Kid Appeal

Food with Kid Appeal wins Titanium Spork Award from Mrs Q

2011-09-16T07:10:00.000-07:00

This week two programs I was involved with in the 2010-2011 school year, Eat to Learn and the lower sugar in school meals pilots have been recognized. Twice! External validation is nice!

Once
Mrs Q from Fed Up with Lunch awarded me a Titanium Spork for my efforts at a Spring Branch ISD elementary school. Thanks for the nod Mrs Q! Thanks to Dana Woldow of PEACHSF, Bettina at The Lunch Tray, Central Restaurant Products and Christina at Spoonfed for the love in the comments of the nomination post!

Twice
In January of 2011 right after the massive success of the Taste Off, I nominated our principal as a Lunch Box hero. I got a response this week! Can you believe that?? The Lunch Box has offered the November Lunch Box hero spot to Sherwood Elementary's principal. Congrats! I'm delighted the Eat to Learn story and the folks who brought the program to life have an opportunity to be showcased on Chef Ann Cooper's blog!

It's important to recognize the educators and administrators who find time in a busy academic school year to get children some much needed education on healthy food and healthy bodies. Educators are uniquely qualified to take a child from can't-do-it to can-do-it. Every won't-eat-vegetables child out there could be brought to vegetable acceptance by a gifted and enthusiastic educator!

To each and every teacher, librarian, and school administrator that educates the whole child, thank you. You are all heros for the part you play in helping a child grow and maintain a healthy body. Like literacy, health is something a child can take with them and enjoy for their entire lives. What a precious gift you give to children!

Do you know a classroom or school house hero? Leave a comment, brag a little about the educators that are helping children claim their health. Who knows, you might just inspire a teacher or three to talk to their students about the importance of eating healthy food.

Kids Konserve Canvas Lunch Sack - Giveaway

2011-08-06T13:21:00.000-07:00

We are on the countdown for back to school. I'm thinking of what to pack in lunch boxes. I'm thinking of how to stay green with lunch gear. I'm thinking of getting my kids all the nutrients they need to power their brain for a day of learning.

Green Your Lunch Gear
Annie’s Homegrown, Stonyfield YoKids, Honest Kids, and Seventh Generation have teamed up to help families toss their brown bags this back-to-school season by offering a free Kids Konserve lunch sack to four Food with Kid Appeal readers.

Winners will get a brown reusable canvas bag similar to the one pictured above. Inside are coupons for four free products from Annie's Homegrown, Stonyfield YoKids and Seventh Generation. It feels very sturdy, I think it would hold up to weekly washing. If your kids are like mine, lunch boxes often comes home messy. It's hard to remember to securely put the lid on the applesauce container every day when you're 5! It's roomier than a paper sack. Plenty of room for a sandwich, veggies, fruit and water bottle.

These re-useable lunch sacks are washable and made of recycled cotton and eliminate a great deal of waste that would otherwise occur from the use of daily paper or plastic lunch bags.

For more re-usable lunch gear including insulated lunch sacks and stainless steel containers, head on over to Kids Konserve.

To win leave a comment on this blog post with the answer to this question and your email address.

What healthy brain boosting food do you add to your child's lunch?

The fine print
The contest closes at midnight August 13th . I will draw 4 winners and notify the winner via email. The winners will have 48 hours to claim their prize by responding to the email. Your email address should be in this format. jenna AT foodwithkidappeal DOT com.

Disclosure
I received a lunch sack to review. The opinions here are my own.

Making Food Preparation Fun for Kids

2011-07-13T13:26:00.000-07:00

[Ed Note: This is a guest post from Angelle of NourishMD.com.]

As a mom there are some things I feel so great about and other things I wish I did much better. You too, I'm sure.

I do a great job feeding my kids REAL food everyday. I am always working on getting better at the planning and prep part, which makes life so much easier when I do it. It also brings my food bill down. So, I'm springing into action (again). I’m back to scheduling the time to plan and prep for the week. I like to involve the whole family in some aspect of prepping the week’s food. My kids love to cook and when I'm organized it's so fun to get them into the kitchen with me. The life lessons are so rich. They learn more about REAL food and about how people who want to be healthy have to think ahead and have REAL food ready to go. They get to apply all the math they learn at school so they can stop asking me, "When am I ever going to need to know about fractions?"!

They also learn how food feeds not only the body, but the spirit. I talk with them about making sure to include the most missing ingredient – vitamin L (Love) - into the meals and snacks they are helping with. It's so funny because often when we are eating together and I try to have them guess what ingredients are in the meal or snack, they always remind me that I added lots of vitamin L too!

Planning and prepping healthy meals and snacks can be stressful at times. Like everything else, 90% of the stress comes from our response to the situation. I’m always working on 'reframing' the planning and prepping and seeing it as a time to involve the kids more (again), and Mike too. We could easily make it a fun family time if we choose too. I recently heard a 14-year old chef on the radio who said he became passionate about cooking because he started cooking with his mom and dad everyday when he was really little and it was fun for the whole family. They chose to make it fun. We can make it fun, right?

My kids are 9, 9 and 11, so they are definitely old enough to do a lot in the kitchen. Some of the prepping they do (when I ask them to do it) includes:

· Making a big batch of trail mix.

· Washing and cutting vegetables.

· Baking whole grain cookies or muffins.

· Scrambling a dozen eggs for egg roll-ups.

· Cooking taco meat.

I would love to know what you have your kids doing in the kitchen? It’s never too early to start them on their own REAL Food journey!
~Angelle

Some of what's on the Batten Family menu this week:
Breakfast: lightly poached eggs on a bed of spinach with avocado; Smoothies (of course); Overnight Pancakes, Taco Salad, Apple Cole Slaw w/ Turkey
Lunch: Taco Salad, Salmon Salad on Greens, Salsa Salad w/ quinoa, beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, cheese cubes and salsa, Apple Cole Slaw
Dinner: Roasted Chicken, Layered Bean Dip w/ Chef Jackie's Taco Seasoning, Michigan Chicken Salad
Snacks: Vegetables, Fruit Kabobs, Trail Mix, & Chocolate Coconut Raw Bars, Banana Bon Bons from our REAL Snack eBook

Angelle is a Holistic Health and Parenting Coach who helps parents navigate how to feed their families REAL food and solve health and parenting problems holistically. Along with Dr. Susan McCreadie, a holistic pediatrician, she shares her expertise and her own parenting journey at www.NourishMD.com. It’s not always pretty, but it’s always REAL!

Cow, Bucket, Milk, Farm to Table Game

2011-06-14T19:26:00.000-07:00

[Ed Note: This is a guest post from Angelle Batten, HHC, MEd, of NourishMD.com]

We have a family ritual of giving thanks before each meal. Sometimes it’s rather routine, and other times it feels more alive. During those times, we often talk about the food we’re about to eat (or maybe have all ready started to eat before everyone else if you’re one of my eight-year old sons). We talk about how nature has such a variety of colors – how could there be so many shades of green? Or, about how a particular food was grown – on a vine, in the ground, on a tree? Maybe how an animal was raised – did it get a chance to wander around the farm and eat the kind of food that would have made it healthy and happy, or did it suffer on a farm without seeing the light of day and get force fed grains instead of grass? These feel like some of the most important conversations we have. I want my children to make the connection between their food and their health and the health of the planet. I want them to be grateful for their food. I want them to begin to feel a responsibility to themselves and to our Earth when making choices about what to eat.

A few years ago, I was teaching a group of elementary school children about where different foods come from. When I asked where hamburger comes from, a little boy shouted, “McDonalds!” And he was serious. When I pushed him to think about where McDonalds gets the meat to make the hamburgers, he wasn’t sure. I’ve since realized that lots of children are not aware of where food comes from and it gets even more complicated when so much of the food kids are eating is actually Fake Food – from a science lab or a factory farm.

There are a zillion things we are trying to teach our kids and we each prioritize them differently. One of the things I know though is that you want your child to be healthy. Another thing I know is that what your child eats either contributes to his or her health or to creating illness. So, maybe this season, with the abundance of fresh and local foods, you’ll be inspired to think even more about where your food is coming from and also how to ‘eat a little closer to home’.

One way to teach your child more about where food comes from and how it gets to your table is the Farm-to-Table game.

While sitting around the dinner table, you say a farm-related word such as "cow". The next person says a word connected to the previous one. Continue taking turns until you finally reach the word table. For example: cow, farmer, milk, cheese, store, refrigerator, lunchbox, table. Connect as many words as you can before you reach the final destination of the table. Then go back and fill in some steps. i.e. add grass before cow and bucket before milk, etc. Help your child learn about all the people, equipment, and places involved in getting REAL food from farm to table.

Eating locally – from your own garden, a farmers’ market, a CSA, or a roadside farmer’s stand – gives you so many opportunities to have conversations with your children about where our food comes from, how it affects our health and about how farming practices impact the health of our planet. The more conversations we can have with our kids, about anything, the healthier and happier they will be. Talk, eat, and enjoy each other’s company even more than usual this season.

Angelle is a Holistic Health and Parenting Coach who helps parents navigate how to feed their families REAL food and solve health and parenting problems holistically. Along with Dr. Susan McCreadie, a holistic pediatrician, she shares her expertise and her own parenting journey at www.NourishMD.com. It’s not always pretty, but it’s always REAL!

Kids Need Healthy Bugs in Their Stomach

2011-06-08T11:54:00.000-07:00

photo credit: truth about health

[Ed Note: This is a guest post from Dr. Susan McCreadie of NourishMD.com]

I often feel like a broken record in my office:

a healthy digestive tract is essential for health.

A little background on this topic - then I'll talk about how sugar throws off a healthy balanced gut.

We are living organisms and hosts to billions of microorganisms [bugs]; they are on our skin, in our respiratory tract, and line our gastrointestinal and genitourinary systems.

100,000 billion bacteria live in our digestive tract -

that is 10 times MORE than ALL the cells in your body!

What are all these bugs doing there? They are stimulating a healthy immune system, decreasing inflammation throughout the body, and promoting an effective gut barrier (keeping the disease causing organisms and more out). The beneficial bacteria can also help lower cholesterol, reduce allergy symptoms (eczema, asthma, hay fever, food allergies). But there's MORE - beneficial bacteria also help prevent diarrhea, constipation, irritable bowel syndrome and lactose intolerance.

The question is: Does your gut have plenty of these healthy bacteria?

The food we eat dictates the type of flora in our intestines. For example, breastfed babies have mostly bifidobacterium (1 type of beneficial bacteria), and after food introduction, the flora changes. By 2 years of age, a child's flora is similar to an adult.

Fruits & veggies are important to keeping beneficial bacteria counts HIGH

You knew it had to be true - yes it all comes down to eating lots of fruits & veggies. The reason why one of the risk factors for colorectal cancer is a diet high in meat and low in fruits & vegetables is because with higher meat consumption, other bacteria such as bacteroides predominate.

It's all about balance. Which brings me back around to sugar. Like meat, sugar isn't bad - it's just too much sugar throws off this healthy balance of beneficial bacteria. Other critters like some forms of yeast and non-beneficial bacteria may become a problem with too much sugar in one's diet.

The goal is to tip the balance in favor of beneficial bacteria/yeast; this makes it difficult for the harmful competitors to survive!

Hip-hip hooray to veggies! In my family I make sure to prep veggies every week so they are always available for snacks and meals. Some of the veggie prep I do regularly includes washing and chopping cucumbers, celery and carrots; steaming broccoli and baking sweet potato fries. Spending a little time each week doing this means my three girls (and I) will be feeding those healthy bugs inside every single day!

Dr. Susan McCreadie is a board certified pediatrician who practices holistically. You can find her along with Angelle Batten, HHC, MEd, at www.NourishMD.com. She shares her expertise and her own parenting journey – not always pretty, but always REAL!

Summer Adventure to Heal Allergies, Asthma and Migraines

2011-06-03T07:40:00.000-07:00

this is what the boys toothbrush drawer looks like

Have you noticed I haven't been posting many recipes or any kind of posts of late? Sorry about that. I've been distracted by all the learning and preparing that goes on before you make a major diet shift.

Today we start an elimination diet, a very restrictive elimination diet. This diet will change the landscape of breakfast, lunch and dinner around here for a while. I'm embracing all the change. Our whole family is doing this elimination diet as an alternative to all the steroids my sons inhale and squirt every day to keep them out of the hospital during the pollen months.

In the 2010 allergy season, big boo woke up abruptly with a deep cough that made it hard to go back to sleep. He missed many days of school, and we spend a good bit of time at the allergist office. One visit the doc said "I'm glad you brought him in this morning, any longer and he'd be in the hospital with a collapsed lung." In the 2011 allergy season, little boo had many nights where he woke up coughing and I thought it was croup. Little boo has has croup ever 4-8 weeks since he was one. I was told he'd grow out of it by 4, but he's 5 now and croup episodes seemed to be getting worse. It wasn't just that seal cough, now his breathing was gurgley. It sounded like he was breathing water. One night was particularly scary, when he woke up he couldn't stop coughing. We tossed our shoes on and ran to urgent care. I was told they'd stabilize his breathing and then transfer him to the hospital where he'd be admitted for more breathing treatments. Luckily, even though his blood pulse oxygen level was low at 87%, he responded well to the nebulizers and oral steroids and he was able to go home home with the directions to head right back to the ER if his breathing began to get labored again. Both boys, narrow miss of hospital. Eek.

The boys and I also suffer with frequent headaches. Mine are actually less frequent, than when I was a kid but more of them are migraines. There don't seem to be too many days when one of the three of us don't have headaches. When little boo was 4 he started getting migraines. That broke my heart. If there is any way for me to give him a life without migraines, I'm doing it. Migraines are a kill joy. I suspect food triggers, so we'll see if we can solve that mystery too while we're on the elimination diet.

Angry about Food
I've spent many months wondering why our clean diet hasn't been enough to keep my kiddos healthy. I've questioned whether or not the resources we've spent both in money and time to prepare food from scratch have been worth it. Why go to the trouble to eat clean food, if you don't benefit with good health? Here we are with asthma, allergies and chronic headaches. If clean food doesn't work, then what does? After reading Dr Bock's book and Dr Natasha Campbell McBride's book, I actually feel overjoyed that my family has invested in food the way we have. I believe now that if I hadn't been so careful about what we eat, my kids health would have deteriorated faster and instead of involving mostly their respiratory system it might have impacted their neurological function more. Thankfully we are not dealing with learning disorders, both boys are at or above school milestones and don't seem to have any trouble functioning in the school environment.

As an asthma parent you hear all the time that kids grow out of their allergies/asthma. Of course I hope that's the case for them. And if they don't? Little boo didn't grow out of croup when he was supposed to. I'm not very hopeful they are going to follow that path. What if they are the kids who don't grow out of asthma/allergies? Like the kids who approach early adult hood and all the sudden the steroids they've been sucking up all their childhood stop working and the fall prey to a virus or pneumonia and end up sick sick sick in the hospital or worse, dead. I can't leave their health in the hands of fate, hope and Rx drugs.

I don't want my kids to maybe grow out of allergies and asthma. I want them to heal from allergies and asthma. Is that possible? I don't know. Some people claim to be healed from allergies/asthma after they remove trigger foods from their diet and/or heal their gut dysbiosis.

I'm placing my faith in the healing powers of the human body, and food to put our allergies and asthma behind us. I honestly don't know if we can heal and get off all the puffers, immunotherapy, steroids and nose squirts. I don't know if it's possible for my kids to enjoy spring instead of spending the cool, blooming months hacking and wheezing and working hard to stay out of the hospital. But I have a lot more hope that their bodies can heal than in the Rx drugs getting us through the 15-20 or more allergy seasons between now and the age where they might grow out of asthma. My dad had mild asthma. It onset in early adolescence and by the time he was in his mid 20s he could leave his puffers behind. Big boo was diagnosed at 3 years old, and Little boo at 4 years old. They have almost a decade on daily meds before they even get to the point where their grandpa started taking medication. The medications don't control symptoms forever.

Blog Posts May Be Spotty
I can't predict what this summer will be like for us. I know I've got a busy business to operate and a lot of learning to do in the kitchen. I know we'll all be busy getting healed. Anything that isn't work or healing related may get shoved to the back burner, including the Food with Kid Appeal Blog. I'm sure I'll eventually write about our experience on the healing diet, but I'm not sure I'll have the time or energy to share as it's happening. If our bodies do a truly amazing thing, and heal from allergies, and headaches I won't be able to keep it a secret. It's hard not to share understanding, especially the kind of understanding that could relieve many families of the fear, anxiety and discomforts of living with a chronic illness.

GAPS program
The elimination diet we're following is the GAPS program which is based on the SCD diet with a few added directives. GAPS and SCD are well written about so if you're curious about our healing diet, you can poke around and read many of the online resources covering these programs.

What are You Cooking?
There is always an open invitation for readers and bloggers alike to share stories of your recipes, your feeding the family challenges and successes. See here for more details on how to submit a guest post, story or article.

Keep Your Promise Kids - Eat What You Asked For

2011-05-20T06:12:00.000-07:00

Usually when you I do reader polls I get a variety of answers because family meal dynamics are so different for each family. I was shocked when I gave moms a chance to complain about their biggest feeding the family obstacle and the vast majority of complaints were along the same vein. Kids complain about much of what is served, even when it's stuff they've requested.

This is a maddening experience for any home cook. You can't please them even when you give them what they want.

To be eligible to win the Meal Makeover Mom's cookbook No Whine With Dinner, I gave moms a chance to whine. I asked them,

What's your number one complaint about cooking for kids?

This entry came in this morning.

My biggest complaint is that my girls (3 and 6) often won't eat meals that they CLAIM to like! We will let them each choose a meal for dinner some weeks, and more often than not, they end up not eating what they requested.

Promises Kept
Dinner requests are a great time to illustrate the value of making and keeping promises to young children. Our brains are fickle. Humans change their minds all the time. It's a tough lesson to learn that each being can't get everything they want all the time. Choices matter. Once you make a choice and it is acted on, that's it. See your choice through. Meals are a perfect window of opportunity to illustrate the power of choice. Because we eat three times a day, if their choice backfires on them it's only a few hours until they get a chance for a redo. How many choices that you make as an adult have that kind of flexibility? Adult decisions often have no opportunity for a redo, or if a redo is possible it is days, weeks, months or years before you can redo your choice. What happens if you change your mind about your major in college? Or your choice of employer? Or your choice of neighborhood?

Kids can have all the desires and preferences they want, they do need to learn that just because they want something doesn't mean it's possible for their care-givers to give it to them. Resources are always constrained. Sometimes there aren't enough hands on deck to pacify each desire, sometimes money is a constraint, and let's not forget time. Who has time to prepare a special order meal for each family member at the table?

Make a Promise, Keep a Promise
If you ask your child what they want for dinner, and you prepare their suggestion, it's on them to keep their promise and eat it. You can do this in a loving way, nurturing, guiding way. You don't have to shove the food in their face and say "you asked for it, now eat it,"

Remind your child that you gave them a chance to choose dinner and you cooked to their request. Tell them you did your part. You promised you'd make what they asked for. Set the expectation that they do what they said they'd do. The child's part is eat what they asked for. Let them know that choosing dinner is a privilege given to kids who keep promises. When mom knows kiddo will keep their promise to eat, then mom is more likely to continue to take suggestions and recommendations from kids on what's for dinner. When kids show mom that they won't keep their promise and eat what they asked for, then mom can go back to being the decision maker about what's for dinner.

When giving this lesson verbally isn't effective and you still get complaints, the next step is to remove the privilege. To the child who complains about the food they asked for say "I understand that you changed your mind about dinner. You asked me to make spaghetti and I kept my promise. Since you are not able to keep your promise and eat it, I will be deciding what we have for dinner for the next X days/meals. I will give you another chance to choose dinner in X days/meals. You can show me that you know how to keep your promise and then you can choose what's for dinner again." For a younger child, do less meals/days. For an older child do more meals/days.

Don't Forget to Keep Your Promise
If you set a consequence, follow through with it. Kids are learning rules and exceptions every day. If you teach them that mom is making an exception to the consequence by allowing your child to choose food before the consequence time is over, you are showing your child that exceptions to this rule are allowed. They will learn that under certain circumstances it is OK to complain about a requested dinner.

Kids need to understand that dinner resources (time to prepare, ingredient inventory, cost of food) aren't unlimited. The family meal can not reasonably be a buffet each time you sit down. Kids don't always get to eat exactly what they want. They will be OK if they eat something that doesn't match their fickle food wanter. Kids can get nourished by eating what's available, and there's always another meal later that may be more appealing.

To read the whole lot of whining from moms, check out this post. It's not too late to enter for a chance to win the cookbook No Whine with Dinner.

No Whine with Dinner - Cookbook Review and Giveaway

2011-05-18T18:46:00.000-07:00

I think I tweeted across Liz Weiss during my very first week on Twitter a couple years ago. Flash forward a couple years and she and co-author Janice Newell Bissex have released their second cook-book, No Whine With Dinner.

The Meal Makeover Moms involved their readers in the book. Brilliant! They polled readers about the obstacles that come between healthy food and kids and learned that complaints about what's for dinner was the top concern. Then they asked readers how they solved that problems at their kitchen tables. What resulted was 150 make-over recipes featuring the sage advice of a diverse group of home cooks who, after years of serving up dinner had figured out a few tips and tricks to get more dinner down the hatch, and less whining at the table.

Janice and Liz lined up 12 of their favorite mom bloggers to contribute a recipe. Yours truly can be found on page 192 with a recipe for a family favorite One Pot Sausage, Potato and Green Beans.

