Cooking Kids

If you’re a mom who takes part in a playgroup, a grandmother who watches the grandbabies a few days a week, or just someone who likes to cook and has lots of kids in the family, then starting a kids cooking club might be for you. I am starting my own cooking club to take off in September. My club is called “Little Chefs” and is comprised of kids in my daughter’s playgroup. I’m aiming to have kids 3+, but I know there will be a few younger kids taking part, too.

My goal is to think of simple recipes that kids can cook independently. Simple dishes include deviled eggs, fruit pizza, cheese dogs, or smoothies. Ocassionally I will include recipes that adults need to help with, but my goal is to get kids cooking independently and learn a little about the cooking process, too.

If you’re interested in this, all you need is a group of 4-10 kids. I’m looking to cut the number to no more than 8 kids. (We have a large playgroup.) You need a place to host the cooking club; I’m using my house. And you also need a handful of starter recipes and a simple complementary activity. For example, I’m thinking of doing “Apple Men” as our first recipe since school will just be starting and apples are a fall food. If a recipe calls for any baking, I will read a related story to the kids while the food cooks. If the recipe is assemble and eat, I will read the story before cooking. The rest of the details I’ll fine-tune once I get “Little Chefs” underway.

Look for future “Little Chefs” recipes, activities and pictures once September starts.

A favorite summer past time that doesn’t involve a baseball or a bathing suit, is grilling. One thing we commonly grill is hot dogs and hamburgers. We don’t eat a lot of these foods over the fall and winter months, but I buy them occassionally for summer time. Most people have their own favorite grilling recipe for hot dogs and hamburgers, but I thought I’d share mine anyway.

 We use all beef hot dogs for our BBQ. The secret to our tasty grilled dogs and burgs is BBQ sauce. We coat our hot dogs and hamburgers with BBQ sauce throughout the grilling process. This helps keep them moist and gives them a unique flavor without tasting too smoky. Basting the hot dogs actually helps give them their own sauce, and I find that you don’t really need ketchup and mustard.

That’s it. That’s all we do for sensational summer hot dogs and hamburgers.

Have you ever had a day where you felt that all you did was eat? Since I’ve become a full-time stay at home mom, I’ve gained 10 pounds. I know it’s because I’m always home with the kids, eating when they eat, eating what they don’t eat and snacking with them. Granted it has taken me three years to gain those 10 pounds, but I didn’t need to gain them in the first place. The problem is that I don’t think about what I’m eating when I’m hanging with my kids. Am I the only one? Am I the only one that mindlessly grabs an extra handful of fries or eats at the pizza buffet 2x a week for 3 weeks because the kids LOVE their pizza?

Tonight, for example, the kids asked for a meatball pocket at around 9:00pm. We had eaten  dinner around 6, but they chased the dog around outside for over an hour shortly after dinner. Needless to say, they burned off all the calories they took in at dinner. I didn’t. But  what I did do was join them by heating up some chicken and rice. I didn’t need the chicken and rice. Heck, I didn’t even really want the chicken and rice, but I ate it anyway. You know how yawns are contaigous? I think eating is contaigous in my house. I’m determined to break my bad habit of eating just because the kids are. And it’s not because bathing suit season is here (I’ve already depressed myself by shopping for a new suit,)but because I can’t teach good eating habits if I can’t practice them. I’ll keep you updated on my fight to eat 3 squares a day instead of 3 squares, a snack, a nibble, a bite and a half a square meal at night. Wish me luck!

Corn is popping up in gardens everywhere. It has to be one of the most delicious vegetables fresh off the stalk. We had some so good last year that if it had been a person, I would have married it. I have about 30 stalks growing in my garden this year, with my early batch just starting to sprout some ears. Last year we ate a lot of corn on the cob, but this year we plan on eating a lot more creamed corn. I have a real simple recipe that is not only good, but lower in fat than traditional creamed corn. Gather the kids around and get them to shucking!!

