Posted by Matthew Amster-Burton, April 28, 2008 at 11:30 AM
If you're into gadgets and looking to make your own baby purees, Williams-Sonoma is now selling the Beaba Babycook.
Pronounced "Bay-OBB-uh," the device has been popular for several years in Europe and is now available in the US. There's a video on the Williams-Sonoma site showing how it works. It's basically a mini-chopper than can steam food before you puree it. The industrial design is tops—with chubby curves and lime-green trim, it looks like a dollhouse accessory, albeit with a sharp blade.
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Posted by Matthew Amster-Burton, April 7, 2008 at 11:30 AM
When I heard the Georgian Room, Seattle's fanciest hotel restaurant, would be holding an etiquette class for 8- to 13-year-olds, I had one question for instructor (and Georgian Room maitre d') Tony D'Agostino: are any kids going to come to the class on their own accord?
Not likely, he admitted. "How many kids go, 'Mom, I want to go learn etiquette?'" D'Agostino said. "It's right up with the adult classes, though. You go around the table and ask, 'Why are you here?' The husbands go, 'My wife is bringing me.'"
So how do you keep a captive and potentially unruly audience entertained? In a word, snacks. And not those cucumber sandwiches, either. The tiered tea trays will hold scones and clotted cream, peanut butter sandwiches, ham and cheese sandwiches (crustless, of course), and chocolate chip cookies. To drink, kids will get a choice of hot chocolate with whipped cream and mini-marshmallows, or herb tea. This doesn't sound like much of a choice to me.
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Posted by Matthew Amster-Burton, March 24, 2008 at 11:00 AM
What is it about taco trucks? Does anybody not love them, aside from competing Mexican restaurant owners? Do four-year-olds love taco trucks?
I decided to find out. I took my four-year-old daughter, Iris, to Tacos El Asadero this week, and I think it's fair to say Tacos El Asadero is now her favorite place in the entire world.
El Asadero is Seattle's best-known taco truck—a bus, actually, where you can sit inside and enjoy your taco, mulita, or torta while staring through filmy old bus windows. We stepped inside and ordered several tacos at $1 each. Iris's favorite was the lengua, tender braised beef tongue. She entertained other customers by singing, "Lengua, lengua, lengua," to the tune of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." Then she stole one of my tortillas and created her own taco with a mix of lengua, carnitas, and carne asada. "I'm eating a real taco!" she declared, dropping meat on the floor of the bus.
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Posted by Matthew Amster-Burton, March 17, 2008 at 10:30 AM
My daughter Iris, 4, always used to be interested in helping out with cooking, but lately she's gotten bored. Maybe I told her one too many times to measure the sugar, not eat it. But I think I have a new ploy.
Iris loves fish, and mackerel is her favorite. We typically buy frozen mackerel fillets at the Asian supermarket. Last time, however, Iris pointed out that they sell whole mackerel and suggested we buy that instead. I obliged. When we got home, I flipped through Mark Bittman's Fish, trying to figure out how to clean and cook a whole mackerel.
"Hey Iris," I called. She was in the living room watching TV. "I'm going to clean this fish. Want to help?"
"No."
"There'll be fish guts."
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Posted by Matthew Amster-Burton, March 10, 2008 at 10:00 AM
©iStockphoto.com/hidesy
Iris and I were walking home from school the other day and I suggested we watch a movie in the afternoon. "We should get some popcorn," Iris said. I agreed. We stopped at the drugstore, where I looked for the familiar bag of Jolly Time. No dice—it was all microwave bags. I managed to find one "natural" brand containing no artificial butter flavor, and it was good enough to get me through Duck Tales: The Movie.
But the next day, I bought a bag of the old-fashioned stuff and popped it on the stove. Iris hung out by the edge of the kitchen, afraid of flying kernels and the clatter of the pot lid. When it was ready, I poured it into a bowl and salted it liberally. The improvement over microwave popcorn was obvious, and while we crunched it, I speculated about why oil-popped corn is superior and came up with three ideas.