What I like most about No Whine with Dinner is the inclusion of real world tips from different families. Each mom-kid dynamic is different. What works for one family might crash and burn for another. With lots of sage advice from been-there-done-that moms every parent is sure to walk away with a handful of actionable strategies to get more wholesome food to disappear.

Why does it have to be so hard to get a kid to eat something they don't want to? Kids don't want to clean up. They don't want to go to bed on time. They don't always want to do their homework. That's why they have parents. To make sure they are doing the things they need to do in order to grow up healthy and literate. Growing a good eater is one of the most important gifts you can give your child. No Whine with Dinner can help you accomplish that goal.

The other bonus? Some cookbooks are either too sophisticated for most home-cook's skill level in the kitchen, or they are way far down a path that many home cooks are just beginning. I'm guilty of that myself. I swear by local produce and pastured animals. My recipes feature mostly things I can find locally at the market. I know most people don't cook like I do. The Meal Makeover Moms do plenty of every-day classic cuisine all healthed up a bit by more wholesome ingredients. Their recipes are accessible to parents who haven't been cooking since childhood. They are written out step by step so even a kitchen novice can follow. They are neither fussy, nor needlessly ambitious. They are delicious meals you can reasonably get on your table in betwixt school, work, baseball and playdates. They are meals kids can learn to eat.

I'm bummed I didn't get to write this review as I planned it. I was to pick out three or four recipes, make them with my kids, shoot pictures then publish one recipe, gushing about the results. That's the perfect review and giveaway that may never see the light of day. This is the gettin' 'er done review and giveaway. (Sheepishly, I'm more than six months over-due with publishing!)

You guys still get your chance to win a copy. I just didn't get a chance to share my experience cooking my way through some of the pages of No Whine with Dinner. Boohoo.

I can tell you the recipes that made my short list. When I do find time to play around in the kitchen, these are the ones I want to try. I've never roasted leeks. They are in season in Houston now. Maybe next week!

Piping-Hot Peanut Butter Soup
Coconut Chicken Fingers
Greek Chicken and Chickpea Stew
Roasted Cauliflower with Crispy Leek Rings

For a chance to win the cookbook, No Whine with Dinner, leave a comment with your email address and the answer to this question.

Your turn to whine. What's your number one complaint about cooking for kids?

For an additional chances to win,
1) "like" me on Facebook and tell me you did so in the comment section.
2) like Meal Makeover Moms on Facebook and tell me you did so in the comments.

The fine print
Only separate comment entries will be counted for extra entries. If you want more than one chance, leave more than one comment. The contest closes at midnight CST May 25thm 2011. I will draw a winner and notify the winner via email. The winner will have 48 hours to claim their prize by responding to the email. Your email address should be in this format. jenna AT foodwithkidappeal DOT com.

I received a free copy of the cookbook No Whine with Dinner in order to perform this review. The opinions expressed here are my own.

Eat to Learn - Feed Your Brain Apples, Cucumbers, Grapes and Spinach

2011-05-16T18:56:00.000-07:00

This is a round up post for all the Eat to Learn morning announcements I've posted thus far on Food with Kid Appeal. During the course of Eat to Learn, 20 different foods found on the Spring Branch ISD school lunch menu were featured. Each week nutrients and micronutrients in these food items were linked to brain function to illustrate to students that food fuels their brain.

Students read the announcements which were broadcast in each classroom most mornings from October 2010-April 2011.

Do Eating Habits Change When Kids Hear Nutrition Education at school?
We have limited data, but the data does indicate that kids are choosing more fruits and vegetables from the cafeteria line. Fresh fruit acceptance rose by 14% and raw broccoli acceptance rose by 80%! From what parents tell me, it's working. I've heard about kids who are now happily munching carrots, celery and spinach at home. Parents claim these are new fruit and vegetable eating habits for their children. One child told his mom "Cucumbers taste a little bit like watermelon." Sometimes kids just need to have a mental barrier lowered to empower them to taste a new food. Once they taste it, most realize it's not so bad, and maybe even, delicious.

Eat to Learn: Apples
Eat to Learn: Spinach
Eat to Learn: Grapes

Eat to Learn : Cucumbers

Day 1 Cucumbers contain Vitamin C. Vitamin C enters into brain cells easily. Once Vitamin C is in your brain it protects brain cells. Vitamin C protects neurotransmitters from bad oxygen (oxidation). Cucumbers are a defense shield for your brain.

Day 2 Eating fiber helps to remove toxins from your body. Your brain doesn’t work well when toxins build up. Cucumbers are a good source of fiber. All fruits and vegetables contain fiber.

Day 3 Magnesium is a mineral in cucumbers. Magnesium is needed in every cell in your body. Magnesium helps your brain in a special way. Magnesium helps your brain focus and pay attention.

Day 4 Cucumbers contain Potassium. Potassium channels are key elements which control and shape electrical activity in the brain and determine memory and learning. To learn and remember a lot of facts, eat sliced cucumbers plain or in your salad so your can get lots of potassium to your brain.

Day 5 Sliced cucumbers are on the menu today. Grab some on your tray and feed your brain.

Here’s the wrap on cucumbers:

Vitamin C in cukes gives your brain a defense shield
Potassium in cukes makes your brain learn and remember facts.
Magnesium in cukes makes your brain focus and pay attention
Fiber in cukes helps move toxins out of your body so your brain doesn't get foggy.

So, what do you think? Will kids eat vegetables when they know veggies make them smart?

This post is participating in Real Food Wednesday.

School Food Reform 101

2011-05-16T05:39:00.000-07:00

Chicken patty, bun, chocolate milk and "Sour Chery Natural Cooler." A healthy lunch according to USDA school lunch regulations. Elementary students in SBISD can choose a hot sandwich and chocolate milk every day if they want to.

[Ed Note: Update May 16th, 2011, I have updated this page to include Dana Woldow's new website, PEACHSF.org. If you work in Coordinated School Health or are on your district's Student Health Advisory Council (SHAC), or hope to make a difference in the health of school kids, you'll want to be familiar with Dana's work.]

This is post is for anyone new to school food reform. First let me say warmly,

welcome to the cause.

You are very much needed. Kids in every school district need you to advocate for them. They come to school ready to learn and before they even hit the classroom, breakfast - whether at home or at school is wreaking havoc inside their body. Lunch is often no better. The typical school and home breakfast and lunch made up of processed foods with additives and sugar do not support a student's brain for a day of learning. Processed foods are not the kind of fuel a student who is about to attack literacy or algebra needs floating around in his blood stream.

Before you make "to-be" suggestions, understand the "as-is"
In order to be effective in your efforts to reform school food, you'll need a good understanding of the school food "as-is." You'll need to understand how the school food service group in your district operates, what regulations/contract language it's required to follow, and how the average school food program got to the heat-and-serve model. Once you wrap your brain around the as-is, you can work with other parents to call your campus, district, school board and school food director to action.

I've been focused on school food reform for a year. Most of my "free" time is spent reading studies, research, books on the topic and scouring the web for case studies of schools districts that have successfully implemented meaningful school food reform. You will not learn everything you need to know this week, or this month. Next year, you will still be learning things. There will be times you look in the mirror and think:,

why am I doing this,
why this is so hard,
I wish I was a better negotiator,
a more skilled public speaker,
I'm not even sure better food for kids will ever result.

Keep plodding along. It's true that there might be folks out there with skills that would enable them to influence school board members better than you, but if they aren't on the team, you are better than no one doing the advocating. Keep at it, you'll get better as you learn.

Remember, the kids need you. They deserve an advocate. They deserve a chance to live a fulfilled life as a well adult. I liken wellness through a real food diet to literacy. We would not expect a child to go far without literacy, the basic building blocks for earning a living. Yet we don't expect the same with health. Too many people assume they can feed kids garbage and health won't suffer. Without good health, kids can't learn up to their potential.

Please, become a nation builder. Advocate for more real food for students in your school, district or community. This is a good use of your time.

Where Do I Start?
The subject of school food is complicated. It is not as simple as “change the menu to include healthier items”. Many factors including budget, resources, equipment, feasibility, reimbursement regulations, nutrition standards, commodity items, acceptability (if the kids will eat it) and participation (do kids buy vs brown bag) all make it very challenging to make changes that fit constraints, are implementable, meet regulations and are accepted by kids.

Resources and Recommended Reading
Here are some resources I recommended to my district's newly formed School Food Reform subcommittee to our District Student Health Advisory Council.

Don’t worry if you don’t have time to learn all this today, this week, this year. Bookmark this page and come back to it when you have time to dig in. I’ve been focused on school food reform for eighteen months and I’m still learning!

Parents Educators and Advocates Connection For Healthy School Food (aka PEACHSF)

Dana Woldow of San Francisco USD's Student Nutrition and Physical Activity Committee has documented her journey to better school food on the committee's website. In the spring of 2011 Dana released a new website, which for is a roadmap for parents, educators and advocates to guide folks helping students get healthier to get some much needed changes on campus. Follow Dana's advice and you'll learn how to stir the pot productively with as few set-backs as possible. Follow PEACHSF on Facebook, you can like their page by following this link.

She has been generous with her time to direct me via email on how to initiate programs both at a campus level, with our Child Nutrition Services group, as well as advice on how to get the attention of our School Board. In the future, I will share her counsel on this blog for your reference. I appreciate her "continuum" perspective. She has a good "as-is" and "to-be" frame of reference, is a realist, and knows that the journey from A to B takes time. She celebrates the milestones toward the to-be, while taking the next step along the continuum. Here is a power point she uses to demonstrate accomplishments and upcoming initiatives to tackle. For a good chuckle, see how Dana hold schools accountable for adhering to the wellness policy. See her Shame On You report.

Dana's how-to guide to "Making Friends With Your Nutrition Services Director" is a must read for anyone who expects to do anything but make noise about how bad school food is.

Better School Food
Better School Food is a non-profit organization of parents, educators and health professionals that bring awareness to the connection between good food, good health, and a student's ability learn effectively. Founder Dr. Susan Rubin (of Two Angry Moms) has been advocating for better school food for more than a decade. She's learned some lessons and is a leader and authority when it comes to overcoming obstacles that stand in the way of school food improvements.

Dr. SuRu has an Action Plan for parents who want to get involved. I particularly like her counsel to "improve food IQ" as a starting point in the journey of better school food for kids. Although her counsel that improvements could take 10 years or longer are very sobering, it may in fact be reality. Doesn't that suck for students just entering grade school? They will be almost done with school before they have decent food that doesn't harm their health at school. Why must it take 10 years to get more real food and less chemical additives in school food? Why must another generation of kids suffer potential life-long ill health?

Parents who send brown bags need a higher Food IQ too.

The Lunch Tray

The Lunch Tray is a School Food Blog written by a Houston ISD parent, Parent Advisory Committee

and Student Health Advisory Council member, Bettina Elias Siegel. Their management of their school

food program is outsourced to Aramark.

This link has a collection of articles and a book list for those “new to school food reform.”

Here is a TLT interview with a school food consultant providing an answer to the question “can self operated schools really serve scratch made meals on the same tiny budget for processed food”

If you are active in your school's PTA/PTO, Student Health Advisory Committee or a member of school food reform initiatives, you should subscribe to her blog. Bettina publishes 1-2 articles daily, and saves me a bundle of time having to go chase down relevant information about new legislation, studies, and case-studies of schools who are making school food improvements.

The Slow Cook

Ed Burske is a journalist. On his blog, The Slow Cook, he has written reports on three districts that have

successfully made meaningful school food reform (at least two of these schools used Kate, the expert in

the lunch tray interview). In addition to the case studies for Boulder, Berkeley and DC, he also

publishes articles relevant to school food reform legislation, and student health. I also recommend

subscribing to his blog to keep school food reform issues on your radar.

Boulder’s story here

Berkeley’s story here

DC’s story here

Myth-Busting; Elementary Students Do Like Vegetables
Sherwood Elementary offered 9 vegetables and fruits to 400 students. Guess what? 82% of them tasted all 9 kinds of produce. 48% preferred a vegetable over a fruit. 25% preferred a green vegetable over carrots, oranges and pears. This is a great way to raise the food IQ at your school. Hold a campus wide tasting event, and let students prove school food service folks wrong about the "acceptability" of fruits and vegetables. It didn't cost that much either. $400 will buy enough produce and supplies to feed 400 kids 9 kinds of produce. Read about Sherwood's Taste-Off competition here.

More Resources?
If you blog about school food reform, or are a member of a council or committee who has been working on school food reform and been successful with meaningful school food reform and I have left you out of my resource list, please leave a comment and details. I'd be happy to include more resources and success stories on this page.

Share Your Story
Guest articles on the topic of school food reform are always welcome here on Food with Kid Appeal. Contact me at jenna@foodwithkidappeal dot com with your story. Let's tell stories of how kids do get healthier in the public school system. Let's bolster everyone's confidence that when you give a kid an apple, he will eat it.

Best wishes in your journey towards school food reform. Keep me posted on your progress. Nothing steels the resolve of a school food reformer like hearing about another school's success.

Smiley Star Omelet Recipe

2011-05-11T05:32:00.000-07:00

[Ed Note: This is a guest post recipe from Food with Kid Appeal Facebook fan Karen. See how she turned around her daugther's sudden refusal of eggs.]

I'm Karen... I've followed your Facebook page and blog for 2 months now (or maybe more) and I love them! I also live in Houston. I have a 4 year old daughter. She goes to preschool and I prepare her lunch every day. Thank God she's not a picky eater!

I admit it can be difficult to find the inspiration to cook everyday.

Smiley Star Omelet Recipe
ingredients
one beaten egg (salt and pepper to taste)
one slice of tomato
green beans sauteed in olive oil with onions
a sheet of nori seaweed, cut into heart shapes.
ketchup

directions
Heat a skillet over medium heat. Place pancake mold in pan. Add beaten egg to the mold and cook until the egg sets. Remove mold and place star omelet on a plate Using a craft punch out, make heart shaped seaweed eyes. Place eyes on star omelet and draw a smile with ketchup. Serve with sliced tomato and sauteed green beans.

Kid Appeal Tip One day my daughter decided she didn't like eggs anymore, except in cakes and crepes "because they are in the batter." I found this idea online and it did the trick.(stay tuned for link to inspiration recipe).

Check an international or asian market for the seaweed. It's called Nori or sushi wrappers and looks like this.

Do you have a simple fun way to plate food that gets real healthy food down the hatch? Share with the Food with Kid Appeal gang. Send your photo and recipe to me at jenna@foodwithkidappeal.com.

This post is participating in Kelly the Kitchen Kop's Real Food Wednesday.

Real Food for Dummies - Getting Started (Q & A)

2011-05-09T07:13:00.000-07:00

I get questions on my Facebook wall from fans on a regular basis. If you're not new to Food with Kid Appeal, you know I often have major problems keeping my commentary short and sweet. I could get an advanced degree in the priciples of being concise, and I would probably still suck at it, sigh. My propensity to ramble is an issue on Facebook where status updates have a word limit (I hit them at least once a week!) When that happens I move the question/answer to the Food with Kid Appeal Facebook discussion tab.

Often the question bears repeating on the blog, so here is Jaci's question, and my answer. I know I didn't think of everything, so if you have tips to share on how you get your transition to healthier, real food started, share some advice in the comments.

Question: I'm a working mom of 2 boys (5 and 2) on a tight budget. Our eating habits aren't out of control but they definitely are not where I want them to be. I just don't know where to start... it all seems so daunting. Can you point me to the 'healthy eating for dummies' section ?? :)

Jenna's Answer:
1. Take a deep breath. Implementing a change from the standard american diet to a real food diet involves a lot of moving parts. There is much work to be done, but you will do the work one step at a time. Don't focus on what you haven't gotten to yet. Take one step at a time. In one year you will have made a lot of progress.

2. Make a list of the changes you want to make. Put them in priority order. Determine how frequently you can implement a new change. If you work and have young children, you might be able to manage one change per 1-2 months. If your kids are older and you work inside the home, you might be able to take on three changes a week. Be kind to yourself. You will make progress in the time you have available. You can't go faster than is humanly possible. There is a list of some of my kitchen goals in this post (scroll to the bottom).

3. Be committed to the process. It will require effort. It will have a huge payoff. There will be complaints and obstacles along the way. Just remember, you are doing the right thing. Convenience food will damage your family's health. They are used to eating their current diet, but they will in time appreciate the way real food tastes. Education and nutrition (wellness) are the two biggest gifts parents can give to their kids. It makes a whole lot of sense to spend time in these two areas, even if you often don't think you know what you're doing! You have plenty of time to learn. In other words, don't give up on your family's wellness when you hit an obstacle. Dig deeper, get over the obstacle and move forward. Set backs are temporary if you get up and continue.

4. Where to start? Proteins, fats, grains, fruits, veggies, nuts and seeds oh my.
Fats and proteins are very important nutrients for your family. Most of the fats and proteins you can find at the conventional grocery store are tainted with hormones, antibiotics and come from animals who eat a diet that makes them sick (animal meat, dairy) or are overly processed and essentially dead by the time you consume them (fat, conventional milk). These two food groups support normal brain function (education, mood, behavior) and support all the major organs in the body. Get fats and protein straight first. Farm eggs top my list. They are relatively affordable, usually accepted by kids and quick to prepare. They are very nutrient dense and easy to digest. We eat eggs almost every day. Next would be milk. Buy organic to avoid hormones, antibiotics and GMO feed. If you can find low temp pasteurized go for that.
Clean water is key. It should be toxin free and contain minerals. Invest in a water filter when it fits in your budget.
Do produce next. Herbicides and pesticides are used to grow mass produced fruits and veggies you can find in a big box grocery store. On top of that, the soil these crops are grown in are stripped of many of the vital minerals your cells need to function. Buying organic is good, but getting produce from a farmer's market, from a farmer that uses sustainable or organic farming principals is best. Here's a thread on FB more about what to buy at a farmer's market .

Grains are hardest for most people to digest and for some people they cause more harm than good. I would work on reducing the frequency of grains, but when you do serve grains, make sure the majority of them are as whole, organic, and unrefined as possible. At dinner I focus more on organic, non-gluten grains like rice than gluten grains like wheat. Wheat is so easy to consume in our food culture. Things like breads, pizza, crackers, pasta, baked goods etc, are hard to avoid at a party or restaurant. Why repeat that nutrient at dinner, especially when it doesn't add that much value to your overall health?
5. Find a reliable source of recipes. I have over 100 free real food recipes on Food with Kid Appeal. My cooking style may not suit your fancy. No worries, there are tons of good real food recipe sources online. Find a blog or site you like and subscribe via email so you don't miss newly published recipes. To subscribe to Food with Kid Appeal recipes, click here. That link will get you an RSS or email subscription.

Hope this helps! Come back if you hit an obstacle. That's what the Food with Kid Appeal community is for. Support for you during your transition to serving your family more real food. Leave a question on the Facebook wall or leave a comment on a blog post. I'll answer as soon as I can.

Alright peanut gallery, it's your turn to chime in. How did you kick off your transition to real food? What advice would you give to someone about to start that journey? What's one thing a newbie with time and budget constraints should do, and one thing they shouldn't do? Leave a comment, help a fellow home cook.

Chewing Gum - Dye Free, Chemical Free

2011-05-04T07:13:00.000-07:00

After my Natural Easter post, I got several inquiries about the artificial dye free, chemical free, additive free gum the Easter Bunny brought for the boys.

Here are the deets. I bought two kinds from the online Natural Candy Store. Wee Glee Gum and Tree Hugger Gum Natural Bubble Gumballs. The boys liked them both, neither had a preference for one over the other.

I confess. I was a Chiclets Gum addict as a child. At least part of every dollar I was given or earned as a child went towards a Chicklet Gum purchase. Tiny size Chiclets were my favorite. I would dump out the packages. Sort by color. Experiment with flavors. Do they taste better all mixed up, or a mouthful of pink together? I had an old margarine tub I used to keep my opened uneaten gum in.

It was funny to watch the boys do the same thing at 6a on Easter morning. Must be some kind of childhood instinct. Dump out the little pieces. Organize by color. Ascertain flavor of colors. Taste colors separately and together. They didn't do that with the Smarties (european M&Ms made without artficial dyes) I bought. The dump, sort, taste is only appropriate for gum. Mysteries of the young brain.

Check out the ingredient list for Chiclets. No mention of chicle included, even though it is the namesake ingredient. Head scratcher that one is. List doesn't specify what is in the "gum" base.

A word of warning. Natural gum is stickier than modern gum. I taught both my boys how to chew gum without swallowing and playing with it before their second birthday. Until this year, they have never created a gum mess. Not a single gum in the hair, gum on the clothes, gum in the car incident. But with this gum, little boo has gotten it all over his clothes and skin twice! You'll have to teach your kids to take it out of their mouth using a tissue. If they touch it with their hands, or pull it out like a string and pop it back in their mouth, it will be a mess. Tip, rub oil on their skin to wipe it off. Hubby did the gum laundry, so I don't know how he resolved that mess.

If you end up buying from Natural Candy Store, would you be so kind as to use this link to execute your purchase? When you do so, I earn a referral coupon for sending you their way. If you like, set up a friend plan of your own, then you can share the link on your FB page and earn referral coupons too. It's helps to put a dent in the price of natural candy and shipping costs. I only buy 2x a year, Easter and Christmas, but still. If you'd asked me two years ago if I would pay $50 on candy annually, I would have said never, ever, ever.

Non-toxic gum and candy : $50. Keeping toxins out of kids bloodstream and brain, priceless.

