, like me, may want to sign the Slow Food USA petition telling Congress to provide America’s children with real food at school. Click here to add your name: http://slowfoodusa.org/timeforlunch.
—Mama Kate
September 4th, 2009
The fabulous designer at Amuse Me that makes those great nursing covers with ribbons inside for your baby to play with, has launched adorable Mommy and Toddler aprons in some gorgeous fabrics.
These aprons are totally reversible, chic and whimsical! What little girl doesn’t want everything that mommy has? And what mommy doesn’t want to rock some serious style while in the kitchen or garden?
I absolutely adore these aprons and so does my daughter! You’ll want these aprons hanging in a prominent place in your kitchen. They are a decoration in themselves…
Mama Jen
September 3rd, 2009