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Posted by Matthew Amster-Burton, February 18, 2008 at 10:00 AM
My daughter Iris's preschool is, like so many these days, a nut-free zone. Often Iris will come home and, after a morning of nut deprivation, eat a big bowl of toasted pecans.
Before she started preschool, her standard lunch was the same as every other non-nut-allergic kid's: peanut butter and jelly. I did my best to choose a good quality jam and bread (the Innkeeper's brand multigrain bread from Costco is delicious), but it was your basic PB&J. This wouldn't fly under preschool rules. So I've fumbled with various leftovers and other sandwiches, and fallen back on deli ham more often than I'd like to admit. (I've tasted "soynut butter," recommended in the preschool handbook, and could not in good conscience serve it to anybody with taste buds.)
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Posted by Matthew Amster-Burton, January 28, 2008 at 10:00 AM
My father came over the other day to help me replace a bathroom faucet. It took four hours, two trips to the hardware store, and one trip to a French restaurant for lunch (croque-monsieur, baked eggs with gruyère). When we were done, we turned on the water and exchanged many high-fives. While washing my hands with the sparkling new faucet, I realized that the experience was a lot like cooking.
I've been teaching my daughter to cook, and it's gotten me thinking about why I cook. Iris, age 4, has been working on her stirring and flipping techniques. She's poured a whole bowl of beaten eggs onto the rug and made a very odd-looking pancake. And she loves it.
It bothers me when people say that everyone should learn to cook. Cooking doesn't make you a better person—just look at Marco Pierre White or Gordon Ramsay. Cooking doesn't make you more environmentally conscious or a good parent. For me—and most Serious Eaters, I bet—it's a form of entertainment.
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Posted by Matthew Amster-Burton, January 7, 2008 at 2:00 PM
At a recent playdate, the subject of hot dogs came up, and I heard one mom say that, okay, she does let her child eat hot dogs, but only the "nitrate-free" kind from Whole Foods. I didn't say anything, but the portion of my brain devoted to ruthless debunkings lit up.
Last year, you'll recall, Ed Levine took Consumer Reports to task for naming Hebrew National skinless franks the top dog. I'm with Ed: franks with natural casings are better. (You can read the CR report at Consumer Reports.)
But there was this tasty tidbit in the report:
While the three uncured franks might boast of "no added nitrates," our testing found that Applegate Farms, Coleman Natural, and Whole Ranch contained nitrates and nitrites at levels comparable to many of the cured models.
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Posted by Matthew Amster-Burton, November 21, 2007 at 3:15 PM
"Giving your children the right amount of the heart-healthy oils is just as important as keeping them from eating lard." —Missy Chase
Lapine, from 'The Sneaky Chef'
That's funny, because in preparation for Thanksgiving, I just sent my wife and daughter to pick up some leaf lard. We buy our lard from a local farm, Skagit River Ranch. It's certified organic and, if you care about this sort of thing, loaded with the exact same monounsaturated fat found in Lapine's beloved olive and canola oils. More important, Skagit's lard is of superb quality, elevates every food it touches, and is essential to the centerpiece of our Thanksgiving table: Cornish pasties.
Why pasties? My wife, Laurie, traces her roots to Penzance, Cornwall—known for its pirates and pasties. And pasties are very much in the spirit of Thanksgiving: comforting, starchy, nap-inducing.
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Posted by Matthew Amster-Burton, November 12, 2007 at 3:00 PM
The Melissa & Doug Cutting Food Box surely deserves a spot in the toy hall of fame. I've lost count of the number of "meals" my daughter Iris, 3, has prepared for me with this thing. The best feature is the sound: when the wooden knife lops off a chunk of toy carrot, cucumber, or watermelon, the Velcro gives way with a crunch much like the sound of a real knife through celery.
Trouble is, Iris has had the toy for almost two years, and she's getting bored with it. What's the next step? I have just the thing.