My local natural foods store, Georgia's, sells a brand of gum called Spry. It is sweetened with Xylitol. I'm still on the fence about Xylitol. I don't use it in beverages or baking, and this is the only product I buy that contains it. It may be safe, I just haven't done my due diligence on it, so I'm (mostly) avoiding it for now. I like to keep a pack of Spry with me so I have something to offer the boys when they see other people chewing chemicalized gum. Most parents wouldn't serve their kids diet soda, because they know that artificial sweeteners aren't recommended for kids. But most people don't think twice before sharing their gum junked up with artificial sweeteners and phenylalanine with kids. I'm just as guilty as everyone else. Before this year, I too served chemicalized gum to my kids. Now I know better so I'm doing better.

I'm working on another post that answers the question : What's the big deal? It's just a little artificial sweetener, why is that so bad for my child? Stay tuned. Disclaimer, I have a "post topic" list a few pages long, and an insane work and family schedule at present. No promises when I can have it ready, but I will get to it.

This post is participating in Real Food Wednesday, hosted by Kelly the Kitchen Kop.

We Grew Our Own Vegetable! Sugar Snap Peas

2011-05-03T05:57:00.000-07:00

Pea plants are sneaky. They grow and unfurl and attach to themselves and pieces of string. For weeks they don't get much taller. They don't blossom when you expect them to. You expect them to die before they blossom and fruit, and plan how to deliver the sad news to the kids. But then, they surprise you. They double their height.

While you weren't looking they blossom.

Baby peas begin.

Even a big one with a hat!

Thanks boys for caring about the life-cycle of a plant and remembering to water the herbs and veg! Thanks Science Night at SBISD! Thanks Auntie and Uncle for the pea plant survival 101 course! Thanks hubby for procurement of supplies and repotting! The Peppers just grew their first veggie ever. Yum. Crunch. Happy day.

Mom Congress on Education and Learning Talks School Lunches

2011-05-02T05:34:00.000-07:00

[Ed. Note] This is a guest post from Melissa Taylor of Imagination Soup. Melissa reached out to me after she read my post Better School Food - Every child, lunch box or lunch tray, deserves it. It's encouraging to see that in the education community a conversation about the link between food and learning is underway. Melissa is a former elementary classroom teacher. Good stuff. Check out her report on school food talk at Mom Congress.

Mom Congress on Education and Learning hosted by Parenting Magazine and Georgetown University invited one mom-advocate delegate from each of the states and D.C. to talk about educational issues. The conference surprised me with it’s rigor – most meals included speakers even. One of my biggest take-aways was what’s happening with school lunches – from Mrs. Q. and Jamie Oliver.

Mrs. Q.

Do you know about Mrs. Q? She’s the teacher who ate school lunches for a year and blogged about it. We got to meet her at Mom Congress and listen to her story of average mom to leader-activist. She explained that as a busy mom and teacher, she never had time to make her lunch. So, she ate at school, then decided to blog about it, and as a result, became an activist for improving school lunch in our country.

“It’s actually not just food – it’s everything. It’s the basis of learning,” she told us.

And, the scary thing, that if it’s the majority of what many low-income children eat, their basis for learning sucks. Instead of building brain function on whole-grains, fresh produce, lean proteins, the kids and Mrs. Q. are eating processed, high-sugar, high-saturated fat foods. Not much of a building block for learning.

Mrs. Q.’s Call to Action

1. Educate yourself.

2. Get others to join you.

Eat your school lunch. Invite others to join you for lunch. That will convince other parents more than talking or blogging. Just try it. Watch the kids and what they’re eating and what they’re throwing out.

3. Take a stand for better school lunches.

Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution

I’m sure you know about Jamie Oliver and his passion for improving school lunches across America. We were treated with lunch and some words of wisdom from Oliver's staff.

dishing up $.66 per head lunch, photo: Parenting Magazine

Oliver’s chef cooked us a "school lunch" for $.66 a person – and it was delicious. Barbequed chicken thighs or drumsticks, rice and veggies. The point was that it can be done – you can feed large amounts of children fresh, healthy foods without a huge expense.

Personally, I love Oliver for what he’s doing to make changes in school lunch. What never ceases to amaze me is the resistance he’s up against – and not just by the school lunch ladies, but by the parents of students. Really?

But, on his latest episode, he shows parents what the ingredients are in the lunches their kids are eating. Doing so convinces the parents and they join him in rallying for change. You can see it all on his reality show, The Food Revolution, Tuesday’s on ABC.

You can find out more about Oliver and The Food Revolution on his website.

Jamie Oliver’s Call to Action

Get the facts. Resources here. Tool Kits here.
Support the staff.
Mobilize a team.
Start with the basics.

School lunches aren’t going to change. Not unless we change them. We as parents must advocate on behalf of all children, children who don’t have a voice, who don’t have lobbyists, who are depending on YOU, ME, US.

The Mom Congress Resource Center

More from my experience at Mom Congress at http://imaginationsoup.net. Search for "mom congress."

Bio: Melissa Taylor writes about education-related topics at her award-winning playful learning blog, Imagination Soup, and for publications such as Scholastic Parent and Child, Babble.com, Colorado Parent Magazine and others. She's the Book Editor-at-Large for Colorado Parent Magazine, writing their book review blog, Bookmarkable and is a certified teacher with a M.A. in Education.

Recovering Picky Eater Challenge - April 2011

2011-05-01T07:07:00.000-07:00

If you've been reading for a while, you know that a few months ago, a nutrition instructor used the recovering picky eater challenge with her students as a class project. I was honored. My work, as a project in a college class?!? You just never know what will happen when you evangelize about the benefits of a real food diet and develop tools to help more people get hooked on real food. To read more about Sally Kuzemchack MS, RD check out her blog, Real Mom Nutrition.

Sally plans to use the challenge at the start of each course. The intent is to show students the power of a the mind when it comes to food preferences/tolerances. After all, "food isn't nutritious if it isn't eaten," says Brian Wansink in this article.

What a recovering picky eater pledge needs to do
1. Think about all the foods you've hated forever.
2. Pick one. A nutritious one (no, bagels don't count as nutritious). You will be using your brain and the way you think about food to change your mindset about that food, it's texture, smell, taste. You will be digging into the "why" it is repulsive to you, and replace the negative thoughts you have about the food with positive ones.
3. Eat your challenge food at least once a week. Keep trying new recipes, preparations until you find one that isn't repulsive. Mindset shifts take time. If it doesn't work on the first try, keep trying. Here is some reading that will help you make the mindshift.

Find A Way to Like Food You Hate - Actionable Steps to Take
Bend your Mind, Like a New Food - Create new positive thoughts about a food you hate

4. "Like" the Food with Kid Appeal FB fan page and look for the RPEC status update every Sunday. You can share your experiences, success, failures and see how others managed to overcome their food aversions.

What counts as "nutritious"?
Fruits, vegetables, nuts/seeds, animal proteins, dairy, healthy fats (coconut oil, olive oil, fats from animal products if the animals eat their natural diet and are raised organically) are all nutritious. The average American already over consumes soy, corn, wheat, grains, so do your health a favor and don't challenge with one of those items. Do your health a favor and get organic animal products if budget allows. If you're not sure if your challenge food is nutritious leave a comment and I'll advise.

Try not to challenge a "reactive" food. Sometimes we avoid reactive food in childhood because they make us feel bad. Your brain is smart. It will protect you even in childhood, if you listen. Eating reactive foods (also called food in tolerances) causes inflammation in the gut. You don't want to inflame your gut. Your gut is the only vehicle you have to nourish your cells, when it's inflamed you can't get nutrients to your cells and organs and they start malfunctioning. The malfunction may seen benign at first but over time it builds up can cause some annoying disorders like migraines, allergies, asthma, learning/attention disorders, mental health deficiencies, constipation, IBS, diarrhea and more. So listen to your body. If your eczema gets itchier, your throat feels scratchy, your nose gets congested or your notice your tummy is roiling after you eat your challenge item, that's a good sign to discontinue it, at least temporarily. For example, I recently discovered that conventional strawberries are reactive for me. Organic berries don't make me react, but conventional ones do. I'm guessing the pesticides used during their cultivation are irritants to my immune system and cause nasal congestion and a flare up of eczema.

Most hated foods are not reactive foods
More often than not you have avoided a food in childhood for other reasons that to avoid inflammation and tummy distress. You avoided a food because you couldn't tolerate the texture, smell or taste. Or it was introduced to you during some time of distress (health or emotional). Your brain linked the food with the distress, when really there is no link. Or you didn't have a real food advocate in your life and so no one ever taught you that yes, indeed you really do need to eat real nutrients to fuel your body or your body can perform and function optimally. If your parents took the "they'll eat it if they want it" route and never really expected you to eat protein, fat, fruits and vegetables you may have grown up eating on the foods you wanted to eat, instead of the foods that would fuel your body for a well life. Don't worry, it's never too late to learn to like real food. Even the pickiest eaters can reform. I did. You can too. The good news is, you can say good bye to annoying conditions like IBS and trouble maintaining weight, just by eating more real food and less processed food.

Will you Pledge to become a Recovering Picky Eater?
Are you with me? Are you tired of saying "no tomatoes" to the waiter when ordering a side salad at a restaurant? Are you ready to leave the hypocrisy bag behind when you serve veggies to your kids but won't eat them yourself? Are you ready to stop avoiding baked chicken because the bones creep you out? Are you ready to embrace the mouth feel of raw crunchy carrots or nuts? Is there a dish your spouse loves that you can stand because it contains onions or a feared vegetable from childhood? If you are ready to leave your picky eater label behind, leave a comment on this blog post in this format:

Hi, I'm (your name). I pledge to learn to like (disliked food item) in the recovering picky eater challenge.

To leave a comment, scroll down to the bottom of this article, click the comment link that looks like this

Posted by jenna at 5:20 PM 0 comments

Disclaimer : Forgive typos, kids are ravenous, gotta get started on breakfast, I'm already a week late on this deadline, it's publish now or drop the ball.

Growing A Good Eater - Ask Your Question

2011-04-25T19:46:00.000-07:00

Come out, come out wherever you are! There is a place you can ask questions about how to grow a good eater. The Food with Kid Appeal Facebook fan page. How many times have you read a picky eater article, employed the tactics and had them fail? How many times have you given up on getting your kids off the kids menu and onto an adult palate? How many times have you vowed to rid your pantry of meal helpers and cook from scratch until the logistics got the better of you and you went back to convenience? How many times have you found yourself in a menu rut and need new ideas for dinner? There is hope. You can get over the obstacles. You just need a community to support you. You need to know how other families are doing it, and you need to know what works and what won't work for your unique situation. You need atta-girls (guys?) to keep you going. You need a group of 2685 other parents trying to solve the same problems to get you back on your feet and on track.

I started the Food with Kid Appeal Facebook page a year ago with less than 50 fans. These 50 fans were my personal FB friends who wanted to "like" my fan page and a few blog readers who liked the page. The reach of FB is astounding. Just by conversing on FB every day for a year, the community has grown from less than a 100 to nearly 3000 people. I'm honored to have the opportunity to have such a reach with the real food for real health for every child message.

I didn't really know what I was doing when I first started my Facebook fan page, and I was hesitant to do it. I was already having enough problems keeping up with how to leverage Twitter, and spending far too much time online. 2685 fans later, I'm glad I did. I discovered that I could get a better conversation going on Facebook than I'd ever been able to do in the comment section of my blog, or the forum that I had to shut down because it got over-spammed and required too much maintenance.

I cherish the FwKA facebook community. It's a place for me to rant about articles I read, and draft future blog posts. It's a chance to hear from other parents who are facing the same challenges as I am, how to grow good eaters in this world where factory food is thrown at kids right from the baby food aisle to kindergarten.

Have you liked FwKA on facebook yet? I hope you come interact with me and 2,685 other like minded parents there. Whether you're just getting started with feeding a toddler (bless you) or you're trying to convert your mac-and-cheese loving child to food that isn't sold in a box or shiny wrapper, you'll find a support group of parents who are all trying to do the same thing, and hitting some of the same obstacles as you.

On the Food with Kid Appeal Facebook Fan page you can:

Answer the WFD aka What's For Dinner thread. Every night between 4:30-5p CST I let the gang know what I'm fixing for dinner, and fans share their dinner plans. The WFD thread makes me salivate and gives me plenty of ideas for what to make when I'm in a rut.
Answer the QOTD aka Question of the Day thread. Every morning around 8a CST I ask a question to the group. Sometimes it's about a particular ingredient, or feeding the family practice. Often I poll readers for their best piece of advice on feeding toddlers or teenagers.
Ask a Question on the Wall. You can leave me a question about a problem you stumbled across while feeding the family. Fickle toddlers, picky preschoolers and stubborn gradeschoolers can throw parents a plethora of curve balls.
Request recipe or ingredient help on the Wall. You can request help with a recipe or ingredient on the wall. I often put an APB out to the gang to see what the other ideas come up. I don't always have the best answer.
Post a picture of your kiddos in the kitchen. I love to see what your kids are cooking and eating with you.
Help me reach more families. When you interact with me on FB your friends see what we're talking about. They may get curious and come check out the dialog. They may like the page. They may lurk for months, or click through on an advice post or real food recipe. I know in my heart that every kid needs better food in order to become healthy adults. I don't want a single child left off the real food train. Most people just don't know what is in the food they're eating and serving to their kids. Even when they do know what's in it, they don't understand the serious health ramifications of a routine processed food diet. I want every parent to know their child is capable of learning to eat and be nourished by real unprocessed food.
Share an article with me and get my reaction. The FwKA community often wants to know what I think of school food reform news, food dye news and other real food issues.
Hear from me more frequently. I post on FB almost every day often several times. I do unplug on some weekend days when I just need a break or have a lot going on with family. With my two contracts and busy volunteer schedule I'm lucky if I can get one or two blog posts published each week.

Interact by leaving a comment on the blog
Of course you can always interact with me here on the blog by leaving a comment. The best thing about leaving a comment on the blog is that your words get attached to the blog post for all future readers to see. That makes the blog post a much richer source of information when readers hear my two cents, and the experience and perspective from my readers.

If you've ever felt isolated in this world of feeding real food to kids among all the cereal box marketing, kids menus, ginormous chemically dyed cupcakes at birthday parties; come out, come out where-ever you are. Come talk with us over on the Food with Kid Appeal Facebook fan page. We don't bite. We love to help.

Want tips on how to grow your FB fan page? Heather of Freebies 4 Mom has created a PDF called Fabulous Facebook Fan Page with plenty of How-Tos. Thanks for all the tips Heather!

Natural Easter

2011-04-20T14:24:00.000-07:00

A natural Easter; it's too much to expect, I know. Family gatherings are usually pot-luck which usually means only some of the menu is real, nourishing food. I'm on hyper-alert this year because now instead of one kiddo with allergies and asthma, I have two. Little boo had what appears to be his third "asthma attack" over spring break. We ended up in urgent care and narrowly missed a hospitalization.

The more I peel back the onion of why kids get allergies, the more I realize that diet is one key factor. I want to have fun at family gatherings, relax and enjoy a meal with the family. But more than that I don't want overindulgence of sugar, refined grains and yet unknown reactive foods to further compromise my sons' already compromised immune systems. Nor do I want their brains bombarded with toxins from chemical food additives and dyes found in junky candy or convenience food. Even in moderation.

Easter, the egg holiday
I've proposed to my sisters we eggsperiment with dying eggs using different foods like red wine, fruit juices, onion skins and chlorophyll. I think it will be fun. Thanks to Christina at Spoonfed and this food science how to round-up of turning eggs from white to colors, I have instructions for a fun-filled natural kid activity at my fingertips.

Speaking of eggs, where do yours come from? I feed my family local farm eggs from pastured hens when at all possible. If I'm doing a large amount of baking I buy organic eggs from the grocery store since I rarely have enough farm egg supply to feed the masses. If you're unschooled on the difference between grocery store eggs and farm eggs, here's a post with the many reasons why I go to all the trouble to source and procure farm eggs for my kids' brains. Eggs = brain food. I want only the best brain food available for my kids. Hint: animals are what they eat, ingredient list for "conventional" hen feed included. Only click through if you seek the truth about what's in an egg. You might not like what you read.

I hope to get another batch of real homemade organic chocolates made before we head over for Easter celebrations with the family. Hubby nearly passed out when he thought I intended to put these chocolates in the boys' Easter baskets. I assured him it was a recipe for the family to enjoy, made lovingly by me, not a treat from the Easter bunny.

The Easter Bunny spent entirely too much money on confections from The Natural Candy store. I intend to let them gorge on however much sweets they want, as long it's from their Easter Basket stash instead of the junk they may get from everyone else. I found some additive free gum. The boys now have a small stash of gum that doesn't contain artificial sweeteners, phenylalanine, chemical food dyes and who knows what else. Don't people read ingredient lists?? Please, if you know my kids, don't offer them your chemicalized gum. Their brains thank you.

This post is participating in Real Food Wednesday, Pennywise Platter and Life As Mom's ultimate recipe swap for Easter.

Got a home made candy recipe using real ingredients and free of additives and chemicals? Share your link in the comments. It will probably end up in a future natural candy recipe roundup!

How will you celebrate Easter naturally?

Better School Food - Every child, lunch box or lunch tray, deserves it

2011-04-14T08:13:00.000-07:00

My brain is busy trying to keep up with the state of the union of food in schools in our country. My brain hurts. My heart is heavy. I am livid. I am distraught. I am worn out. I've been numb for two days. Good thing emotions are temporary, and I'll have my sea legs back before too long.

It is hard for me to understand how our great nation could harm human health with food additives, genetically modified foods, and government sponsored nutrition education that is based on profits versus nourishment. Many people don't know where their food comes from, because it is so unfathomable that food would be anything but nourishing. Sure we know desserts and fried foods aren't healthy, but food? You wouldn't expect food like your ground beef or your whole grain breakfast cereal to be health damaging.

It just doesn't make sense. How did we end up here where we soak meat in ammonia and make brown food browner with food dyes? What are the consequences? Is it too late for us to clean up the food supply and get healthy? Are food industry practices contributing to the decline in health of our children in the past 2 decades?

Unless your food came from a farm, you better double check what's in it, where it came from, what it ate or where it grew, and how it was transformed from a plant/animal to something boxed or shrink-wrapped before it ended up on your plate. Then decide whether or not it's fit for human consumption.

Here's where I'm at today, two days following the season premier of Jamie Oliver's 2nd season of Food Revolution. Here's where I'm at more than one year into my efforts at my local elementary and district to get kids better food at school.

If you feed kids, its on YOU
No one, parents, school staff or government staff has the right to trash a child's health or intelligence by feeding them factory food as a rule. Children shouldn't eat food made in a factory for every breakfast, snack, lunch and dinner. Children rely on adults to get their nourishment. Every adult, whether they are school staff, govt member, parent or someone who feeds kids on occasion, should be educated about the truth of what's in that factory food and how it can damage a child's health and brain.

Big Kids Big Brains?
I'm not talking about oversized kids here. I'm talking about kids whose brains can't learn and stay focused long enough to accomplish a task. Those kids will eventually be employees and parents. Imagine trying to keep a toddler safe when you can stay focused long enough to finish a task.

I'm talking about kids who have allergies, asthma, ADHD and GI disorders like GERD, IBS, constipation. Those condition aren't normal. Your child should not be suffering from any of those conditions. If you don't fix the food they eat, they will most certainly suffer from those conditions long term, and possibly much worse as they get older. Is that OK with you? That is not OK with me. Not for my kids. I want them well and their brains to become huge complex thinking orbs that can solve hairy problems and get stuff done. If I give my kids those two things, a well body and a big brain, then I've done my job. They can become anything.

It doesn't matter what the child wants to eat, or likes to eat. Children want all kinds of things that are not in their best interest. That is why they have parents and teachers and community outreach centers to protect them. You are the adult. You figure out what fuels a child's body for health and wellness and what does not.   You do some research on the internet about what macronutrients a young body and mind need to learn and grow (right-sized). Don't know what an excitotoxin is? Do some digging. Decide if these food additives are safe for your family, students or customers to eat. Don't know about the link between artificial food dyes and attention and mood disorders? Read up on it. Decide whether or not your family, customers and students should be consuming dyes that the FDA now agrees are harmful for some kids. They still won't warn you that you should think before feeding to your kids everyday in the form of colorful yogurt, breakfast cereal, cupcakes and flavored medicines and multivitamins.

Do you think your child or student wants to be so distracted he can't sit still and learn? Don't you think your child wants to use her big powerful brain to learn lots of fascinating things? What if you could make a huge change in the way a child's brain works by feeding him mostly real food with food made in a factory as sometimes food? Would you stop buying convenience foods except for special occasions?

It's on you as a citizen
If you feed children, you need to get it right. Children are our future. Children are our ticket to continued prosperity. Our country needs children to be well because they are the guardians of our government, economy, and earth when we leave. Our children deserve to have brains that function properly and bodies that are right-sized and well.

Want to take action?
Head on over to PEACHSF for some of the best "how to change school food" road map tools I've found. Parents Educators & Advocates Connection for Health School Food can help you get started on doing your part to help our kids get the food they deserve.

How do you feel when you read a food industry story or learn of something in food that shouldn't be there? What do you do about it?

Real Easter Chocolates - Simple Anyone-Can-Do-It Organic Recipe

2011-04-11T20:31:00.000-07:00

easter chocolates

This was supposed to be a real chocolate for valentines day recipe. My first recipe was a flop, not suitable for the camera. Life intervened and I didn't have time for a do-over. Thankfully there are two chocolate holidays in the first third of the year. Behold the Easter Chocolates.