 Creamed Corn Recipe

4-8 ears of corn depending on the size of your family.

1/2 stick of butter for 4 ears, a whole stick of butter for 8 ears.

Approximately 1 cup of low-fat milk

1 tsp. cornstarch

Salt, pepper and sugar to taste.

Cut corn off cob and then melt butter in a pan. Once butter is melted, add corn. Stir and coat corn with butter for approximately 2-3 minutes. Mix cornstarch and milk together until cornstarch dissolves. Add milk to pan. Stir until sauce begins to thicken. If it’s too thick, add some more milk. If it’s too thin, mix a tiny bit of cornstarch with more milk and add gradually to the pan until you get your desired thickness. Add salt, pepper and sugar to taste. Serve.

Grab a blender, some berries, a container of yogurt, juice and some peanut butter and get ready to make some real simple smoothies. Smoothies are a staple in our house during the school year. Now that it’s summer we’ve been eating more whole fruit and less smoothies, but these recipes would be good for families on the go during the summer.

Berry Smoothies 

A couple handfuls of your favorite berries. Some good choices are raspberries, strawberries, blueberries and blackberries. Frozen berries work, too.

1 container of yogurt. We use vanilla, but you can use any flavor.

1 banana, sliced.

1 tablespoon of peanut butter. For more nutrition, use natural peanut butter with flaxseed and Omega oils.

1/2 C. favorite juice. We use Minute Maid blueberry pomegranate.

1 C. crushed ice

Fill the bottom of the blender with the juice, yogurt and peanut butter. Top with berries and the banana. Pour ice on top. Blend well. If mixture is too thick and blender slows down, add more juice.

Chocolate Banana Peanut Butter Smoothie

1 sliced banana

2 Tbsp. peanut butter

1 C. chocolate milk or chocolate ice cream

1/2 C. crushed ice

Mix all together in a blender and blend until well mixed. Top with chocolate syrup.

Oh, what a day! Today was my monthly stock up day. That means the kids and I hit two bent and dent stores to stock up on dry goods for dirt cheap, hit the regular store for a few things we can’t get elsewhere, and then hop on over to Aldi’s for the rest of our shopping. If you aren’t familiar with Aldi’s - and I wasn’t until we moved to Missouri -  you bag your own groceries. Now there is a reason I never applied as a bagger when I was young; I stink at bagging groceries and keeping the eggs and bread in one edible piece.

On the way out the door, the bread falls off the top of the bag where I’d so carefully placed it to keep it from getting squashed. For some reason my husband has this idea that your bread shouldn’t resemble a squished piece of foam when you make a sandwich, so I work hard to keep the bread in bread form. Well it falls and takes down the can of cinnamon rolls in the process. We hear a “Splat!” and then a “Boom!” as the cinnamon roll can pops its lid. Luckily none of the roll had touched the ground. I pick up the can and look back at the loooonnnngggg line we just left and tell the kids we’ll just make the rolls when we get home. Cinnamon rolls are our Sunday morning treat, usually.

One thing I didn’t know was that the longer the can stayed open, the more the cinnamon dough oozed out the top. By the time we got home, two of the rolls had completely unraveled and were hanging out of the can like two dead worms covered in cinnamon goop. I knew making the rolls was a lost cause. But not one to waste money on food, I pulled the strings of gooey dough out of the can and proceeded to make cinnamon twists. They turned out pretty good, actually. There was one roll left intact at the bottom of the can, so we got 4 twists and 1 roll from our cinnamon roll explosion. The best part was the giggling and squeals that came from the back seat as the cinnamon ‘rolls’ continued to crawl out of the can. Next time, the rolls are going on the bottom of the bag!

I thought I’d start a food joke of the week just for laughs. I hope you enjoy reading all the food funnies!