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Posted by Matthew Amster-Burton, November 1, 2007 at 4:15 PM
Everyone seems to agree that childhood food allergies are on the rise, and nobody knows why. Newsweek steps in this week with a cover story. For the most part, it's standard news magazine fare: Kick off with a scary anecdote about a kid with a peanut allergy ("When she goes trick-or-treating this week, her candy will be scarier than any costume"), then backpedal in the last few paragraphs and admit that the problem is not actually as widespread as people think it is (only 1 in 100 kids has a peanut allergy—not reassuring at all, of course, if your child is the one).
The most interesting research in the article comes from a London researcher, Dr. Gideon Lack, who thinks maybe we should all be eating more peanuts. In places (particularly Africa) where peanuts are a staple of the diet, peanut allergies are nearly nonexistent, and it's unlikely to have much to do with genetics. A recent 60 Minutes broadcast with Anderson Cooper examined a third-world nutrition supplement called (I love this name) Plumpy'Nut, a fortified peanut butter. "What about peanut allergies?" Cooper asked Dr. Susan Shepherd, head of Doctors Without Borders in Niger.
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Posted by Matthew Amster-Burton, October 23, 2007 at 12:00 PM
I've been reading new kid-related cookbooks so you don't have to. First, the good news.
Nicola Graimes's Top 100 Recipes for a Healthy Lunchbox
is petite (the book is about 6-inches square) and English. The author may also be petite and English, for all I know. The recipes have an emphasis on "healthy" but without resorting to unsavory stuff like low-fat cottage cheese or tub margarine. Surely my daughter Iris could be convinced to take Chicken Tikka Naan, Zucchini & Parmesan Fritters, or even Sushi Cones in her Hello Kitty lunchbox, although she would eat the contents of the sushi cone and leave the seaweed. There is a whole section on salads; if your kids accept salad in their lunch, please don't mention this in the comments. Top 100 is appealingly laid out and a bargain at $10 list.
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Posted by Matthew Amster-Burton, September 24, 2007 at 3:25 PM
Hello there, children! | Photograph from iStockPhoto.com
Concerned chefs and food writers agree: American school lunches suck. Reform programs such as Alice Waters's Edible Schoolyard have sprung up at every grade level from kindergarten to college.
Deborah Madison recently took a trip to France and observed schoolchildren choosing between two salads, mâche with roast duck and fava beans or mâche with salmon and asparagus. Meanwhile, Ann Cooper's book Lunch Lessons surveys the depressing fast-food landscape of the average American school and offers some ideas for fixing up your school's lunch program.
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Posted by Matthew Amster-Burton, September 10, 2007 at 11:30 AM
When my family vacations in Vancouver, British Columbia, as we did a couple weeks ago, food is never far from our minds. We subsist on Timbits, Chinese food, Indian takeout from Vij's Rangoli, and ice cream bars from Rogers'.
This time we brought back an inedible, yet tasty, souvenir. It's a children's board game called Crazy Chefs, made in England by Orchard Toys. My 3-year-old daughter, Iris, loves it and easily mastered the gameplay, which goes like this:
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Posted by Matthew Amster-Burton, August 27, 2007 at 1:30 PM
Recently, I bought some baby food. This was unusual for me, since my daughter, Iris, is three. "Is this for your baby?" the cashier asked, ringing up a couple of jars of Dr. Susanna's World Baby Foods.
"Uh, I'm going to try it myself."
Food writer, I explained, while the clerk looked around for the Security button.
Dr. Susanna's is based in Seattle, and its shtick is international foods. There are currently six flavors. I tried Tokyo Tum Tum and Lullaby Thai; also available are Sweetie Tahiti, Baby Dal, and so on. They're organic and, according to the website, "favor local farmers," which makes no sense, since the products are sold nationwide. I guess the farmers could be local to the United States.
The Lullaby Thai tasted like bananas with cardamom, which it is. Not bad. The Tokyo Tum Tum was a bad collision of flavors: sweet apple juice, bok choy, and edamame. Each 4-ounce container is $4.