I stumbled on this recipe when I was looking for a yoga video from Kathryn Budig. I ended up watching Kathyrn make chocolates instead of doing yoga that morning. Thanks YouTube.

She doesn't list any amounts in her video, so I had to guess. I guessed wrong on the oil. The chocolates actually tasted great, they just didn't look great, and they had an oily flavorless layer at the top.

You must plan a trip to Whole Food or Trader Joes or wherever you find your coconut products and pick up a stash so you can make these simple, delish treats suitable for any ~~night~~ holiday. If you don't have molds you can pour the chocolate mixture into a shallow pan (think fudge).

don't look too close, you can see my finger prints..

Real Chocolates - home-made, pure yum Recipe
based on Kathyrn Budig's video recipe
Ingredients
4oz Coconut butter (I used Artisana found at WF)
2 TBSP coconut oil
2 TBSP + 2 TSP raw honey (more if you like sweeter chocolate)
1/4 cup almond butter
1/4 cup cacao powder ( I used Dagoba found at WF)
1 tsp cinnamon
2 dashes cayenne pepper (it won't taste spicy, it will taste, um, more chocolaty)
1/8 tsp of ancient sea salt (it won't taste salty, it will taste more chocolaty)
2 plastic chocolate molds (I got mine at Hobby Lobby)

directions
In a double boiler (or in a metal bowl over a sauce pan of simmering water) melt the coconut butter, coconut oil and almond butter. Add the cacao powder, cinnamon, cayenne and salt. Stir to combine. Do not let mixture get too hot, just hot enough to stir. It will be a bit thick like a batter. Spoon chocolate mixture into molds. Flatten mixture so it is even with mold. Place molds in freezer for 15 minutes to set. Pop chocolates out (use a knife if necessary) and store in air-tight container in fridge. They melt at room temp, keep them chilled until serving.

brainy chocolates

According to Kathyrn the recipe is forgiving. Leave the almond butter or cinnamon out. Put dried fruit in. I have a bag of walnuts I'll be making into chocolates next week. I haven't tried too many variations yet, but I can tell I will always want to have a batch of these for an after dinner guilt free dessert. I think the recipe could take a little more oil, I'll add 4 TBS next time and see if that works.

Kid Appeal Tip If you've been trying to find a way to sneak more raw coconut/ coconut oil in your child's diet, this is the perfect vehicle. Why not give kids a chemical dye-free treat that will help their brain instead of harm their brain as is the case for some kids when they eat candy with artificial food dyes?

Do you make your own chocolates? I'm new to this, what's your recipe?

Baked Apple Puff Recipe The Whole Family Cookbook Review and Giveaway

2011-04-11T05:41:00.000-07:00

Just out of the oven, puff already deflating a bit

Read on for a chance to win Michelle Stern's new cookbook, The Whole Family Cookbook. Also included in this post is her Baked Apple Puff recipe that can go either a breakfast, brunch or dinner direction.

The Whole Family Cookbook Review
I appreciate cookbooks written for me. By that I mean, written for a real food eating, environmentally conscious, growing good eaters family cook. That's who Michelle is too, so that's what you'll find in her book. Recipes you can make with your family, for your family. Recipes kids enjoy making with their family and don't mind eating. Recipes that meet the requirement of being both nourishing and earth friendly.

Michelle teaches cooking classes for kids. In her book, she teaches parents how to bring kids into the kitchen as a strategy to get kids hooked on locally grown foods. Each recipe instruction bears a colored triangle that indicates the recommended age a child can be to manage the task. This is a great cheat sheet for parents who haven't yet let kids into the kitchen. I know there are dangerous things like knives and heat in the kitchen and precaution should be taken, but that's no excuse to make the kitchen a no kid zone. Riding bikes can lead to scraped knees and broken bones, but I don't know many parents that avoid bike-riding because an accident may happen.

Ranging from age 2 on up to over 11 years, Michelle guides you to which recipe tasks are appropriate getting kids involved in the food they're eating before it shows up on the plate.

The Book is Beautiful and Delicious
The photography and recipes are compelling. I rarely find so many recipes in one cookbook I want to try. The book has a way of saying "this should be on your table. Soon."

The Book is a Guide
One of my favorite parts of the book are the "teachable moments" content in the green boxes peppered throughout the book. Michelle has included dozens of tips to get kids engaged in the role of food for the the family as well as insight into why eating locally and thinking about the environment are important concepts for kids to learn.

Baked Apple Puff Recipe
Serves 4

5 TBS butter, divided
3 eggs
3/4 cup milk
3 TBSP sugar,divided
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup flour
2 small crisp apples, peeled, sliced thinly

Directions (I have condensed the steps, in the book they are broken down into kid sized instructions. Perfect for early readers and beginning cooks.)

Preheat oven to 450. Melt butter in a 10" oven proof skillet, remove skillet from heat. Whisk eggs in a bowl. To the eggs add milk, 1 TBS sugar, vanilla, 1/4 tsp cinnamon, salt and flour. Mix the ingredients until well blended and set aside. Peel the apples, core and slice thinly.

If the apples are organic hand the peelings to kids and let them munch, my boys love to eat apple peelings!
Place apples in skillet with 3 TBSP butter over medium heat and cook the apples until they brown a bit, about 5-10 minutes. Remove pan from heat, and pour the batter over the cooked apples. Sprinkle a mixture of 2 TBSP sugar and 1 TSP cinnamon on top of the batter. Place the skillet in the oven for 15-25 minutes until gently browned and puffed. (Do not open the oven during the first 15 minutes or you will lose the puff.) Call kids to kitchen before removing the pan. Let them observe the puff and watch as you slice to serve.

Look in the oven, it's puffy!

The puff will deflate a minute or two out of the oven.

Cooks Note: I made a gluten-free version of this recipe but the puff didn't puff and I had equipment error, so we won't talk about that foible. The pancake portion tasted great, but totally different than the white flour version. If I nail the recipe adaptions I'll report back. My first batch burned at 18 minutes, so watch carefully!

Win a Copy of The Whole Family Cookbook
To win a copy of the Whole Family Cookbook answer this question in the comment field and include your email address.

Tell us one reason why you cook (or don't cook) with your kids.

For an additional chances to win,
1) like What's Cooking on Facebook and tell me you do/did so in the comments.
2) like me on Facebook and tell me you do/did so in the comment section.
3) subscribe to my email or become a reader and tell me you do/did so in the comment section.
4) follow me on twitter and tell me you do/did so in the comments.
5) share the What's Cooking's blog URL or the URL to this review on your FB page and tell me you did so in the comments.

The fine print
Only separate comment entries will be counted for extra entries. If you want more than one chance, leave more than one comment. The contest closes at midnight April 20th at midnight CST. I will draw a winner and notify the winner via email. The winner will have 48 hours to claim their prize by responding to the email. Your email address should be in this format: jenna AT foodwithkidappeal DOT com.

Disclosure
I received a copy of the The Whole Family cookbook in order to conduct this review. The opinions here are my own. I think Michelle's work is amazing, admittedly, I am biased.

High Protein Potato Pancake Recipe

2011-04-05T05:21:00.000-07:00

I'm surprised this recipe made it to my breakfast table. I remember a year back, when fellow blogger Kelly the Kitchen Kop said her kids were getting tired of eggs for breakfast, she whipped up potato pancakes. I naively commented on her post, "how could you ever get tired of a fried egg, over medium on a piece of butter toast?" That was back when we had breakfast cereal in a regular morning rotation. Breakfast cereal has been off the menu for a while, and guess what?? We got tired of egg toast.

I've never read a recipe for potato pancakes, much less eaten one. I have no idea if my potato pancakes are what "real" potato pancakes are supposed to taste like. This is just how 1.5 cups of leftover mashed potatoes and 5 eggs turned into a change-of-pace breakfast for us. I will repeat this recipe with every cupful of left over potato mash I have.

High Protein Potato Pancake Recipe
1.5 cups left over mashed potato
5 eggs, beaten slightly
Salt, pepper to taste
Butter to grease the pan

Directions: Beat the eggs. Mix in the mashed potatoes. Stir to combine. Over medium heat in a generously buttered pan, pour egg-potato mixture into the pan making circles about 3 inches in diameter. (I don't think they would flip easily if they were much bigger). When egg starts to set, flip. After 1-2 minutes on side two, remove potato pancake to a plate.

They tasted like scrambled eggs and hash browns. Not quite as good as egg toast. Now that there's been a little separation between me and egg toast, it is going to taste darn good tomorrow morning. Big boo liked them a lot. Little boo was in a funk this morning and sat in front of his plate saying "don't look at me" instead of eating. I think he ate a total of two tiny bites. Boy does it irk me when he decides to go to school with an empty stomach and hungry brain. It was partly my fault. I'd snapped at him for taking too long trying to find something warm to come to the table in and missing his breakfast window. When he comes to the table chagrined, his appetite goes from sluggish to comatose. Me on the other hand, I'm hungry before the alarm goes off.

Kid Appeal Tip Don't be afraid to enforce a small breakfast even if your child is not usually hungry before school. Just like you wouldn't let your child skip teeth brushing every night because he wasn't ready to brush, condoning breakfast skipping can be a learning disaster. Students really need their brain to be nourished with protein, fat and water. Complex carbs help power the brain until lunch time. Don't expect your child to eat a lot at breakfast, but make sure they understand their brain needs fuel to learn and think. Tell them to put as many bites in their mouth as they can, even if their tummy isn't awake yet. By the time their hunger arises, they will be in class, still hours away from lunch. Avoid snack or liquid breakfasts that entice your breakfast loathing child to eat something. Their brains don't need juice or sugary cereal bars for fuel. These foods may take hunger pangs away, but they don't give your child's brain the energy and nutrients it needs for learning. In time your child will, on most days, eat a little real food for breakfast, as well as learn a valuable lesson that food = fuel and good fuel = good learning and health. You will never worry when they're off to college whether or not they remembered to eat something before taking a big test.

This post is participating in LifeAsMom's URS (simple recipes) and Nourishing Gourmet's Pennywise Platter.

This recipe is grain free, gluten free. Enlighten me. What is a true potato pancake supposed to taste like? Have in the recipe?

Get More Vegetables Down the Hatch - Healthy Recipes with Kid Appeal

2011-04-01T07:02:00.000-07:00

sweet potato chips - perfect for movie night

One thing that often stands in the way is getting more veggies down the hatch is the way veggies are prepared. Here are 5 veggie preparation techniques and 11 kid tested vegetable recipes to help move the veggies from the plate and into the tummy of your kiddo.

Over-cooked mushy, flavorless veggies are not very appetizing. So, what to do if you're not a veggie cooking expert? Learn a few veggie prep tricks that will take veggie appeal up a notch or three for your family.

Hop on over to my contributing post at Zisboombah, How to Cook Vegetables The Way Kids Love Them to learn 5 vegetable preparation techniques.

Vegetable Recipes links in the Zisboombah post include:

Sweet Potato Chips
Red Cauliflower
Oven Fries
Purple Cabbage and Pork Stir Fry
Bok Choy and Chicken Asian Pasta
Vegetable Fried Rice
Lettuce Wraps
French Rice Salad
Purple Cabbage and Carrot Slaw
Chickpea salad with Tomatoes and Cucumbers
Mediterranean Beans and Greens Salad

Kid Appeal Tip Let the question to your kids be "how do you want to eat your veggies today" vs. "do you want veggies with that?" Just like teeth brushing and bed time, kids don't always want to do what's best for their health. When kids know that veggie eating is normal for kids, and expected they will generally comply. When they complain, give them options: "The steamed broccoli looks unappealing to you? Would you rather help yourself to some raw broccoli in the fridge or and extra serving of salad?" Short of chronic gag reflex when serving veggies (which can indicate a medical issue or super-taster status) you should maintain that vegetable eating is normal, expected and necessary for your child's health and development.

This post is participating in Cooking Thursday and Pennywise Platter.

What tips do you have for getting veggies down the hatch?

School Kids Should Have Cholesterol, Fat & Produce

2011-03-31T06:45:00.000-07:00

This is a response to Kelly the Kitchen Kop's post on Weston Price Foundation's Healthy 4 Life press release and the 8 minute video of Sally Fallon Morell presenting the WPF response to USDA's new dietary guidelines. My comments will make more sense if you read Kelly's short post first and watch the 8 minute video. I promise, it won't be a waste of your time. It may be the best thing you can do this year to give the gift of physical health, and incredible brain function to your family.

The video has a good explanation of why cholesterol and saturated fats are necessary for health, especially for kids who have developing brains. Please, go watch the video, even if you don't want to read me opine about school food reform! If the health benefits of saturated fats and cholesterol are news to you, I suggest you sleep on what you hear, and follow your heart. If you feel like Sally's nutrition education may be valid, do your own research, get more information so you can decide for yourself if saturated fats and cholesterol can bring wellness to your family.

___________________ My response to Kelly's post, it's a bit informal, but I don't have time to edit....

First I'll say that I'm am 100% on board with dietary cholesterol and saturated fat as nutrient dense foods, necessary for hormone function, proper brain nourishment, weight maintenance and overall good health.

BUT. As a school food reform advocate I have to say that given the "as-is" of the current dietary guidelines upon which the school lunch program develops meal plans, the recent recommendation to eat nutrient dense foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables, and for produce to make up 1/2 your plate is a good direction for the school lunch program to go. If the cafeteria tray went from 90% low fat flavored milk, processed factory food and a couple sides of refined grains to 50% fruits and veggies and 50% low fat, factory made crap, that would be a big improvement.

Fruits and vegetables may not be as valuable as bone in meat, saturated fats, organ meat and pastured animal products, however they are not health damaging like the processed and packaged food that most school kids are subjected to every day.

Real Estate on the Plate
If kids took an apple instead of a whole wheat roll to go with their slice of pizza, chicken sandwich, or chicken teriyaki over white rice this would be an improvement right? We are agreed that it's not as good as an improvement as liver with onions with sourdough toast and pastured butter.

Because fruits and vegetables are already accepted as healthy by our mainstream medical and nutrition community, there is much less resistance to adding or increasing the availability of produce in the national school lunch program machine. Simply put, veggies are already on the menu, and putting more of them on the cafeteria line is an easy win compared to getting organ meat, saturated fat or full fat dairy on the serving line.

Kids need relief TODAY. Not in 10 years which is what it would take (if not 50) to make a paradigm shift in the food pyramid. Students simply can not wait another decade or 4 before they have better food at school. Their health is already in the toilet. Sadly, most kids, parents and health professionals won't know until the child is an adolescent, teenager or young adult that their health was damaged from the food pyramid and processed food. As a product of the packaged food and picky eater diet, I was in my early 20s before dealing with IBS pain nearly caused me a semester of bad grades at college. Luckily I quickly learned the role of food and my health and I'm healed now. For some it happens sooner. For others later. For many, they never learn that diet is the culprit of health problems, and never experience healing. They never experience wellness.

Antioxidants
The other benefit to more students and Americans increasing their produce intake is their high level of antioxidants. Our modern world exposes us to toxins in our water and air, they are in the dirt our food grows in, they are in the products we sleep in/on, skin care products. Antioxidants protect our cells from free-radical damage. Fruits and vegetables are rich in antioxidants. Even real foodies could use extra antioxidants to rid their body of the toxins in the air. Even with a clean diet and properly functioning gut and hormone system, real foodies breath garbage from the air into their lungs every day. The antioxidant dense plant based foods are especially necessary for people who don't have a clean diet.

When talking about school food reform, we must be careful to demand feasible and sustainable solutions. You can't take a program that is historically underfunded, understaffed and undermanaged and expect that it's possible to go from factory made meals one year to pasture fed animal products, whole fat dairy, light on the grains, with a side or two of "lovely" fruits and veggies.

I applaud Sally and WPF for doing this PR and advocating for children's health. It will just take more than a foundation who is educating people about what the "to be" should look like to make meaningful change on the cafeteria tray.

I would love to see WFP lead a coalition of non-profits and University research facilities in studies that link the downward academic success of american school kids to the standard american diet. Maybe then the leaders in the whitehouse, the leaders of education, leaders in the medical community and leaders in food manufacturing will say, with deep remorse, "No, profit and prosperity from the medical and food industry is not worth mass illness of our population. Our nation will find other ways to profit and enjoy prosperity than shoveling harmful food and Rx medications at our people."

Your thoughts? Does it make sense to question the nutritional value or benefits fruits and vegetables for america's school children?

Butternut Squash Pizza Recipe

2011-03-29T05:16:00.000-07:00

This recipe is a spin on vegetable pizza. This recipe is a reader submitted recipe from Ana. Want to share your recipe on the Food with Kid Appeal blog? See here for details.

This recipe is gluten free recipe since it has a butternut squash slice as the crust instead of a wheat dough. I might try these finger food veggie pizzas with goat cheese since we are temporarily dairy free. I might go with a green pesto like sauce instead of red. So many options!

Butternut Squash Pizza Recipe
Ingredients
1 large butternut squash, neck cut in half inch slices, round part cut in half and seeds removed.
1/2 -1 cup of tomato sauce, or pizza sauce
1 cup of shredded mozzerella/ paremsan cheese mix
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp healthy fat (coconut oil, butter, ghee)

Directions
*cut the squash in half inch slices until you reach the seeds (you should get squash "disks")
* use fat to grease a baking sheet or similar and bake your slices at 350/375 until they start getting golden underneath and soften. About 10-20 minutes.
* flip them and put tomato sauce and shredded mozzarella or Parmesan cheese on top until the cheese melts. Add a little oregano and voila!
* you can add anything else on top, it really works as any other pizza
* for the bottom part of the butternut squash (the part with the seeds in it), you can scoop out the seeds and bake it "face down". Once the squash starts to soften you can turn it around and fill it with tomato sauce, cooked corn and top it with cheese. It looks like a bowl so you can just eat right out of it!

Note: my kids eat these "pizzas" with the skin and all but if you don't want to eat the skin, I personally think it is easier to remove it after it is baked. Before you put the "toppings" on you can remove the skin around each slice. They come off pretty easily.

Ana's Bio

My name is Ana and I grew up in Buenos Aires (Argentina). I moved to the US with my husband Daniel 10 years ago and after living in Pennsylvania, Washington, DC and Colorado, we now live in Cypress, TX with our son (5) and daughter (2). As a child, I was raised with food made from scratch at every meal and lots of fruits and vegetables on our table everyday so that is also what I try to do with my own kids. But living in a society where artificially colorful food-like products is abundant and so readily available, it is a constant challenge to keep my kids excited about our scratch-made meals and we frequently need to review the reason why his lunchbox content looks so different from most of his classmates.

What Ana likes about Food with Kid Appeal

Your blog is not only an inspiration to try new recipes but also as reminder that I am not alone in this endeavor. A few years ago, I became increasingly interested in environmental issues and began to realize the benefits of organic/local produce as well as raw foods. Since then I have been trying to improve the quality of the ingredients I use and this spring we will be starting our own organic garden in our backyard. We are all very excited!

This post is participating in Kelly the Kitchen Kop's real food wednesday.

[Ed Note. Don't you love it when life helps you out on days when you have so much on your plate that there are balls dropping you don't even remember tossing up? Back in November I put out an APB for recipes from readers. Ana was quick to respond with this awesome kid friendly way to get orange veggies down the hatch, but she lacked a photo. She sent the photo today, and voila, I am able to cross "publish a recipe post" off my list of things to do ASAP. Thanks Ana for making my life a little easier today!]

Why I Don't Think School Food Reform = Nanny State

2011-03-24T07:17:00.000-07:00

Bettina over The Lunch Tray, posted a link and commentary to a NYT article about the childhood obesity issue, who supports government intervention, who doesn't. It got me thinking, and I ended up writing a long comment on her blog post, that I wanted to share here.

I grew up in Republican household with the belief that our great government should let our great people decide, and act on things for ourselves. I think that's a fine mentality to have about consenting adults, but for children's health, I have a different perspective.

I think a highly packaged food diet harms children. I think that kids who live with parents who are ignorant of nutrition deserve to have their schools, their churches, their community centers looking out for them. I think the government should help everyone who feeds children including schools, restaurants, churches, etc. understand what it is they are feeding kids, and what it can do to a child's health if it is not eaten in moderation. The government should also encourage organizations, and institutions feeding kids to do so in a nourishing way, not a health damaging way. The government should enable operations to feed kids real food. These kids are our people, our work force, our community. They deserve health from anyone who can give it to them.

Junk Food in Moderation
Moderation does not mean packaged cereal or a cereal bar for breakfast, a lunchable and capri son for lunch followed by mac and cheese with a hot dog for dinner, filled in with goldfish and chex mix for snacks. That is a 100% packaged food diet, and even though some of those items contain whole grains, proteins, fruit juice and are enriched with vitamins and minerals, it is not sufficient nourishment for a growing and developing child.

Why, oh why do people think that the government is trying to impose nanny state, when it is trying to protect children from harm?

A Nation of Sick People
What will happen to our nation when the majority of our current, next and future generations have serious health concerns?

I'm not just talking about medical bills and high costs of health.
I'm talking about lost productivity for working adults who spend a lot of time at a Dr office or hospital managing conditions like high cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, overweight, sleep apnea, depression etc.
I'm talking about our great nation not being able to innovate, develop and prosper because our population is too sick to thrive. That means a depressed economy, poor job conditions. I don't know about you, but I want my kids to have great job opportunities when they get out of college.
I'm talking about your kids dealing with death among their peers as young people. Dealing with early death of their future spouses, friends, co-workers. The next generation will bear a lot of grief losing loved ones before old age.

