Entries tagged with 'Cooking With Kids'
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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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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.
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©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,...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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"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,...
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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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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...
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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,...
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