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Posted by Matthew Amster-Burton, August 13, 2007 at 2:00 PM
Mac, cheese, and morels. Photograph by Matthew Amster-Burton
In his book Dinner with Dad, Cameron Stracher talks about what happened when he served his kids real macaroni and cheese topped with crunchy breadcrumbs. They rebelled. They said it was burnt.
In my house, we've had exactly the opposite experience. Periodically, spurred on by something like this Salon article, I will try a new recipe for homemade macaroni. I've made custardy, cheesy, stovetop, and oven versions. The result is always the same: Iris, my three-year-old, is fine with any macaroni. Her parents—whose foodie credentials, I assure you, are unassailable—prefer the stuff from the box. We're not into canned ravioli or frozen burger patties. I make my own panko-breaded chicken strips. But boxed macaroni is just the thing.
If you're stuck with a blue or purple box due to child or parent prejudice, do what we do: Doctor it. Actually, it turns out you, Serious Eaters, are way ahead of me. Sloppy joes? Leftover lobster? Chipotles? I love it!
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Posted by Matthew Amster-Burton, July 30, 2007 at 12:15 PM
Having a kid in the house has changed dinnertime. Not so much what I cook—the actual time dinner is served. It went from a ballpark figure to an ironclad contract. Before my daughter, Iris, came along, my wife, Laurie, and I would sometimes have dinner somewhere between 5:30 and 8 p.m., maybe later if I was trying something fancy.
Now, dinner is at 6 p.m., the same way Christmas is on December 25. Iris's bath starts at 7. I can delay dinner until 6:15 if I run into unexpected kitchen obstacles, but if it looks like it's going to go later than that, it's time to switch to scrambled eggs or frozen potstickers. Not every kid has such a lockstep routine, I know, but it's worked well for us.
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Posted by Matthew Amster-Burton, July 16, 2007 at 4:00 PM
Thanks to my wife, I discovered Roots and Grubs a few weeks ago. It's Matthew Amster-Burton's blog about his food life with his wife and young daughter. I really liked Matthew's take on cooking and eating with children and asked him if he'd blog on Serious Eats here and there. So every other week, on Mondays, we'll bring you a bit of advice from him. Here's his first entry. Enjoy! —Ed Levine
By Matthew Amster-Burton | The Man has crushed some of my family's favorite convenience foods under his twin jackboots of recall and import ban!
When the FDA announced a recall of salmonella-tainted Veggie Booty snack food in late June, I was concerned for the safety of its young consumers, but I was also smug. OK, I had a bag of the stuff on top of the fridge, but we're past the stage where my three-year-old, Iris, would request Booty and a cup of warm milk every afternoon for a snack. And adults don't eat that sort of thing. Maybe seven or 12 pieces here and there while preparing Iris's snack. That's it.
Then, the same day, the U.S. banned
imports of one of my favorite convenience foods: eel from China. (The ban also covers catfish, shrimp, basa, and dace. Sorry about that, all you basa and dace fans.) A package of barbecued eel in the freezer and a bag of rice on the shelf meant lunch was minutes away: Cook some medium-grain rice in the rice cooker, and when the rice is almost done, toss a frozen barbecued eel fillet on top and let it steam until the eel is hot.
The same meal will set you back maybe $12 in a Japanese restaurant; at home it's a couple bucks. If you have a little more time, you can buy unagi no shiroyaki, eel without sauce, and make your own sauce with soy sauce, sugar, and mirin.
Well, you could at least, before traces of nitrofuran, malachite green, gentian violet, and fluoroquinolones were found in the now-banned Chinese seafood.
So now our house is a Booty- and eel-free zone. To the global food industry: Please clean up your act. Nobody wants to see a frozen potsticker recall. That's one staple dad and daughter can agree on.
Is there a Veggie Booty or eel addict in your house? How are you dealing?
About the author: Matthew Amster-Burton lives in Seattle. His work appears frequently in the Seattle Times and Seattle magazine. His favorite food is pad Thai.