My Job Is to Feed My Kids Right
Maybe your kids are fine because you know better, but what about the other kids in the class who can't learn because their brain doesn't have the nutrients it needs to pay attention and sit still, causing classroom disruptions and making it hard for the teacher to teach all the students, including your healthy child?

Maybe your child will be healthy as an adult because they eat right, but what happens when their best friend who ate a packaged food diet and their boss at work and uncle have serious health concerns, possible early death because they didn't eat right. Now your healthy adult child is needlessly experiencing a lot of grief losing loved ones.

Your healthy adult child will have co-workers who constantly miss work due to health concerns and he will have to pick up the slack for them in their absence. Being overburdened at work will make your child lose precious time with his wife, kids, family and friends.

Do we really want to march forward singing the tune of "I'm taking care of my family, you take care of yours?"

It's not about trust here. I trust most parents to do the right thing for their kids. Sure there are some parents who didn't really want to be parents that can't get their sh*t together. But there are many many many capable, loving, attentive parents who are unknowingly damaging their childrens' health because it is counter-intuitive that the majority of the food in the grocery store is health damaging. The damage is subtle. You don't know until it's too late, and then when you do know, you can't point the finger at this ingredient or that eating habit.

The medical community is still trying to figure out what causes all of our health problems. Is it GM foods? Is it chemical additives in our food? Is it lack of real nutrients? Is it an imbalance of nutrients? Is it too much sugar? Too much fake fat?

I'm not a doctor. I'm not a scientist. I can't prove anything to you. I can say that on a real food diet for the past seven years, I feel younger, more energetic and more well than I ever have before. I have less illness, less minor aches and pains and more feeling-awesome-ready-to-greet-the-world days. Why don't we all want that wellness, that productivity, that level of contribution and connectedness for each of America's children?

Here is the comment I left on Bettina's TLT post. I'm not editing it, just pasting it stream of consciousness as I wrote it. Hope my emotions didn't muddle up my thoughts too much.

_______________________________________________________________

I am always surprised when people link nanny state to a child's health. A child can not feed himself. He can not shop at the grocery store or prepare foods for himself. He relies on his parents, his school and his community to do those things for him.

When parents and the community are ignorant of nutrition as so many people are, the child's health will suffer, precisely because our government allows food manufacturers to produce, market and sell entirely too much food that harms human health.

I also don't want the government to take away big macs. But i do want the government to make a choice to care for the health of our country by saying, hey John Q Public, go ahead and eat fast food, packaged food, soda and other low-fat food like factory made substances with no real ingredients as 95% of your diet over 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 decades. Go ahead, but if you do you WILL get sick.   You will have IBS, or cancer, become overweight, get diabetes, have high blood pressure, develop kidney stones, etc. That's not nanny state. That's disclosure.   Same thing that we do with alcohol and cigarettes.

Kelly - unfortunately we do have to rely on the govt to make changes. communities absolutely can plant gardens, teach kids about real food and offer more real food at school, home, and social gatherings. BUT. In my experience, kids who like junky stuff, will NOT eat real food when junk is available.

However, when you remove the junk, kids, even those who eat a lot of packaged food, WILL eat real food. When you add fresh fruits and vegetables to the school lunch line, a few kids eat them. Most kids don't take them, and half that do toss them in the trash uneaten.

We saw that at Sherwood E when we did a taste-off competition. Only thing on the menu was fresh fruits and vege. No chips, no juice, no pretzels, no hotdogs. 82% of all students tried every thing offered. http://tinyurl.com/4ugmwg8

When you teach kids why they should have them, a few more kids eat them. As long as those fruits and vegetables are served along side chocolate milk and other carnival foods, kids will mostly not take advantage of any menu reform that is happening.    We saw that when we looked at the increase of fruits and vegetables consumed at Sherwood E after six months of nutrition education for all 400 of our students. Fruit and Veg consumption increased, but we only gained a few new students eating fruits ( 25/335) and vegetables (52/335 for raw broccoli) http://tinyurl.com/4j8pemg

Hmmm, when students only have access to real food most will eat it. When it is served along side carnival food most will not participate.

Until the govt changes the way school lunches are funded and reimbursed, the nutrition requirements for those lunches and gets rid of the hundreds of obstacles school food service groups have to actually delivering real food to students, not much will change in the area of school food.

Unless every student receives nutrition education, any menu reform that does occur will have low acceptability. Meaning it will be served, offered and either A) not taken from the line or B) tossed in the trash.

How do we get nutrition education to all students without asking the govt to make it so?

__________________

Your two cents? Do you think the government should help kids achieve wellness by helping schools, families and kids lose weight and prevent weight gain?

Poop Matters - Kids Should Know

2011-03-21T20:08:00.000-07:00

Sherwood students participating in the Eat to Learn program will not hear about the link between the fiber in cucumbers, healthy poop and a smart brain. Their principal decided it was not appropriate for morning announcements and censored the content. Food revolution attempt stymied again by an administrator who may be doing the right thing for teachers and test scores, but the wrong thing for student learning and health.

Poop Matters - Kids Should Know
I get that hearing a lesson about poop would get kids talking and asking questions. It might even cause a classroom disruption. Responses to curious students would eat into time for planned and required lessons.

But, I don't know why it makes sense for a school to pass up an opportunity to teach a very important health lesson to students.

Do we really think that elementary students aren't smart enough to handle information about poop, a normal bodily function, and use it to become better learners?

Do you know how many Americans suffer needlessly from constipation? Do you know how serious health concerns can become for people who suffer from constipation for years and years? Did you know that a real food diet with plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables provides plenty of fiber to keep bowels moving, toxins removed and brains functioning properly?

Sherwood students won't be learning it. Too bad. There would have been a captive audience of 400 students willing and ready to learn about how eating produce can keep their brains healthy by getting rid of toxins via regular bowel movements.

If you're a Sherwood parent and want to share this important lesson with your child, here are the morning announcements for the vegetable of the week, cucumbers, as I wrote them.

Read on for an update on how Eat to Learn is changing kids eating habits in the Sherwood cafeteria.

Cucumbers Give Kids Healthy Poop and Smart Brains

Day 2 What happens when you forget to take out the kitchen trash?

(Pause and wait for classes to think/answer)

It gets stinky and really gross! If you forget to take out the kitchen trash for 5 days, you do not want to be in the kitchen. Yucky smell!

Cucumbers contain fiber. Fiber is necessary to help your bowels function properly. Bowel is a medical term for the tubes that hold the waste your body makes from the food you eat. Your body turns food waste into poop. When your body can’t “take out the poop” it stays in your body and gets really gross. The waste products in your poop turn into toxins, and hurt your brain. Your brain doesn’t want to be in your body when the poop doesn’t get taken out every day or two!

Eat some high fiber cucumbers and keep your bowels emptied out. All fruits and vegetables contain fiber.

Day 3 Magnesium is a mineral in cucumbers. Magnesium is needed in every cell in your body. Magnesium helps your brain in a special way. Magnesium helps your brain focus and pay attention.

Day 5 Sliced cucumbers are on the menu today. Grab some on your tray and feed your brain.

Here’s the wrap on cucumbers

« Vitamin C in cukes gives your brain a defense shield

« Potassium in cukes makes your brain learn and remember facts.

« Magnesium in cukes makes your brain focus and pay attention

« Fiber in cukes helps move poop from your bowels to the toilet. Put the toxins in the toilet, far far away from your brain!

Eat to Learn Status Update
Sherwood Elementary is in month 6 of the Eat to Learn program. Daily morning announcements began airing in October featuring one school food produce item each week. The goal is to link the fruits and vegetables students get in school food to learning. My theory was that if you make fruits and vegetables relevant to kids they will eat them.

What is more relevant to a student than brain power? Elementary students are hooked on learning. Why not link learning to real food and see if more goes down the hatch.

Fruit and Vegetable consumption Before and After
Eat to Learn seems to be working. Raw broccoli consumption on campus is up 80%. In the fall raw broccoli was not widely accepted. An average of 31 students, or 9% of cafeteria eaters, accepted broccoli in September 2010. The most recent data day showed 82 students accepted broccoli, a 164% increase in broccoli acceptance. This is a small victory, as we still have an average of 274 cafeteria eaters not accepting raw broccoli.

I had limited data to use to compare before and after fruit vegetable consumption. I did not receive data for each fruit and vegetable covered in the program. I also did not get the same number of data points for each type of produce, so drawing conclusions was a less than scientific. Here is what the data I have could show:

Fresh Fruit was widely accepted by 49% of cafeteria eaters before the program. There was a 14% increase in fresh fruit acceptability over the past six months. However, I have only three preE2L data points and 11 postE2L data points, so that conclusion may not trustworthy.
Carrot sticks appeared to have wide acceptance before morning announcements began airing, and acceptance remains strong, but no significant change. An average of 135 students or 40% of cafeteria eaters accept carrot sticks as of Feb 2011.
"Tossed Salad" (a bit of iceberg lettuce and a tomato slice) actually saw a decrease in acceptability (40%) over the data period, but the food service folks tell me that's probably due to poor lettuce quality in the winter months due to freezing temps. Kids don't eat brown lettuce. Or boring salads with low quality tomato slices barely fit for hiding under a sandwich bun. Big surprise.
Cooked broccoli also seems to show an increase (26%) but I don't have before data, and with only two data points, I'm not sure how valid the conclusion is.
Mixed Fruit (aka fruit cocktail in lite syrup) showed an increase (26%) but again, only 2 data points and neither were from before Eat to Learn launched.

My Question To Teachers
I have a question for teachers (past and present). If your school had a nutrition education program that talked about healthy poop, and your elementary students got curious and asked a bunch of questions all day, even into the next week about vegetables, fiber, poop and healthy brains, would you feel put out? Would you feel like valuable classroom time was wasted on an unnecessary health lesson? Would you feel overburdened by having to discuss something with your students that is the health teacher's job, the nurses job, or the parents job? I'm truly interested in hearing from teachers who support and oppose nutrition education in the classroom.

My Question to Parents
Would you be put out if your child spent some time learning about how to improve their brain function by eating fruits and vegetables during their school day? Or, in other words, do you mind if your child has 10 less minutes for reading, writing and test preparation in order to get some nutrition and health education in the classroom?

See you in the comments!

Real Food Recipes for Healthy Leprechauns - Dye Free St. Patrick's Day Treats

2011-03-17T10:00:00.000-07:00

Sometimes life intervenes and I don't get to do what I want as a blogger. I'd planned on making guacamole dip from the cookbook I was featured in as my 2011 Saint Patrick's Day recipe, but out of town Spring Break visitors and urgent care visits said otherwise. (Little boo is breathing fine now!)

So instead, here is a round-up of some real green recipes I have featured before on Food with Kid Appeal, as well as links to some of the other places FwKA recipes have been featured.

Party Drama
A holiday is a mixed bag for a real foodie. I believe kids can have a blast making and tasting food that is naturally colored and enjoy a holiday with real food treats. I get grief from family who think I'm just a holiday bah humbug because I snub my nose a petrochemical food dyes and junky store bought treats on holidays. Party hosts get their feelers hurt when my kids or I opt out of a chemically food-dyed item.

It's hard for everybody to wrap their brain around what I oppose. I'm anti junky food additives. I'm not anti sugar, treats, fun or colorful food. It's also hard to reconcile the gap between my definition of "moderation" and others' definition of "moderation." I don't want to eat junky chemical food additives in moderation. I don't want to eat them at all. Since food scarcity is rarely an issue at a party and there are usually plenty of menu items to choose from, I can usually still find something to eat at a party that doesn't involve ingesting factory made junk. I'm very fortunate that all of my family cooks from scratch most of the time. Outside of store bought treats, family meals are usually pretty nourishing.

I choose to eat real food treats in moderation. I choose to almost nearly eliminate factory made food even during holidays and special occasions. I'm not judging other folks choices, I'm taking care of my health. I'm teaching my kids to think about the food they eat, even foods they eat in moderation.

I will be saying "no thanks" to artificially colored menu items tonight at our family St. Patrick's day party. The kids are on their own. If they want to indulge, they may. They may say no thanks as well, not sure how it will all play out. I will probably catch some hell for my choices and theirs. I can live with that.

Kid Appeal Tip According to a little web research, leprechauns cause mischief by pinching people on St. Patrick's Day. In order to avoid a prank by a leprechaun you can wear green so they don't see you. Why not take that a little farther with the tots? Let them know that in addition to wearing green, they can be even more invisible to leprechauns by eating plenty of real green food. Leprechauns can see artificial colors so the only sure way to protect against a pinch is eating naturally green food. Green food like broccoli, spinach, kiwi and grapes. Let me know if it works in getting some wholesome food down the hatch!

Naturally Green St. Patrick's Day Recipes
Green Kefir Smoothie from Not a Short Order Cook.

Green Monster Smoothie from Brenda at Meal Planning Magic

Green Macaroni and Cheese from FwKA

Healthy Little Green Pearls from FwKA

St. Patrick Day recipe round-ups featuring Food with Kid Appeal recipes and guest posts
I'm always so honored when an unknown blogger or reader decides to link up to one of my posts. Thanks for the love! Disclaimer (not all recipes featured by other bloggers are chemical dye free...).
PBS Kitchen Explorers
Meal Planning Magic
The Foodies
Polka Dot Design
Two Kids Cooking
My Delicious Ambiguity
Pitter Patter Fun
Nourish MD
Mr Food
Two Kids and a mom Cooking
Messy Kids
Red Plum
Food with Kid Appeal (more green recipes)

(If you linked up to one of my posts for a St. Pat's article and I missed you, I'm sorry! Leave me a comment with the URL and I'll get the list updated.)

This post is participating in Life as Mom's St Pat's URS and Pennywise Platter (link coming soon).

Enjoy your little leprechauns today!

Real Green Food St. Patrick's Day Party

2011-03-15T05:01:00.000-07:00

student tastes food at real red food valentine's day party

[Ed. Note. This is a story from FwKA reader, Sheryl. Read how the Real Red Food Valentine's Day party went down in her son's class, and her plans for a vegetable filled St. Patrick's Day party.]

Happy Valentine’s Day!!**

*did I mention no candy or cakes involved?

My 7 year old son has such a wonderful teacher this year. Mrs. B has been very receptive to all the ideas I have thrown out at her, which included making your own green and gold fruit kebabs to celebrate the Packer’s Super Bowl, and having a ‘Real Red’ Valentine’s Day party was no exception.

When I presented this idea to her, she had no hesitations. The activity would even correspond to a unit on healthy eating that she was teaching. Tasting real red food was only one part of the party. The students would also be painting and decorating a love note box and completing an obstacle course. Mrs. B sent out an e-mail about what the food portion of the party was about and how we were trying to introduce the students to real, healthy foods.

Parent Response

The response was overwhelming. Parents were thrilled to be able to contribute healthy foods to the party. I came to school early on the day of the party to clean fruits and veggies and was amazed. The parents had provided: red peppers, cherry tomatoes, Macintosh apples, radishes, strawberries, cherry crasins, gluten/casein/peanut/egg free trail mix with cranberries in it, salsa, beet and pineapple salad, red grapes, pomegranate and red grapefruit juice.

Did each parent understand the point of the activity? The majority did but one parent sent in pepperoni and the grapefruit juice was not 100% juice.

Teacher Preparation

The classroom teacher had done a wonderful job preparing the students for the activity. She had explained numerous times that they were expected to try each item. If they didn’t care for the food item, the response should not be negative but instead, “Hmmm…that was rather interesting.”

Mrs. B provided clipboards for the students to use while they filled out their questionnaire which included the name of the food, a quick sketch of the food, a prediction if they will like the food, and a rating scale: 3 – awesome, 2 – pretty good, 1 – no thanks! Each student voted for their favorite red food.

Student Response

Where the kids disappointed to have a party without candy, cookies, and cupcakes? Not at all! I didn’t hear a single complaint. The kids thought it was a lot of fun to try new foods. I had made the beets and pineapple dish and was amazed to find so many students tried it – including my own super fussy eater. The teacher even welcomed the opportunity to try some vegetables she had never tried!

The most popular red food was strawberries but there were a lot of other favorites.
One boy couldn’t get enough salsa and was drinking it from the cup.
Another girl ate red peppers hand over fist.
The least favorite was the radishes.
Most of the 14 students had tried all the ‘real red’ foods.

I have to admit, I didn’t really hear a lot of feedback from the parents regarding the party. I asked Mrs. B if she had and she hadn’t. I figure no news is good news. Mrs B has noticed that the students were bringing more fruits and vegetables for snacks for themselves and to share with the class. To me, that is a good sign. Several teachers have also requested information from Mrs. B so that they could do a ‘real red’ party next year.

Green Food Next

What’s next? Just presented and confirmed today…a St. Patrick’s Day party with green fruits and vegetables. Making an appearance will be green beans, peas, cucumbers, zucchini, green grapes, granny smith apples, kiwi, and broccoli. To spice it up, the students are going to smell the foods first to see if they can match the smell to the food.

This was a fun, simple activity to do with my son’s class. Thanks for letting me share.

This post is participating in Real Food Wednesday.

Healthy St Patrick's Day Recipe - Green Monster Smoothie

2011-03-14T05:06:00.000-07:00

[Ed. Note. This is a guest post from Brenda Thompson at Meal Planning Magic. If you're like me and don't bat an eye at meal planning, you'll probably find a few useful tips on her blog, not to mention some delish recipes. She's a fellow Houston blogger. Enjoy this green recipe just in time for Saint Patrick's Day.]

Believe it or not, the one vegetable I can pretty much guarantee my children will eat is spinach. They like it raw in salads or cooked in casseroles, dips or soups. Sometimes they will even just munch on it plain! So, last summer when we were visiting my sister-in-law and her family I was intrigued when she offered us a green smoothie. She said it had spinach in it and I’ll be honest, at first I thought “Ewww, spinach in a smoothie?” Her version included bananas, ice cubes and bit of honey. It was delicious and I was anxious to try it out at home. Since my family prefers creamier smoothies and I like to include a little extra protein in them, I came up with my own version using milk and yogurt too. I’ve nicknamed it the Green Monster Smoothie because it just seems to fit.

Green Monster Smoothie

Ingredients:

1 ½ C skim milk

½ C plain yogurt

2 very ripe bananas (the riper they are, the sweeter they are)

2 C loosely packed baby spinach

1 T honey

Combine all ingredients in blender until blended. Pour and enjoy!

Makes 4 cups.

Our taste test at home received mixed reviews. My daughter crinkled her nose before she even tried it but she did take a sip. Thumbs down for her. Her verdict: “It just tastes weird.” My son on the other hand, not only liked it, he drank nearly half of it for his after school snack one day!

Our Green Monster Smoothie has become a regular at breakfast, after school or just whenever. I feel good knowing we’re getting a tasty drink that is good for us too! I have had smoothies with avocado in them too—another way to get a little extra green into our diets—so plan to try that soon. And I’m hoping my daughter eventually comes around on the Green Monster Smoothie too!

What's in your smoothie?

Healthy Little Green Pearls - Natural St Patrick's Day Recipe

2011-03-09T05:00:00.000-08:00

"Cool, Mom! You're national," my seven year old said when I told him one of my green recipes was featured on the PBS food blog, Kitchen Explorers. The perspective of my child sure does boost my ego. He's come such a long way from the one year old who used to cry when I wouldn't let him eat frozen green peas every time I opened the freezer (there are disadvantages to bottom door freezers). Six years later, he's still a big fan of green peas, frozen, on the side or in fried rice.

Because I forgot about this tasty recipe, I was sure you'd forgotten about it too. A memory refresher is in order and just time in time for a holiday all about green food. We do green food naturally without food dyes. What are better naturally green things than vegetables. Nothing.

This recipe is so simple, you can pull it together with a bag of frozen peas stashed in the freezer for a quick supper night and half an onion. You need 2 minutes to hack the onion, 8 minutes to cook the onion and another 2 for the peas to lose their chill and turn into bright green pearls before you and your leprechauns devour them.

I know they'll be on our menu next week when all things green come out to play at the dinner table.

See here for the original recipe for Kicked Up A Notch Green Peas and here for PBS Kitchen Explorers round-up of St. Patty's day recipes. There are a couple other naturally green recipes featured. I liked Aviva's description of my recipe, so I used it for the title to this post. Always happy to have wordsmiths make my work better!

Frugal Real Food
Peas are frugal. I was buying organic frozen peas, but I don't think that's necessary anymore so I save a few pennies and buy conventional.

Growing a Generation of Good Eaters
Will you take 1 minute to help me grow a generation of good eaters? Babble is running a top 100 mom food blogs contest. I'm currently sitting at number 87 with 12 likes. If I get 127 likes, I make the top 10. Follow this link, click on the "alphabetically" tab, scroll to page 2, look for the "F" section and click the "like" button. Thanks!

This post is participating in Real Food Wednesday and Nourishing Gourmet's Pennywise Platter.

What naturally green things will you be serving for St. Patrick's day?

Eating to Learn in Houston Makes Food Revolution News

2011-03-07T18:48:00.000-08:00


students pose with taste off punch cards

Last month, Sherwood Elementary's Eat to Learn program was featured in Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution February Newsletter. Sherwood Eagles should be proud to officially be part of the Food Revolution. These young people truly are changing their future health by learning what to eat in order to fuel their body. Hop on over here to read Sherwood's Eating to Learn story in the Food Revolution newsletter.

Sherwood is now in month 6 of the Eat to Learn nutrition education program. So far it's going good from what I can tell. I'd like to have more feedback from classroom teachers directly. I'm hearing an equal amount of positive and negative feedback. I've heard some complaints funneled through the principal, but I have to believe there are more teachers who supporter the program. Just have to find them!

