I promise this isn't the usual (vaguely insulting) case of "Here's how to sneak vegetables into your kids' diet!" I've actually been making this moist, fragrant quick bread for years, and not just because it's virtuous. I return to the recipe because it's so flavorful—moist and rich from the carrots and toasted walnuts, not too sweet and fantastic with a steaming mug of Earl Gray. More

These turkey and kale meatballs are a big hit with my kids Flannery, three-years-old, and Wyatt, 18 months. It's easy to get in a rut serving kids bland proteins (poached chicken, roasted salmon, sliced turkey...) but these meatballs are full of flavor and they're a great way to sneak a healthy green vegetable into the mix. More

My daughter and I eat a lot of scrambled eggs for breakfast, and I make them over medium-high heat and get them in and out of the pan as fast as possible. But according to Food Network host Tyler Florence, whose son Hayden (19 months) is also an egg aficionado, I’m doing it wrong. “My son, he loves scrambled eggs,” said Florence when I spoke to him on the phone recently. “Farm-fresh organic eggs, a little bit of whole milk, two tablespoons of butter and a nonstick pan. Cook eggs at a low temperature, because the temperature reacts with the protein in eggs and makes them very rubbery. Light, fluffy, billowy eggs, that is achieved with a low, slow cooking... More

What should your 2- to 5-year-old eat, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture? Beats me, because its website seems to have been put together by 2- to 5-year-olds, and when I tried to generate a custom pyramid for my 4-year-old daughter, all I got was “Could not download Redirect.aspx.” Maybe it will work better for you: Food Pyramid for Preschoolers I’m having a hard time understanding who this material is geared toward, other than fans of Comic Sans. According to the Chicago Tribune, “The new MyPyramid for Preschoolers is intended to help parents make better food choices for preschool children, aged 2 to 5 years—a critical time when food habits and taste preferences are established.” Really?... More

Photograph by Matthew Amster-Burton See these awesome maple-bacon doughnuts I made? I actually can’t take any credit for them. The idea came from Voodoo Doughnuts in Portland, Oregon, where they serve a maple bar with bacon strips on top. The idea of doing it at my house, with bacon sprinkles, came from Dana Cree, the talented pastry chef at Poppy in Seattle. The raised doughnut recipe is from Baking Illustrated, which comes from the editors at Cooks Illustrated. Making raised doughnuts at home sounds like a major undertaking, but it’s not. All you need is a lot of hungry people to eat them, because one batch of dough makes a lot of doughnuts, and you don’t want to waste... More

Editor's Note: To continue our Halloween coverage, Matthew Amster-Burton shares this holiday cupcake idea for the kids: black cat cupcakes. "My corporate overlords at Serious Eats have demanded a Halloween post," I told my daughter, Iris, 4. "What's something we could make together to eat for Halloween?" "How about an edible cat?" she replied. "That sounds hard." "We could use cupcakes." This is her solution to everything. We wanted them to be black cats, of course, but my wife Laurie reminded me that black food coloring tastes terrible, so we decided on dark chocolate frosting. (Chocolate is my solution to everything.) For tails and whiskers, we'd use black licorice whips. For the ears, wedges of York peppermint patties. And for... More

Photograph from ammichaels on Flickr I was delighted this morning when I opened the New York Times and found an article entitled Momma, I’ll Have Some of Whatever You’re Having. (I was also jealous, because I didn’t write it.) Jessica had begun making meals for Gracie, our 7-month-old daughter, following the recommended pattern for carefully introducing individual puréed foods.That all changed when she called me at work one day to tell me that she’d taken the food mill to the next level: since Gracie had tried all the basic ingredients from what we’d eaten the night before—my pasta Bolognese with mint—she had milled some up and watched with delight as Gracie happily finished every bite. I had the same... More

When people ask me about baby food, I always tell them the same thing: there's no such thing as baby food. With few exceptions, mashed-up adult food is perfect for babies. It's nutritious, fun, and easy, and you don't have to prepare separate meals. Sometimes I go on and on as if I invented this idea. Then something will come along to remind me that I'm about as original as a financial planner telling clients not to spend so much on lattes. This time around, it was Amelia Bedelia. The book series Amelia Bedelia, for anyone who hasn't been introduced, is for early readers and authored by Peggy Parish. The first was published in 1963. They have not aged entirely... More

Biggie's preschooler-friendly bento box featuring kalbi and chopped kimchi. There's no cooler lunch box, I say, than a bento box. (Although my 4-year-old, who just got a new Wizard of Oz lunch box, would probably disagree.) Check out the bentos made by Biggie of Lunch in a Box. Not only does she send her kid to school with delicious-looking food, but she has tips for adapting spicy food for the preschool palate: Regular kimchi is too spicy for my preschooler as is, so I generally rinse it off before giving it to Bug (his favorite is the sour ggakdugi daikon kimchi cubes). This post walks us through two recent bentos and reports on not only the contents (Korean galbi ribs?... More

Parents magazine has released its list of ten best family restaurants (warning: extremely naggy, ad-ridden website). At the number one spot: Legal Sea Foods. Not bad. “The greatest thing about Legal’s kids’ menu: Even if your child insists on ordering the chicken fingers or grilled cheese, they arrive with grapes and corn on the cob,” they write. My first thought was, “Even in February? What kind of lesson does that teach?” but possibly I’m outside the target audience. The rest of the Parents list (not necessarily in order): Chili’s, Mimi’s, Souplantation/Sweet Tomatoes, Red Robin, Old Spaghetti Factory, Claim Jumper, P. F. Chang’s, Denny’s, and Uno. (Plus many runners-up.)... More