 A woman visits her mom in the nursing home. It turns out that she is taking a nap, so she just sits down in a chair in her room, flips through a few magazines, and munches on some peanuts sitting in a bowl on the table.

Eventually, the mother wakes up, and her daughter realizes she’s absentmindedly finished the entire bowl. “I’m so sorry, mom, I’ve eaten all of your peanuts!”

“That’s okay, dearie,” her mom replied. “After I’ve sucked the chocolate off, I don’t care for them anyway.”

 I especially liked this joke because it makes me think of the time my daughter licked all the icing out of the cookies and put them back together. I grabbed one and ended up with a mouth full of dry cookie and mildly wet icing.

Strawberries are in season and if you don’t grow your own, then you know that they’re at the cheapest they’ll be for the next month or so. Now’s the time to stock up and make jelly, pies and other sweet strawberry treats. Unfortunately, we’ve depleted our homegrown stock and are back to buying berries from the store. But since I can get them for .99 a carton, I’ve been stocking up and making simple desserts with them. One of the kids favorite strawberry treats is our easy strawberry cream cake.

The only thing I do for this is cut the cake into layers; the kids enjoy layering all the berries and cream.

 1 Sara Lee frozen pound cake, thawed and cut into 3 layers

1 container whipped cream

Strawberries

Spread bottom layer with cream and add berries. Top with middle layer and repeat process. Finish with top layer replaced. Then cover the entire cake with the remaining cream and cover with strawberries. Keep chilled until ready to serve. You can have this on the table in under 5 minutes. This is a great last minute dessert for company, or when your kids have friends over. Enjoy!

My family and I are currently working on cleaning our cabinets and fridge of ‘killer foods’ -foods that contain harmful chemicals to keep them fresh or make them taste good. We’ve reduced the amount of foods with high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, white flour and an over abundance of sugar. We’ve started eating things sweetened with cane juice or fruits. Overall, we do feel better on our new ‘diet.’ One thing that still makes its way into my kids’ mouths is that dreaded bad news nugget. I decided to do a little research on these so called all white meat chicken nuggets served so readily at one of the most popular fast food restaurants, (ya know the one with the big, golden arches and friendly clown mascot?) If you’re like me and occasionally find yourself telling your kids to “finish your nuggets before you can open your toy,” you might be interested in this.

A 4pc. serving of nuggets has 207 calories with 118 of those coming strictly from fat. It has a total of 13g of fat, with 3 of those being saturated. It also has 34mg. of cholesterol. Nuggets are also full of synthetic ingredients like dimethylpolysiloxene-say that 3 times fast-which is a known carcinogen. It also has tertiarybutylhydroquinone or TBHQ. This is added to preserve freshness in a very limited quantity as regulated by the FDA. Why is it regulated? Because 1 gram of this causes nausea, vomiting and in severe cases collapse. Five grams or more can kill. I don’t know about you, but it will be a cold day in hades before I tell my children to finish their nuggets again.

My daughter had an ice cream party with her playgroup today. The rules were that two moms provided the ice cream and everyone else brought a topping to share. Of course par for the course in my house, we forgot our topping. It was okay though because there was more than enough to go around. However, I was amazed at the number of different toppings. I expected an overload of sprinkles and oreos, and while there was a fair share of both of those, there were also some different toppings.

I’m not an ice cream lover. I eat it ocassionally if I take the kids out, but if I never ate it again, it wouldn’t bother me. That being said, some of these toppings might seem run of the mill to you if you eat a lot of ice cream. But some topping brought for the kids included:

Colored and flavored marshmallows

Chocolate covered cookie dough candy

Chocolate and butterscotch chips

Crushed Andes mints

Crushed peppermint

Oreos

M&M’s

Sprinkles

Nuts

Red Hots

Crushed peanut butter cookies

Gummi bears

Colored sugar

Crushed waffle cones

I hope this gives you some ideas for a future ice cream party you might have with your kids. If you have a favorite topping not listed here, let me know about it!