The cafeteria manager estimates that vegetable consumption is up 10% since the Taste-Off Competition.
Some teachers are reporting that the morning announcements are getting kids talking and thinking about how fruits and vegetables fuel their brain.
One teacher believes her students are choosing more fruits and vegetables at lunch because of the morning announcements.
Parents are stopping me at volunteer events telling me their kids are eating spinach, celery and carrots, as well as choosing white milk in lieu of chocolate milk, citing "brain fuel" as the reason.

I'm looking forward to our Health Fair at the end of March where I'll have some food packaging as a big reveal on what's really in those food products marketed to kids and busy parents. I'll also have a feedback posters out so that kids, parents and staff can let me know what they think, good and bad, about the program.

I believe at least part of the program will be repeated next year, such as the Turkey Trot and the morning announcements. I'm still working on getting approval for another Taste Off Competition next year. We'll see how that campaign goes.

Your Stories!
How are Food Revolution and school food improvement efforts going at your school? Have you heard Yes or No from administrators? Are the programs being implemented showing signs of success? What obstacles have you had to overcome? Leave a comment and let us know. If you're up for writing an article about your efforts, contact me at jenna@foodwithkidappeal.com for submission details.

Recovering Picky Eaters Challenge Tales From the Trenches Week 2

2011-03-06T15:35:00.000-08:00

In just two weeks we recovering picky eater challengers are already 30 challengers strong! We are also welcoming back 2 participants from last year.

In the last year, Facebook has become a better place for dialog versus the comment section of a blog post. Given that, I will be starting a weekly RPEC Tales from the Trenches status update on each Sunday. I will keep the Sunday RPEC tales from the trenches status updates going for as long as there are participants popping over to talk about how their tastings have been going.

If you haven't already "liked" Food with Kid Appeal on Facebook, you can do that here. Just stay tuned on Sunday for the RPEC thread. When you see it, leave a comment.

What should you share? Anything pertaining to the challenge is fair game. Whether it's working, not working, stumbling blocks, successes. Whether you think it's a bunch of malarkey or an window of opportunity to change your relationship to food. If you're stuck, try

Answering any of these questions:
What recipe did you try?
Were you able to taste the food?
Did you like/not like the challenge ingredient in the recipe?
What recipe will you try next?
What was helpful in getting you to change your mindset about the challenge ingredient?

The week two status update is already up for this week. Go now. Discuss amongst yourselves. Or, if you're feeling shy, hop on over there and lurk to see how other challengers are doing.

How long does it take to change mindset?
It depends on how long you haven't liked an item, and how committed you are to the mindset shift.

How I went from onion hater to onion lover
I spent my whole life thinking I didn't like onions. It wasn't true, but I didn't know that as a kid or young adult. I'd eaten onions dozens of times and tolerated them without really knowing it. But if I ever spied an onion piece in my food, I would pick it out, or skip the dish.

The funny thing is, I didn't grow up thinking I didn't like leeks or shallots, because these weren't ingredients my mom used. When I started cooking with them as a way to add flavor to meals for my husband that I would ordinarily omit onions from, I accepted them immediately. Next came local spring onions in my co-op veggie share, then red onions. I actually loved the dishes I made with the onions in my co-op share, and instantly I was no longer an onion hater.

I can even eat red onions raw on a burger or in a salad.

Do you want to give the mindset theory a shot and learn to like a food you hate (or think you hate)? Hop on over here and leave a comment to join the challenge.

See you in the comments on Facebook! If you don't do facebook, feel free to leave a comment on this blog post.

Oven Fries - A Healthy French Fry

2011-03-03T17:45:00.000-08:00

Monday I posted about mashed potatoes.

I heart potatoes. In my book, potatoes aren't bad for you. They actually have a good variety of nutrients, antioxidants, and are a good source of carbohydrates which give you energy. Potatoes makes Dave Grotto's 101 Foods That Could Save Your Life list and George's World's Healthiest foods list.

Perhaps the problem in potatoes lies in what other starchy carbs we're eating, and whether or not potatoes are a part of your vegetable rotation or are on the menu every night. If potatoes and corn are the only veggies on your yes list, you might have vegetable rotation work to do.

The beauty of this recipe is that if you're using a healthy oil you are only getting good fat when you eat these roasted fries. The amount of fat used is far less than what is absorbed when you deep fat fry a potato. I say, indulge in oven fries. Go ahead and take seconds.

Oven Fries Recipe
1 medium to large potato per person
1-2 TBSP healthy fat
Dry spice mix of your choice to taste (I use a Mediterranean spice mix Georgia's sells)
Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions
Preheat oven to 400, put roasting pan in the oven to preheat. Cut potatoes in to steak fries. Coat with fat and add seasonings. You don't want them really wet, just a light coating of fat. Carefully remove hot roasting pan from the oven and spread potatoes in an even layer. Roast for about 20 minutes (or until they start to turn brown), then flip potatoes and return to oven. To flip use a spatula and scrape the all off the pan, then flip. The fries will want to stick to the pan, but with some elbow grease and a good technique you will be able to get them off and flip. Cook another 20 minutes until they are golden brown on all sides. They will be fork tender before they brown all the way. To get a crisp outer texture you need the extra time to brown.

If your fries come out soft and mushy or broken up the first time, keep trying. It took me a while to perfect my method. It is worth the time investment to get this recipe right. They are a crowd pleaser every time. Roasted potatoes don't taste bad when soft, they just don't taste much like fries. Your taters will be completely edible until you reach perfection.

There are always a few softies in the batch. That's OK in our family. Hubby prefers them on the softer side, I prefer them on the crisp side, and the boys are happy with any variety. There's something for everyone!

Kid Appeal Tip My kids still fuss a little about skin-on mashed potatoes. And they still scoop out insides from baked potatoes. They don't even notice the skins on roasted potatoes, no matter what shape I cut them in. Half the nutrition is in the skin. That doesn't mean that eating peeled potatoes is "bad" for you. No need to fret about it, just make a point of teaching your kids over time to accept the skins (organic potatoes only). Let them know the skins have vitamins and minerals that help them stay well and make their brain smart. While you eat your skins be sure they hear you say something like, "I'm gobbling up my skins. I have a big deadline due tomorrow and I need lots of brain power to finish it right."

So which side of the fence are you on? Potatoes are good or bad for you?

Healthy Birthday Party Menu Plan Happy Birthday Big Boo

2011-03-03T04:30:00.000-08:00

double grass-fed beef slider w/ lettuce & tomato

In case you all were wondering what a real food blogger feeds guests at a kid birthday party, here are the deets.

Big Boo turns 7 on Saturday. I don't really want to talk about it. He's my first born. And seven seems so wise and mature. He can draw his own bath. Read non-fiction books. He voluntarily looks for ways to help family members who are sick or have a problem. I want to hold on to six just as long as I can. This day, today was the last Wednesday I'll ever spend with my first born six year old. Next Wednesday he'll be seven. I know seven will be full of sweetness and marvel. He'll acquire new skills, abilities and develop new dimensions of his character; but for now, I just want big boo the way I know him right now today to linger....just a little longer. Birthdays are bittersweet. Nuff said.

I consulted the birthday boy on what well rounded meal he wanted to serve his guests. First they roller-skate, then return to chez nous for dinner and cake. Then 2 friends spend the night and get birthday breakfast before heading home tired and exhausted to their parents.

He liked the idea of grilled cheeseburgers as a main course. For the vegetable he picked carrot and cabbage slaw, and a side item he picked oven fries. Carrot cake was his pick, even though I tried to steer him towards cheesecake. We ate mini sliders over the weekend, and he fancied them for birthday grub. I talked him out of that claiming dad would have an easier time on the grill with fewer larger burgers.

Since we're feeding 9 adults and six kids I didn't splurge for grass-fed beef for the burgers. I did find local natural beef at Georgia's, so that's what guests will be dining on. It saved me $2 a pound. I'll find some bakery bread for buns so we can avoid weirdo ingredients. Tilamook cheddar is our house cheese.

I guess I need to get hubby's recipe for burgers. I have moved past my fear of working with raw meat in terms of chickens. But I still hate working with raw ground meat. Hubby always does that for me when he's around.

Funny story about big boo last time we were at McD for a playdate (there, I said it, on occasion we eat at McD, not because I like it, but because it's where friends and family are.)

He opens his happy meal burger and says, "Mom, where are the pickles, lettuce and tomato?"

Me: "McD doesn't think kids like vegetables, so they don't put them on kid meal burgers. Pretty silly eh? Would you like me to ask them to add vegetables to your burger?"

Him "What?? A burger is not a burger without lettuce and tomato."

Here are the recipes for big boo's 7th healthy real food birthday party menu. Hope he's still one of the popular kids after this menu!

Carrot and Cabbage Slaw.

Oven fries

Whole Grain Carrot cake - with white wheat flour, coconut oil and flax seed. I'm resisting the urge to use my raw milk clabbered milk cheese (consistency like cream cheese) for the cream cheese frosting. I'm fine with serving this wholesome cheese to guests, but I know not everyone is on the raw cheese bandwagon....

I no longer use artificial food dyes. Last year we put letters built out of legos on cupcakes. I have natural food dyes to try out this year.

Egg Toast with local farm eggs from my favorite farmer Cathy. We eat this for breakfast on school mornings (minus the hole, cooks faster that way.) For a birthday I'll whip out bacon and fruit. He has two eggs, one toast. He pops one egg yolk smears it around, getting an even coating all over the toast. The other yolk he leaves as a "secret surprise" for me to cut into with a knife. He likes to watch it gush out all over the plate. Then he mops up all the orange-yellow yolk lingering on his plate with the toast bites. I love that kid. Hard to believe in a decade he'll be eating breakfast in the dorm cafeteria (or more likely skipping breakfast so he can sleep in before class). Dammit. Didn't I say, I didn't want to talk about my kids getting older??

How do you do birthday party menus in your house?

Fiesta Carrot Salad

2011-03-01T18:28:00.000-08:00

I've made this "salad" twice now for demonstrations. I finally got around to making it for my family and getting a picture. The boys really liked peeling the carrots into ~~ribbons~~ snakes and little boo did a great job shaking up the vinaigrette. Hubby complained about the cumin in the recipe. He said it tasted "gritty." I use dry spice in lots of vinaigrette and he only complains when it's on broccoli or carrots. I guess the "grit" is acceptable on greens, but not single veggie salads? I happen to like the additional smoky flavor to the tang of the dressing. The kids ate up the carrot snakes.

The first demonstration was at a family talent show last summer. I had 10 cousins in the 9 and under crowd help me dump in ingredients, shake the dressing in mason jar, pour over carrots and serve in dixie cups to the family. One particular 3 year old cousin surprised his mom when he asked for a second serving of carrots!

What can I say? I have a certain talent of getting kids who usually won't eat vegetables to try, eat and yes, like carrots and green beans. The public demonstration and dixie cups help a ton. Plus it's not at meal time, it's just a food demo and some samples.

Most recently a friend and fellow Healthy Lifestyles committee member prepared this while I spoke to parents about Sherwood Elementary's Eat to Learn Program, and gave them the run down on what fat, protein, carbohydrates and micronutrients (aka antioxidants) do to help their kid's learn.

This is a great salad to make with your kids. Let them shake the vinaigrette. Let them pour ingredients into the mason jar. If they are old enough to handle a peeler, let them peel the carrot into nice long ribbons into a salad bowl. Have them dump on the vinaigrette and toss the carrot ribbons about.

And if you ever find yourself in a situation at a party, family gathering or school function where you can demonstrate how easy and tasty it is to prepare carrots in this way, please give it a shot. One reader wrote in asking what she could do for a healthy cooking demonstration to a Kindergarten Class. I suggested this recipe.

Fiesta Carrot Salad Recipe

Ingredients

1 bag of shoe string carrots, or 4-6 carrots peeled and ribboned (use a peeler to make length-wise carrot ribbons).

3 TBSP Olive Oil (extra virgin is best)

1 TBSP Mild Vinegar (apple cider, white wine, rice wine)

1/4 tsp Cumin

Salt and pepper to taste

Equipment

Large mixing bowl.

Empty mason or jam jar

Measuring spoons

Serving spoon or tongs

Dixie cups (for demonstrations)

Directions

Whole carrots: peel the carrots, discarding outer peel. Continue peeling carrots into the mixing bowl making carrot ribbons. Bag of shoestring carrots: open the bag of carrots and add them to a large mixing bowl. To the empty Mason jar, add the olive oil, vinegar, cumin, salt and pepper. Screw the lid on tightly and ask a kid to shake it up. Give it a taste test. Pour over carrots just before serving (shake dressing again if necessary) and toss. Serve in dixie cups to tots at a play date, or on a dinner plate.

the tongue needs to be just so

Kid Appeal Tip Kids who help prepare food are more likely to taste the food they make and eventually enjoy it. This is a tasty and fun way to introduce kids to carrots, or a new way of eating carrots. The bonus is home-made dressings are fun to shake up and avoid all the preservatives and less brain friendly oils store bought versions contain.

For more Jam Jar Dressing Recipes for your kids to shake up, check out Jamie Oliver's roundup.

This post is participating in Real Food Wednesday

Taco Rice Recipe

2011-02-25T07:50:00.000-08:00

About a year ago I got wise and started packing up half of the taco meat I make every week and tucking it away in the freezer. We never finish a whole pound of ground beef at one taco night meal. Leftovers would occasionally get forgotten in the fridge. It hurts to throw out pricey grass-fed beef!

Left-over taco meat is generally used for another round of soft tacos, a crowd pleaser at our house. Aside from the in-store made whole wheat tortillas from the big HEB, this meal is hearty and wholesome by way of lots of wholesome fresh vege toppers and the whole family digs it. Sometimes meat reserves goes into quesadillas or loaded nachos. In the Spring when we have lots of local lettuces available I serve it as taco salad.

Last week I needed a pinch hitter on a meeting night. I had taco meet ferreted away in the freezer, but no tortillas or lettuce. It was a week night, so I couldn't justify nachos for supper. Taco soup was an option but it's already spring in Houston, and we've been having highs in the 80s.... Plenty of brown rice was in the pantry, and I had a few grape tomatoes getting wrinkly and stalks of celery in the fridge. Taco rice?? Perfect. It'll do in a pinch.

When the boys asked what's for supper, big boo was upset we weren't having tacos. He pouted. When he came to the table and gave it a shot he cleared his plate without complaint. The crunchy celery really made this dish. I might add more next time. This recipe is a keeper.

Taco Rice Recipe
Half pound of pre-cooked taco meat seasoned with onion and make-it-yourself taco seasoning
One crushed dry thai pepper (I get these from a local farmer, use what ever pepper you have)
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp turmeric
3 ribs celery
18 grape tomatoes quartered, or one whole tomato diced
One cup dry brown rice, cooked
salt and pepper to taste (may not be necessary depending on your rice & taco meat seasoning)
celery leaves - chopped (frugal sub for parsley, has similar taste, lots of nutrients, don't toss celery leaves!)
half a lime
Toppers of your choic : shredded cheddar, sour cream, salsa, avocado

Directions
Cook rice according to directions. Cook tomatoes and celery in a bit of healthy fat over medium heat, about 5 minutes. Add Thai pepper, stirring to combine. Add cooked taco meat. Add cooked rice and dry spices. Remove from heat. Stir in chopped celery leaves and squeeze half a lime over top.

Kid Appeal Tip If your kids protest left-over night or new recipes, hear them out. They may just want you to know, hey mom, I prefer recipe round one or the way we usually eat pasta. Let them know that it's your job to feed the family dinner. Sometimes the meal is a crowd pleaser and sometimes the meal is sustenance to put to good use ingredients you have on hand. As a busy parent who works, shuttles kids to activities, helps with homework, and handles the laundry, you can't live at the grocery store or in the kitchen and make every meal fantabulous. By making good use of the ingredients you've already invested in you are allowing your family to have more budget to go to the movies or splurge for a new video game. Kids are smart. Tell them why you do left-overs and new concoctions. Let them know what it does for them, expect them to dig in, and they will.

This post is participating in Nourishing Gourmet's Pennywise Platter and LifeAsMom's URS.

What do you do with left over taco meat?

Education + Vegetables = Veggiecation Review and Giveaway

2011-02-23T08:29:00.000-08:00

This is a review of the nutrition education program called Veggiecation. After you read the review, and my request for you to act as a nation builder, you will have an opportunity to win a copy of Veggiecation's At Home program including I tried it stickers and a vegetable recipe book.

Michelle Obama and Jamie Oliver would be tickled pink if every public and private elementary school had Veggiecation, a nutrition education program designed for PK-3rd graders.

Veggiecation is a curriculum based nutrition education program that makes it easy peasy for teachers to get kids falling in love with vegetables. The lessons are standards based meaning it can be seamlessly incorporated into math, literacy, social studies, science and art curricula. The hardest thing a teacher has to do with this program is to decide which persuasive literacy, measurement, geography or vocabulary lessons to take out, in order to find time in the day use vegetables as a vehicle for building literacy, math and science skills.

student language arts work

Should Teachers Have to Teach Math, Literacy, Science and The Love of Vegetables?
In a perfect world, every parent would teach the love of vegetables at home. Schools used to teach home economics, and there was usually one member in each household who'd had some amount of nutrition education. Home cooked meals used to be the norm and cooking skills were passed down to sons and daughters. How can a parent teach nutrition education if they never received it in a school or from their parents?

Our world isn't perfect. Our world is turning out high school seniors who are have heart disease are obese, or worse, diabetic. Teachers who want to be nation builders should be teaching the love of vegetables, even if it makes their job even more demanding than it already is. Schools feed children. They need to get it right.

Just as literacy and math skills set kids up for success in their adult life, so do good eating habits. Teach a child to eat real food, and they will have the health to utilize all those great literacy and math skills they acquire in elementary school from every hard-working grade-school teacher across our great nation.

Veggiecation is a tool your school could be using to instill good eating habits with kids. It's time for parents, teachers, schools and communities to all do their part to grow a generation of good eaters.

The Good Stuff

students casting ballots

The posters are beautiful, the program is comprehensive. Kids get excited about seeing the posters, writing and reading about vegetables. The recipes are easy and appealing to families. The recipes empower mom and dad to reinforce at home what kids are learning in school. Students love tasting and casting their ballot with their liked it or didn't like it decision.

Most of all, kids respond when you teach them why real food is relevant to them. Vegetables help students learn and grow into thinking healthy bigger people. Kids want to be thinking healthy big people. Their response? Kids eating vegetables. Kids liking vegetables. Veggiecation is not a silver bullet. It may not win all students over to all vegetables. I would be very surprised if every student did not adopt just one new vegetable tolerance after going through this program.

ginger asparagus in tasting cup

The Possibly Not Good Stuff
Not all schools have cooking facilities available for teachers or staff to use. That could make the recipe preparation, tasting and ballot box activities inaccessible. I believe there would still be value in the program even for a campus who couldn't cook at school. They might need parent volunteers who were willing to bring in prepared food. Or they might nix the food prep piece entirely and focus on writing about vegetables and making vegetable patterns and other curricula based activities.

Some public school administrators might be wary of food allergies and food safety that comes along with feeding kids in the classroom. This will be an obstacle for some public schools, but hopefully with the right parent support, these obstacles can be overcome, and the program can be implemented with careful planning.

Skeptical? Try it out at home, or in your school and see how kids react. Here's what teachers get with the program.

The Veggiecation School Package - click here for more details

ballot box data

Lesson Plans with more than 20 lessons for literacy (language arts), math, social studies, science and art. Veggie games are included. Think vegetable Memory and Bingo.
Membership to Veggiecation.com - access more activities, tools, nutrition tips and recipes for home.
Veggie of the Month Posters - The bright veggie characters brighten up the classroom and create a buzz around the campus. They really get kids talking and thinking about veggies.
Audio CD with Veggiecation theme song and dance. Perfect for Health Fitness, Pre-K and K.
Recipe book with 36 vegetable of the month recipes.
I Tried it Stickers - Kids love getting recognition for their choices. When they try a veggie, they get to wear an I tried it sticker. Studies show that interventions like tastings increase fruit and vegetable consumption.
Decision Ballot Box - Empowering a student to make a decision on whether they like or don't like a food item, gives them something to focus on other than misleading negative thoughts they may have about vegetables. Instead of thinking 'I don't like squash" they are thinking "i will decide if I like it or not." Teachers get a voting box, and voting card so each student can cast a ballot. Just think of all the graphing a class could do with the ballot box data!

Veggiecation has at home programs for Parents and After-School
Parent Teacher Association or Organization groups may want to recommend an after-school enrichment program on their campus. Parents and grandparents may want to buy the Veggiecation At-Home products to get more veggies down the hatch at the dinner table.

Do a nation builder task today
If you watched President Obama's state of the union speech you were probably touched by his call for teachers to be nation builders. Teachers aren't the only folks who can build our great nation. You can too. Send a link to this program to your PTA president, your child's teacher, your school's principal, director or head. Take action to grow a generation of good eaters. Ask that Veggiecation be incorporated into the 2011-2012 school year as the school wide theme. Don't stop if all you hear are objections. Come here and let me know what "No" you heard and I will help you turn that into a "Yes."

Enter to Win a Copy of Veggiecation At Home
Two readers will receive:

one recipe book with 36 kid friendly recipes,
2 activity books (think vegetable coloring pages),
Audio CD theme song with lyrics, and dance video,
3 complete sets of "I tried it stickers"
click here for more details

To qualify for a chance to win leave a comment, include your email address and answer the following question

What is one veggie your kiddo loves to eat and one veggie your kiddo won't touch with a ten foot pole?

For an additional chances to win,
1) like Veggiecation on Facebook and tell me you do/did so in the comments.
2) "like" me on Facebook and tell me you do/did so in the comment section.
3) subscribe to my email or become a reader and tell me you do/did so in the comment section.
4) follow me on twitter and tell me you do/did so in the comments.
5) share the Veggiecation URL or the URL to this review on your FB page and tell me you did so in the comments.

The fine print
Only separate comment entries will be counted for extra entries. If you want more than one chance, leave more than one comment. The contest closes at midnight March 2nd , 2011. I will draw a winner and notify the winner via email. The winner will have 48 hours to claim their prize by responding to the email. Your email address should be in this format: jenna AT foodwithkidappeal DOT com.

Disclosure
I am a paid sales consultant for Veggiecation. I did not receive any free products to conduct this review. The opinions here are my own, I was not compensated for the review. I agreed to do the review before I was hired by Veggiecation. Lisa at Veggiecation donated a school package to Sherwood Elementary as a prize to the Second Grade Teaching team for winning the Taste-Off Competition.

How to Grow a Good Eater

2011-02-21T19:55:00.000-08:00

Dear readers, this is a revision of my Food Tips 101 page. I have added about 15 new links since the last revision, so there may be some new content you haven't read. This is supposed to be a "welcome" page for new readers. Let me know if you think I hit the mark with this round up and intro to Food with Kid Appeal. In theory, it's a landing page for a new reader to see what this blog is all about and some "getting started" details. Stay tuned for an "about me" revision. This page can always be found by clicking the "introduction" tab under my blog header.

If you're here you probably have a feeding transition to make. You either believe your child is capable of tossing out the picky eater label and growing into a good eater or you're trying to shift from a take-out, meal-helper meal plan to one that includes scratch made meals from wholesome real food.

Now, where to start? It's a journey, so don't think you'll need to learn everything today. I'm still learning how to grow good eaters and balance the food budget while still serving up tasty meals. I'm still learning how to treat my soon-to-be five and seven year old boys like thinking people who are capable of choosing to fuel their body with wholesome real food.

I'm cooking for them now, but they eat at school and at parties. Eventually they'll fly the nest and start cooking for themselves. When that happens I want them to choose wholesome real food to buy and cook because it's what gives them energy to study or work or parent.

I'm on a mission to help America grow a healthy generation of kids. If you find something useful while you're here, give me a hand. Share the articles and recipes on this blog via your Facebook page, via email, on Twitter. You can use the "share" buttons at the end of each post.

For healthy recipes with real kid appeal, head on over to view more than 100 recipes on my recipe index.

Mindset, Thoughts, Actions Matter
I wrote a series of posts about how to learn to like a food you think you hate during my three recovering picky eater challenges. These articles are targeted at an adult. If you figure out how to change your own mindset about food, you'll be capable of arming your child with a new mindset as well. The recovering picky eater challenge is still ongoing. Join anytime by reading this post and leaving a comment on the blog post.

Mindset: How "good eater" mindset influences results
Thoughts: Bend your mind, like a new food
Actions: Find a way to like a food you hate

Tactics
Sometimes it comes down to tactics. Parents just need some actionable steps to take to get help get food down the hatch. I get it. Teaching kids what to eat isn't intuitive for every parent. Thank goodness for the internet, you can learn anything!

#1 secret weapon to getting kids to try new foods
Taste buds change as kids age - empowering kids to try new foods once thought of as hated
how to get kids to try new food
how to get kids to drink more water
Eat like a dinosaur video
What to say when kids refuse foods
How I taught my kids to eat visible onion pieces
harmony at the dinner table with toddlers
the benefits of shopping for local food with your kids
building healthy habits at the farmer's market

What to do when.....
Sometimes readers write in with questions. These questions often turn into full blog post answers. Here is a round up of the Help! articles I've written.

Help! My kids won't eat soup
Help! My kids don't eat enough lunch at school.
Help! My child gags when he tries new foods.
Help! My husband won't eat his vegetables.
Help! My kids don't eat well at family gatherings or restaurants
Help! What should a constipated kid eat?

Kids in the cafeteria
If you've never eaten at school with your child, I recommend you do so. You should know what the climate is like in the school cafeteria, and what constraints are your kids might be dealing with. Knowing how lunch goes down will help you ensure they're getting adequate nutrition during school hours.

5 things your school age kid needs for breakfast and lunch
How to get your preschooler ready for school lunch
Help! My child doesn't eat enough school lunch, (this is one of the most popular pages on the FwKA blog)
Overcoming lunch box boredom
How to get kids to drink more water

Position Pieces
From time to time, I write an article defining where I stand on certain debatable issues. You may not agree with my positions. I didn't always think they way I think now. As I get more experience and collect more data, my positions will continue to evolve. I continually ask myself, do the positions I hold enable or hinder me from growing good eaters?

Is letting kid decide what and how much to eat the right thing to do?
Kids in the kitchen, Joy or No Joy?

Baby Food Basics
It's been years since the baby food days for me. These posts share a bit about my feeding baby philosophy. I rarely opened jars. As a meal cooker, it didn't occur to me to feed baby any different.

Transitioning baby from spoon food to table food
Starting solid food with baby

Growing a Generation of Good Eaters
Help me in my mission! If you like what you read here, share it using the Facebook, email and twitter buttons below the post.

This post is participating in Real Food Wednesday

1000 Recovering Picky Eaters Needed Again

2011-02-20T17:20:00.000-08:00

If you've been following FwKA since last Spring, you know about my 2010 campaign to find 1000 people willing to become recovering picky eaters. In honor of some nutrition students and Jamie Oliver's upcoming Food Revolution series, I'm doing the challenge again. In that post I wrote:

What is the biggest obstacle in the way of people choosing healthy food? Taste preference. I don't know anyone that doesn't want better health through food. But do you eat food you don't like? Didn't think so. So how do you develop a taste for wholesome food you don't like?

A few weeks back, Sally Kuzemchak, MS, RD and instructor for a Nutrition Intro class, wrote me and asked if the recovering picky eater challenge was still ongoing. She wanted to have her students take the pledge as part of an assignment. I let her know the challenge officially ended, but invited her students to go ahead and take the pledge. Sally blogs at Real Mom Nutrition. By sharing the recovering picky eater challenge with her students, she is empowering a new crop of nutrition students to lead their future patients to a healthier lifestyle by first changing their mindset.

How do you change your mind about liking a food?
First you have to change your mindset. Your mindset has to become, I'm capable of learning to like new foods, instead of I'm a picky eater. One your mindset has changed, your thoughts will change. You will start thinking, I don't really like carrots raw, but they're decent cooked. Once your thoughts about the hated food start changing your actions change too, I'm going to make carrots as a side dish this week. Then as you're eating those carrots you've disdained your whole life you think, huh, these are actually not so bad, I might try them raw next week. After experimentation with some raw carrot recipes, a mindset change led to a change in results. You used to avoid raw carrots, but now you've found a way to like them.

I'm renewing my quest to find 1000 people who will pledge to learn to like a food they think they hate. I assure you, it's addicting. Once you learn to like a food you've avoided all your life, you'll want to see how many more walls you can break down. You'll probably discover, you're not really a picky eater like you thought. Picky eater becomes a discarded label that was responsible for decades of misconceptions about food.

In 2010 I found 113 people that signed up for the recovering picky eater pledge. I missed the mark by a long shot. Part of the problem was the widget I used from Change.org to track participants. It required people to enter their address and send a letter in order to sign the pledge. I suspect that was a big barrier for a lot of people to join in. Another problem was my lack of PR savvy. I'm still pretty blind when it comes to PR, but I've picked up a few tricks in the past nine months. I went through press release writing 101 last week. Might as well put my new skills to good use and write another one!

No excuses this time folks. All you have to do is be willing to learn to like a new food and leave a comment on this blog post.

Will you Pledge to become a Recovering Picky Eater?
Are you with me? Are you tired of saying "no tomatoes" to the waiter when ordering a side salad at a restaurant? Are you ready to stop avoiding baked chicken because the bones creep you out? Are you ready to embrace the mouth feel of raw crunchy carrots or nuts? Is there a dish your spouse loves that you can stand because it contains onions or a feared vegetable from childhood? If you are ready to leave your picky eater label behind, leave a comment on this blog post in this format:

Hi, I'm (your name). I pledge to learn to like (disliked food item) in the recovering picky eater challenge.

To leave a comment, scroll down to the bottom of this article, click the comment link that looks like this

Posted by jenna at 5:20 PM 0 comments

Join the Food Revolution
Wanna be part of the Food Revolution? Tweet about the recovering picky eater challenge. Blog about the challenge. Post this URL on Facebook. Email the URL for this post to your friends and family and ask them to do the challenge with you. Send a story to all the media contacts you know. Call me up and interview me on why I'm convinced that if people could dial up their preference for real, whole ingredients and dial down their taste for processed food that's chemically engineering to taste amazing their health would improve.

If you're not convinced that mindset influences how you approach food (or how you view your kids' food preferences) read this article by Christina of the blog Spoonfed. She talks about the dangers of the picky eater label. Why not be done with your picky eater label and while you're at it, stop thinking of your kids that way too?

Stick Around
I'll be checking in with you pledge takers to see how your quest is going. Subscribe to Food with Kid Appeal via email or blog reader so you can check in and let the gang know of your progress.

Calling All 2010 Pledge Takers
If you were one of the 113 pledges last year, pop in and say hello. What's your eating life like now that you have a new mindset about food?

Sherwood Elementary Takes Bold Step To Help Students Adopt Healthy Eating Habits

2011-02-19T07:14:00.000-08:00

School Undertakes Two School Food Pilots to Reduce Sugar

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: JENNA PEPPER, SHERWOOD ELEMENTARY CAMPUS STUDENT HEALTH ADVISORY COUNCIL MEMBER jenna AT foodwithkidappeal DOT com

Sherwood Elementary School students had an opportunity to develop a taste for unsweetened menu items at breakfast and lunch during a two week pilot program. The pilot removed popular sugared cereals, Cinnamon Toast Crunch (20g sugar per 2 oz), Raisin Bran Crunch (30g sugar per 2 oz) giving students a choice between Plain Cheerios (2g sugar per 2oz) and the hot meal. At lunch, student-favored chocolate milk was offered just 2 days a week, giving students a chance to develop a taste for unsweetened white milk three days a week.

The breakfast pilot has been successful. Participation did not decrease during the breakfast period even though student’s favorite breakfast cereals were not offered. Spring Branch ISD Child Nutritional Services is considering offering only healthier low sugar breakfast cereal options district wide.

The milk pilot demonstrated that when students are given an opportunity to adopt healthier eating habits, some students’ choices do change. Typically, around 80 percent of students going through the lunch line at the 405 student school choose chocolate milk. The lunch pilot eliminated chocolate milk for two days. According to preliminary pilot data, after chocolate milk was again made available, the number of students who chose white milk increased by 32 percent.

Joseph Bolduc, a Sherwood first grader and usual chocolate milk drinker reported proudly to his mother during the pilot, “I drank plain milk because it is healthier.” German Amaya a Sherwood fifth grader usually drinks only chocolate milk at lunch. Referring to the two pilot days where chocolate milk was unavailable Amaya said, “I like chocolate milk. I drank white milk because I was thirsty. If water was free I would drink that.”

Special thanks to: Spring Branch Independent School District Child Nutritional Services; Sherwood Principal, cafeteria and teaching staff, students and volunteers and Sherwood’s Healthy Lifestyles Committee for their efforts during the pilot.

Link to the Spring Branch ISD menu for elementary campuses.

My Favorite Healthy Asian Recipes

2011-02-17T06:47:00.000-08:00

Asian Pasta with Baby Bok Choy & Chicken

I'm a sucker for the flavors of Asia. I love soy sauce, ginger and sesame. I love cabbage. I can't believe I lived over 30 years of my live never having baby bok choy. My early years could have been so much richer with this vegetable in my diet! Cabbage is one of the best vegetables and it's deeply entrenched in Asian cuisine. I love cuisine that features a variety of vegetables in many tasty ways like Asian dishes do. What dish isn't made better with snow peas, mushrooms or bean sprouts? Let's not forget the carbs, rice noodles and dumplings are the best carbs in the world.

Love the Cuisine Love the Ingredients
Asian cuisine was my gateway to unknown vegetables. We ate plenty of vegetables from the farm as a kid, but my grandma didn't grow broccoli, snap peas, mushrooms or bean sprouts, so those were all new to me. It was also my gateway to onions. I still remember as a teenager when my parents took us to Chinese restaurant for the first time and I ate fried rice with broccoli in it. My brother and I called them trees, and gobbled them up. I was so enamored by the setting and uniqueness of the food my picky eater mindset was temporarily suspended. I just ate the broccoli because it was so green, and pretty all mixed in with the tasty rice, eggs and other veggies.

Asian cuisine may indeed be the only reason my mind eventually believed I could like onions. If other veggies prepared according Asian cuisine tasted so good, onions could too.

My problem? My husband would never choose a Chinese restaurant. Since we stopped going out to eat frequently when the boys were born I had two options: live without Asian food, or learn to cook it myself. I chose the latter.

Here are some of the concoctions I've put together in my kitchen with an Asian flare. Most utilize a combination of vegetables grown locally in around the Houston area and plus other organic and conventional produce. I always serve brown rice and my new favorite ingredient is organic brown rice pasta. I even use rice pasta for Italian cuisine. Hubby prefers the texture over whole wheat pasta.

Healthy Asian Recipe Roundup

Cabbage and Pork Stir Fry

Lettuce Wraps

The Best Vegetable Fried Rice (Benihana Style)

Asian Pasta with Baby Bok Choy and Chicken

Asian Collard Greens

Kid Appeal Tip If your child is partial to a type of cuisine, exploit it. Add new ingredients or previously refused ingredients cooked in the style of "XYZ." When they resist, remind them that they love Mexican flavors, and ask them to taste your concoction and decide if they like it or not. The question isn't "do you like enchiladas more with spinach in them or without", but "do you like spinach better in an enchilada, sauteed, or in a salad with dressing." The quest then is, how would you child prefer to eat spinach instead of "whether" they will eat it or not.

I still want to explore more recipes with sea vegetables, and start making more Asian soups. And, after last night's trip to my favorite Mediterranean restaurant I've vowed to try my hand at more of that cuisine at home. I'm committed to finding a hummus recipe my kids like more than the Costco brand, and I'll master a great kefir tzatziki sauce and maybe even try my hand at home-made pita bread!

This post is participating in LifeAsMom's my favorite recipe Ultimate Recipe Swap.

What's your favorite recipe? Share a link in the comments.

Asian Collard Greens - How I fell in love with leafy greens

2011-02-15T18:55:00.000-08:00

Welcome to 2011, the year I fell in love with leafy greens. My journey to love leafy greens started in 2008 when I joined a vegetable co-op and received a share of locally grown produce. I had more kale than I could shake a stick at. That whole winter was kale experimentation. Nothing really stuck for me. Hubby and I didn't like it in soup or pot-o-beans. Sauteed with onions and garlic worked well for hubby, not so for me. I just couldn't love that chewy texture. Flavor was good, by why o why must it be so dang chewy. We tried all kinds of greens: mustard, collard, turnip, beet, plus many varieties of cabbage. Beet greens were tasty, but rarely showed up in the share box. Kale was a weekly staple. Sigh. I only bought them, cooked them, and ate them because they are such a rich source of antioxidants, and minerals.

Then came 2010, where I met Kathy of Happy Heart Farms. I switched from co-op boxes to Wednesday farmer's market at Georgia's, mostly so I could skip kale and choose other vegetables! I still tried kale on occasion, especially the non-curly varieties because I knew I needed to keep having a relationship with kale et al in order to eventually fall in love with them. The kids weren't going to fall in love until I was convicted in my heart too.

Then something happened where the only leafy green available one week was a flat leaf variety of kale,so I bought it. Instead of cooking it, I tore half the bunch raw and mixed it with other greens for a nice fresh salad. It was delicious. My first error with kale? Cooking it. My second error with kale? Not adding it to stir fry sooner. I chopped the other half thinly and added it to this pork and cabbage stir-fry recipe. Two winner kale recipes in a week! I'm starting to think thrice about Kathy's suggestion to use dinosaur kale to make "dinosaur toes" an ants on a log spin off, peanut butter rolled up in kale. The idea repulsed me, and I always passed over kale in favor of salad greens or cabbage. She might be on to something!

A couple of weeks later, still high from my stir fry Kale discovery I decided to sub collard greens for cabbage in the pork stir fry recipe. It was amazing. Best leafy greens I've ever had. Big boo didn't even notice it was leafy green night, just gobble gobble. Little boo has been cool to stir fry in the past year after an initial warm reaction to it, so when he didn't dig in to the green version of pork stir fry, I wasn't surprised.

This week as a side dish to quiche I added sliced collard greens to some home-made chicken stock, with garlic, ginger and soy sauce. They were good enough even the big boo ate them without complaining. Shocker! I prefer the collard greens with pork and onions and served over rice, but asian collard greens are very edible.

Asian Collard Greens
Recipe - ingredients
1 bunch collard greens, washed, stems removed, sliced thin
1 cup chicken stock
1 clove garlic minced
1 tsp minced fresh ginger
1 TBSP soy sauce (less if desired)

directions
Heat one cup of broth in a wide pan over medium heat. Add minced garlic and ginger. Add sliced collard greens and stir to coat with hot broth. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally for 6-8 minutes until greens are tender but still green, add soy sauce.

Kid Appeal Tip Your kids will have a much easier time loving a food, if you love it too. That's a challenge to you, mom and dad! If there are things you want your kids to eat, but you haven't really developed a taste for, it's time for experimentation. Look for new recipes, new cooking methods, new flavor combinations, and try the disliked item at restaurants. Keep experimenting, even if it takes a while like it did for me with leafy greens. It is possible to learn to like a food you're not keen on. More than half of my current diet is dishes I've grown a taste for in the past 5 years.

This post is participating in Real Food Wednesday and Pennywise Platter

Confession time! Am I the only one who was slow to love kale and other leafy greens? What's your secret leafy greens recipe? Please share your recipes links in the comments, I feel an exciting greens season coming on.

Valentine's Day Healthy Yogurt Banana Split Fruity Sundae Recipe

2011-02-11T09:18:00.000-08:00

I love the community on the Food with Kid Appeal facebook page. We share dinner ideas every night, and answer a daily "question of the day." On occasion I ask my readers what they're serving for breakfast. Tessa W shared her family's yogurt banana split sundae tradition. I knew I had to share this idea on the blog, so I asked her to take photos and send in her recipe.

Wouldn't this make a fun healthy valentines day breakfast? Or a great alternative to the ever popular ice cream party at holidays? It's got no artificial dyes, is lower in sugar than ice cream and has some probiotics, fiber and antioxidants to boot. What kid would miss giant cupcakes and heart shaped pink cookies when they can top their own sundae with red fruit and chocolate chips?

Yogurt Banana Split Fruity Sundae Recipe
ingredients

Bananas
Yogurt (whole milk, plain sweetened with honey)
Granola
2-3 types of fruit of your choice (dry pack frozen, fresh, or canned in juice)
Mini Chocolate chips

directions
Split your banana a place banana halves in a bowl, scoop yogurt between banana slices and top with your fruits of choice. Sprinkle granola and chocolate chips on top and enjoy!

Thanks Tess for sharing your recipe and pictures!

What are YOU cooking?
Do you have a recipe and photo you'd like to share with Kid Appeal readers? Keep them coming! Here are details for recipe and story submissions:

You don't have to be an award winning writer (believe me, mediocre writing skills in good company on this blog.....). You just have to have a recipe and/or wholesome food experience with your kids to share.

Here are some recipe guest post guidelines:
1) 750 word max
2) send a picture of the dish, ingredients, or your kids helping/eating (your own, or credit the source).
3) recipe should be contain real ingredients (doesn't have to be 100% from scratch, but please no uber-processed food substances!)
4) send article, recipe, photo(s), and a bio of you, to me via email jenna AT foodwithkidappeal DOT com. I will reply and let you know when your recipe will be published.
5) no deadline. This is an open invitation for kid appeal readers to share the recipes their families are making.

Healthy Valentines Day Recipe Double Chocolate Brownie with Natural Pink Frosting

2011-02-08T14:37:00.000-08:00

I had a recipe flop for version one the coconut oil and cocoa butter chocolates I planned to publish as healthy recipe for valentine's day treats this year. Looks like I may not get to version two before the weekend. I didn't want to leave you all hanging without something yummy and not too unhealthy to make for your loved ones this year. I think of brownies as a lesser evil of baked goods. Not as much flour as a cake or cookies Quality chocolate is less refined and retains more of it's high antioxidant load. Real butter instead of vegetable oil. A dessert you don't have to feel too guilty about. Oh, and vegetables in the frosting. Tee hee hee.

I published this double chocolate brownie recipe with naturally colored vibrant pink frosting last year when the boys and hubby whipped these up for my birthday.

The deep magenta of roasted beets gives the cream cheese frosting a color perfect for the holiday of love. They are super chocolaty, have a giant glass of milk handy when you dig into these. Recipe for beet colored cream cheese frosting is here.

Hop over here to see the recipe for the brownies using two kinds of chocolate (use organic if you can find it), real butter and my secret ingredient. Hint: something with a little heat.

More Healthy Valentines Day Treat Recipes
Apple Volcanoes don't forget to look for dye free marshmallows in the natural food selection, who knew blue #1 was in the Kraft variety?
Chocolate Dipped Strawberries

Real Red Food Valentine's Day Party
Is your child's class having a valentine's day party? Check out this idea for a real red food valentines day party, see if your teacher will go for it. It may be too late to set the wheels in motion this year, but it's never too early to think about how you can raise the food IQ of teachers, students and parents at your child's school.

Healthy Recipe Index
If you haven't had a chance to check out the free healthy recipe index I compiled, take a look. There are over 120 recipes. Even I'd forgotten about some of the yumminess, like chocolate waffles and unstuffed mushrooms. There are some new navigation buttons under the Food with Kid Appeal banner, one for recipe index, and one for school food reform. Since I haven't held a class to the open public for over a year I changed the "register for class button" to "speaking engagements." My community outreach is now focused on addressing parent groups with strategies for growing good eaters.

This post is participating in LifeAsMom's Valentine's Day Treat Ultimate Recipe Swap. If you're visiting from LifeAsMom, welcome!

Back to my healthy chocolates recipe flop. I tried yoga instructor and foodie Kathryn Budig's recipe from her video. Anyone (successfully) made chocolates from coconut oil, cocoa butter and raw cacao before? Got a recipe I can try? The ones I made taste ok, but they look terrible. The mixture wouldn't combine and when they set they had a white coating on them (i forgot the technical term for it...)

Eat to Learn, Giving Kids A Chance to Like Unsweetened Cereal and Milk

2011-02-06T08:08:00.000-08:00

there is too much corn syrup in school food

Dear Kid Appeal subscribers, thanks for reading all the school food articles. I needed to post a few things about an upcoming pilot in SBISD that will give students a chance to adopt healthy eating habits. I know you like recipes the best. Stay tuned for a brainy valentines day treat. I'm still testing the recipe, when I nail it and get some decent photos, I'll be sharing it.

Tomorrow Sherwood Elementary students in Spring Branch ISD will enter a two week period where they won't see their favorite breakfast cereals on the menu. Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Frosted Flakes, and Raisin Bran Crunch will be off the menu, plain Cheerios will be on the menu. Before the first breakfast pilot in December, only 5 % of cereal eaters chose Cheerios. The pilot intends to increase consumption of lower sugar breakfast cereals like plain Cheerios. Chocolate milk will be off the menu for six out of 10 lunch services.

Last week Sherwood students heard morning announcements about the benefits of nourishing their brain with low and no added sugar as well as the detriments of eating too much sugar during the school day.

Here are those morning announcements, read by students and broadcast in each Sherwood classroom. Try these out with your kids at home to help them understand the importance of eliminating some of the added sugar in their daily diet.

Eliminate Sugar for a Better Brain at School, Eat to Learn morning announcements

Day 1

Knock Knock:

Who’s There?

Sugar

Sugar who?

Shu Gur you want to feed your brain that sugar?

Sugar sure does taste good, but it is bad news for your brain. When you eat or drink something with added sugar (like chocolate milk, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, a granola bar, Capri Sun or fruit snacks) cells are triggered to suck the glucose out of your bloodstream and store it for later use. When glucose is in storage it is not able to power your brain. Your brain needs carbohydrates from vegetables, fruits and grains to get power. Do your brain a favor, skip the Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal and chocolate milk. Power your brain with a bowl of plain cheerios for breakfast, and drink white milk at lunch.

Knock Knock hint: “Shu gur” is a play on the sounds in the words “You sure?”

Day 2

Rapid blood sugar increases damage the memory center of your brain. When you eat cinnamon toast crunch, drink chocolate milk or gobble a package of fruit snacks you make it hard for your brain to remember the things you learn in class.

Day 3

Sugar makes it hard for growth between neurons in your brain to occur. Your brain can actually shrink, or get smaller, when neuron growth is frequently low. A shrinking brain? No thanks!! I think I’ll skip the chocolate milk next time I see it in the cafeteria line.

Day 4

There are three kinds of fruit in the cafeteria line. Fresh fruit, sliced fruit in syrup and fruit juice. Using your Eat to Learn facts, guess which one of the fruit types is best for your brain? Tune in on Friday for the answer.

Day 5

Yesterday I asked you if fresh fruit, sliced fruit in syrup or fruit juice was best you’re your brain. Raise your hand if you think fruit juice is best for your brain. (wait.) Raise your hand if you think fresh fruit is best for your brain. (wait). Raise your hand if you think sliced fruit with syrup is best for your brain. (wait).

If you raised your hand for fresh fruit you are right. Your brain likes fresh fruit best because it has no sugar in it like syrupy fruit. 100% fruit juice has no sugar, but it also lacks fiber. When you drink fiber-less juice the fructose is metabolized just like sugar, which is bad news for your brain. Remember the rule: Chew your fruit!

Monday is the beginning of Brainy Breakfasts and Learning Lunch at Sherwood. Ms Noble, your teachers and your parents would like each of you to give plain cheerios and plain white milk a taste-test. They are not sweet with sugar like Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Frosted Flakes or Chocolate Milk. If you choose a banana and eat bites of banana with bites of cheerios, you give your brain healthy sugar from whole fruit. Whole grain oats, and bananas, hold the sugar, makes a Brainy Breakfast. Will you try Cheerios and plain milk to fuel your brain next week?

Kid Appeal Tip Have your child make a list of the items they regularly eat for breakfast, lunch, snack and dessert. Read labels looking for the following items: Then ask them if they think they eat too much added sugar for their brain to function at peak performance. Challenge them to find one or two sweet items they could live without. Think of some naturally sweet snacks your child could enjoy instead. Fresh and dried, unsweetened fruit are good substitutes (read labels on dried fruit, some have added sugar. Agree on a one week swap Then regroup and see if the habit sticks. See if your child's behavior or weekly grades at school improve. If not, consider testing the swap for a longer period. If so, replace another 1-2 sweetened things with natural choices.

Myth : Kids Don't Care about Eating Healthy
You may be skeptical, but trust me, young kids do care about feeding their brain better. Start teaching your child today to think about what's in the food they eat when they're young, and in time they will learn good eating habits. They'll leave the nest one day, and you'll no longer be there to buy the right groceries for them. Teach them how to shop and cook to nourish their brain.

Limiting Availability of Chocolate Milk, Bold Move by Houston school

2011-02-04T11:10:00.000-08:00


71% of the milk sold nationwide	is flavored

Next week at Sherwood Elementary our fearless Child Nutritional Services Director is stepping out on a limb and taking chocolate milk off the lunch line for six lunch services in a two-week pilot period. I'm expecting CNS will get some inquiries from parents concerned about their children not having access to calcium, protein and Vitamin D in milk. Some kids just won't drink white milk. Others prefer the sweet taste of chocolate milk. Many haven't tried white milk in years. The vast majority of students at our Spring Branch ISD campus choose chocolate milk.

The Truth about Sugar
The biggest problem with flavored milk? Added sugar. With new studies linking excessive consumption of added sugar to food and especially beverages to metabolic syndrome, obesity, heart disease and obesity it's time school districts put student health above student preferences. I'm proud to say, SBISD is taking this chance.

Don't believe me when I mention a link between school lunches and increased risk for obesity? This NY Times article about a study of one thousand sixth graders makes this same link. (Thanks to Bettina at The Lunch Tray for the tip-off).

Is milk a necessary nutrient
Chocolate milk contains nutrients, that's true. But it also contains sugar, an anti-nutrient. If a child is not drinking milk then dietary needs for calcium and protein need to be sought elsewhere. Vitamin D is best obtained from sunlight exposure versus the diet. Milk is not a necessary nutrient. The reason Americans think it is? The Dairy Council's Got Milk and Raise Your Hand for Chocolate Milk campaign's reinforce a parent's concern that without milk their children won't get the calcium they need to build strong bones. One million dollars was spent on the Raise Your Hand campaign. I doubt the "leafy green council" has budgets large enough to educate parents on the nutrition benefits and palatability of dark green calcium containing vegetables. As of 2005 the National Dairy Board and National Fluid Milk Board have spend 1.1 billion dollars on advertising diary products as essential nutrients. Associations, boards and councils that represent vegetable growers don't have that kind of budget.

In this guest post for Cathy writer of the blog A Life Less Sweet, I remind parents that calcium is available in other food sources. When parents, in fear of vitamin and mineral deficiencies for kids, offer "dessertified" essential nutrients, palates are trained to prefer sweetened foods. An opportunity to for kids to develop a taste for savory or unsweetened nutrient dense foods like plain milk, vegetables and unrefined whole grains is missed. We teach kids that if a food has a necessary nutrient in it, daily consumption of sugar is "healthy". Flavored yogurts and flavored whole-grain breakfast cereals all fall in this category. This could set kids up for a life long struggle with weight maintenance. For some kids the outcome is much worse. Severe health conditions like obesity, diabetes and heart disease result from this childhood habit of over-consumption of sweetened beverages.

Why aren't there more limits on junky food in schools?
Some food is distracting to the learning process. For example when a child decides to take the school lunch, buy 1-2 extra chocolate milks and add an a la carte cookie or two to that. He then guzzles milks, munches cookies, skips the hot food, fruit and vegetable sides and returns to class. From my observations, many of the youngest students eat very little of their food, drinking only juice for breakfast and chocolate milk for lunch. Those students are not set up for success in the classroom.

Sadly, most public school cafeterias have no way to prevent that type of lunch from being consumed by students. The current mind-set is "healthy foods are available in the cafeteria, and students need to learn to choose healthy options." That mind-set was captured here in a Times article covering response to the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act.

"Principal Means thinks kids about to enter the real world need to learn how to make choices on their own — without the government breathing down their gullet."

I don't think offering students nourishing lunches that support academic success an example of nanny state or as Principal Means put it, the government breathing down a child's gullet. Principals utilize dress codes, unexcused absence policies, discipline policies and academic benchmarks to enable kids to succeed at school. Why not limit the amount of junk in the carnival type food common many school food programs and classroom parties as an effort to support academic success?

Parents don't let students choose their bedtimes. Teachers don't let students choose how they will learn math, via computer games or instructor led lessons. Teachers may provide access to math computer games, but that access is limited. Instructor led lessons are prioritized. Administrators don't let kids choose what to wear, most schools enforce a dress code of some sort, knowing that some attire is distracting to the learning process.

Is the problem that most school board officials and administrators don't recognize the link between diet and academic performance? Don't principals want more students who are able to focus on school work thus scoring better on standards tests? Would more districts commit to making speedier more meaningful menu reform if the mindset were instead, a nourished brain is a learning brain?

Setting students up for failure
I'm all for teaching kids to make healthy choices, but we set them up for failure when they are distracted by flavored milk and a la cart items. Nutrition education is essential to help kids make good choices. Education alone won't yield kids who are capable of making the right choices among so many unfavorable ones. Should we really expect students who are still developing decision making skills and learning responsibility to make the right choices in the cafeteria line?

Participation is King
Removing chocolate milk from the menu has health benefits, but budget detriments. Some studies have shown that milk consumption decreases when flavored milks are removed from the menu. Others show that when items preferred by students disappear from the lunch line, students stop buying and bring a lunch from home. Decreased participation in the lunch program equates to decreased revenue which makes an already strapped budget even tighter. Without an increase in participation, thus more revenue, some of the most meaningful menu changes such as sourcing more whole ingredient, additive-free products, increasing the availability of palatable fresh vegetables, and adding more scratch-made menu items can not be undertaken.

Call out to SBISD parents, staff and community
If you are a parent in SBISD and have an opinion about the removal or decreased availability of chocolate milk from the school lunch menu, please leave a comment on this blog post (identifying yourself as an SBISD parent). You may comment anonymously. Then take a moment to forward to the URL to other SBISD parents, staff and community members asking them to weigh in on the no chocolate milk pilot.

If CNS knows the SBISD community has their back as they seriously consider implementing reduced offerings or elimination of flavored milk district wide, I'm confident they will find out-of-the-box solutions to address revenue shortfalls as a result of this menu improvement.

What do you think? Is it time students have a chance to develop a taste for unsweetened and low sugar foods and a better chance at success in the classroom?

This post is participating in Fight Back Friday.

Healthy Superbowl Recipes

2011-02-03T06:10:00.000-08:00

Sausage, potato, green bean, onion one pan meal

Your superbowl party doesn't have to be about a bowl of corn chip and a crock pot full of fake cheese sauce (have you looked at the ingredient list of Velveeta recently - what is that stuff?). I know, I know, it tastes good, you argue. I'm not saying it doesn't taste good, I'm just saying it's fake food.

Here are some snacks that appeal to kid, mom and even man taste buds. Each one packs a nutritional punch giving your family and guests a chance to eat some real food at your superbowl party.

I'm not usually a fan on mindless eating in front of the TV, but I've noticed at our family TV nights that my kids will often nibble raw veggies and tasty dips without even realizing how much they are tucking away. They are captivated, and hungry, so they dig in. Hope yours do too.

Veggie Snacks and Salads

Oven Fries

Twigs in a Blanket Courtesy of Amy at Super Healthy Kids

Blanched Green Beans this crunchy sweet finger food is bound to make your child fall in love with green beans. Works great with ranch dip or avocado chevre dip (listed below.) My kids love the curly tails. We never have any left over.

French Rice Salad with Avocado and Corn

Unstuffed Mushrooms

Sweet Potato Chips

Savory Snacks

Spicy Stove Top Popcorn

Avocado and Chevre Dip this goes perfectly with fresh cut raw veggies, which taste infinitely better than pre-packaged vegetable trays. Do your guests a favor and cut up some carrots, cukes and celery the day of the party. You'd be surprised how fast the veggies disappear when they haven't had a rinse in a chlorine bath and sat out cut ends exposed for a few days before the nibbling begins. Sure, it takes some time, but isn't it worth the effort if the vegetables actually go down the hatch?

Taco Seasoning (add this to sour cream for a chip or veggie dip, the benefits of mixing your own spices from your pantry rack, no MSG, no weird chemical additives.)

Main Meals

Healthy Crockpot Chili For Crowd

Sausage and Green Bean One Pan Meal

Chicken and Vegetable Lettuce Wraps

Sweet Snacks

Chocolate Covered Fruit and Nut Balls (aka flourless, no bake cookie)

Apple Volcanoes

Thanks for visiting Food with Kid Appeal.   Hop on over here to the recipe index for more healthy kid friendly recipes that will guide you to growing good eaters. Most recipes include a Kid Appeal Tip giving you an action plan to help the recipe go down the hatch.

Enjoy your Superbowl party and stay warm.

This post is participating in LifeAsMom's Ultimate Recipe Swap.

Recipe Index

2011-02-02T20:38:00.000-08:00

asian pasta with bok choy and chicken

At long last. After 317 posts and over 2 years of blogging I am finally getting to the "recipe index" I've had on my to-do list since November 2008. Um, very sheepishly I say, better late than never? Hopefully this will make it easier for you to find your favorite Food with Kid Appeal recipes.

If you're new, welcome to Food with Kid Appeal, your guide to growing good eaters. On this recipe index you'll find free recipes to nourish your family. My recipes use primarily whole food and real ingredients. I don't like eating factory made chemicals, so I avoid packets and meal helpers. It's taken a while to figure out how to make cream of mushroom soup and taco spice mix, but I've nailed down most of the "kitchen helpers." I used to rely on. I love veggies so be prepared for a good helping of vegetable recipes.

On most recipes you'll find a Kid Appeal Tip, a strategy or technique you can use to help your kids fall in love with wholesome nourishing food, including vegetables. For more on what kind of meat, eggs, dairy, produce, grains and oils I buy, check out this post (link coming soon).

How to find recipes on Food with Kid Appeal
I will periodically update this index to include new recipes I'm sharing with readers. To be sure you don't miss a thing, you can subscribe via email (see that orange icon on the right? click it and fill in your email address). Also check the blog archive for recent recipes on the blog home page, you'll find it about half way down the right side navigation bar. This index was last updated in January 2011.

Breakfast Recipes
Soaked Whole Grain Pancakes
7 Minute Stove Top Soaked Steel Cut Oatmeal
Whole Grain Waffles - Best Ever
Egg Toast (aka Toad in a Hole)
Blueberry Sauce (Pancake - Waffle Topper)
Apples and Oatmeal
Frugal French Toast
Whole Grain Banana Bread
Summer Squash and Ham Egg Scramble
The Best Whole Grain Pancakes
Key Lime French Toast
Peaches and Oatmeal
Acorn Squash Chocolate Chip Muffins
Whole Orange Whole Grain Quinoa Muffins
Quinoa Cereal
Canadian Bacon and Leek Quiche with Potato Crust

Lunch Recipes
Chicken Salad Cabbage Wraps
Blueberry Yogurt Parfait w/ Honey
Cottage Cheese and Pears, naturally sugar free
Peach Yogurt Parfait
Lunchbox Yogurt Parfait my seven year old insists on this almost daily for school lunch.

Dinner Entree Recipes
Chicken and Vegetable Lettuce Wraps
Soft Tacos with Local Greens, Shredded Cheese, Avocado Toppers
Pork Chops with Pomegranate Stuffing
Homemade Whole Grain Breaded Chicken Nuggets
Kale with Beans and Bacon
Oven Crispy Chicken
Crockpot Chicken Quinoa
Purple Cabbage and Carrot Slaw
Healthy Crockpot Chili For Crowd
Green Macaroni and Cheese (perfect for St. Patrick's Day)
Sausage and Green Bean One Pan Meal
Turkey-Rosemary Meatballs in White Whole Wheat Pitas
Fish Tacos with Cabbage and Fish Taco Sauce
Red Beans in the Crockpot (Meatless meal)
Pasta With Chicken, Chevre, Mushrooms and Spinach (aka Goat Cheese)
Minestrone Soup (using left over vegetable tray)
Kholrabi Greens, Mushrooms, Chevre Pizza
Healthy Kid's Birthday Party Menu
Meatballs with Mushroom Cream Sauce
Ham Bone Split Pea Soup
Vegetable Fried Rice
Purple Cabbage and Pork Stir Fry
Asian Pasta with Bok Choy and Chicken (pictured above)

Dinner Sides and Vegetable Recipes
Black Bean Salad with Corn and Tomatoes
Pomegranate Pesto Pasta Salad
Cranberry Orange Sauce
Cast Iron Skillet Cornbread
Quinoa with Stir Fry Veggies
Sauteed Kale With Onions
Pesto Crostini
Healthy French Fries (aka Oven Fries)
Grilled Asparagus - Camping Vegetables
French Rice Salad with Avocado and Corn
Peas and Onions
Poached Egg with Rocket Salad (aka Arugula) - hubby kisses me when i make this.
Mediterranean Bean, Herb Salad
Tomatillo and Summer Vegetable Rice Salad
Red White and Blue Fruit Salad in Watermelon Boat
Heirloom Tomato Salad
Fried Okra (cornmeal coating)
Black Beans and Rice
Honey Gingered Carrots
Candied Acorn Squash

Wilted Brussels Sprouts with Cranberries
Mushroom Rice Pilaf
Crunchy Garlicky Green Beans
Paneer
Sweet Potato Chips
Chickpea Salad with Tomatoes and Corn

Unstuffed Mushrooms
Red Cauliflower with Lemon
Herbed Potatoes on the Grill
Steamed Okra
Fiesta Carrot Salad
Marinated Baby Beets
Rainbow French Fries

Recipes for Meal Helpers
Oregano Pesto
Spinach Basil Pesto
Frugal Whole Wheat Bread Crumbs
Vegetable Bouillon (most amazing soup trick ever)
Taco Seasoning
Whole Orange Puree
Making Vegetable and Chicken Stock from Vegetable Scraps
Meats and Greens Spaghetti Sauce
Scratch Made Cream of Mushroom Soup (just like la madeleines)

Scratch Made Enchilada Sauce
Sprouted Grain Bread

Healthy Snack Recipes
Chocolate Covered Fruit and Nut Balls (aka flourless, no bake cookie)
Frozen Fruit
Spiced Pumpkin Seeds
Homemade Ranch Dressing
Shelled Nuts
Edamamme
Stove Top Popcorn
Banansicles (horrible photos, tasty snack)
Healthy Snacks You Can Take on a Hike or Road Trip
Ants on a Log (aka peanut butter on celery with Raisins)
Trail Mix
Blanched Green Beans
Hard Boiled Eggs with Butter and Salt
Persimmons out of hand (the pearish tasting bright orange apple)
Pomegranates out of hand (try one whole, far better than the juice)
Chocolate Fruity Granola Bites
Avocado and Chevre Dip

Healthy Dessert Recipes (most of them anyway)
Peppermint Shortbread Christmas Cookies (christmas)
Tangerine Pineapple Popsicles
Double Ginger Snaps
Hand-dipped Chocolate Dipped Strawberries
Whole Grain Strawberry Shortcake
Chocolate Cupcakes w/ Cream Cheese Frosting
Whole Grain Carrot Cake
Whole Grain Rhubarb Crisp
Cherry Split Cake - (no bake, no artificial dyes, no preservatives)
Chocolate Waffles (forgot about these, really want to make them NOW!)
Whole Orange Cake with Fudge Icing
Raspberry Sand Tarts (christmas)
Nutmeg Logs (christmas)
Apple Volcanoes
Double Chocolate Brownies with Beet Pink Frosting
Coconut Cookies

Healthy Drink Recipes

Watermelon Mint Juice
Tangerine Ice Cubes
Strawberry Mimosa (if I drink strawberry puree with my dry champagne, that's healthy right? skip the champagne for kids, opt for club soda)

Please notify me by leaving a comment if one of the recipe links is broken, or pointed to the wrong page. Report back if you try a recipe, I love to know what readers think of recipes. Enjoy your food!