"kids food" news and stories

And they call it puppy love! OK, we couldn't resist a nod to the Paul Anka (and Donny Osmond) song, but we're all kinds of smitten with the Creative Cupcaking duo's pink pooch. All you need to make them (and to make your kids smile) are vanilla cupcakes, a can of frosting (or homemade) colored pink. Then simply add marshmallows, jelly beans, some coconut and nonpareils. This cupcake (thank you, Christopher Guest) is absolutely best in show.

Get the Pink Poodle cupcakes recipe and watch the Creative Cupcaking how-to video here.

See more ideas for Creative Cupcakes.

The school-lunch program is now up to Congress. At year's end, it's serious crunch time in the House, and on the agenda is the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act, now dubbed the "Healthy, Hunger-free Kids Act," which you may remember passed unanimously in the Senate this August. It is now on the House floor for a final vote scheduled today.

As we reported back in August, this bill needs to be reauthorized every five years, but for the first time in 30 years, there's a draft to raise the budget for school lunches -- food does cost more these days, and shouldn't kids get proper nutrition, at least at school? The raised budget, now $4.5 billion, which includes other initiatives, would raise the alloted school lunch money by 6 cents per meal per child.

The new bill would also "expand the number of kids in school lunch programs" and "eliminate junk food," reports the Washington Post, meaning there would be more healthy options on the lunch line and even in the vending machines.

As if the carb mash-up otherwise known as the spaghetti taco wasn't enough, more examples of weird foods that kids love keep pouring in from parents around the country. Fruit sculpted into animal shapes or made into smiley faces are big themes from mom and dad. But when kids have their way? Bring on the PB& J in a cone! For a gallery of kids' wacky food indulgences, visit the New York Times.

Perhaps you haven't noticed it because you are a victim of the phenomenon. You called up your girlfriends on your cotton candy pink cel phone adorned with sparkly cupcake-shaped charms, went out to get frozen yogurt topped with Cap'n Crunch cereal, and sat around talking about the "cuuuuuuutest" Hello Kitty makeup bag at Sephora and gossiping about "boys"...just like all the other junior high girls.

But wait. You're 35.

I was just reading an article about a new book called Rejuvenile: Kickball, Cartoons, Cupcakes, and the Reinvention of the American Grown-Up, in which author Christopher Noxon says very plainly, "'People all over are refusing to act their age." Basically, grown-ups are going through a period of regression back to their childhoods. Though his book talks about the trend from a broad perspective, I couldn't help but think how very true this trend is in food. I mean, how else do you explain a craze for cupcakes, those tiny treats that we ate as children in our homeroom birthday parties? What about the recent throwback to "retro" foods that many of us associate with growing up in mom's kitchen like macaroni and cheese, and meatloaf?

Are we regressing as a society? I know I am. Are you one of these grownups who still lives with his/her parents, postpones marriage, watches cartoons, all the while eating Hello Kitty Pop-tarts, dipping your dinosaur (chicken) nuggets in ketchup and having a Twinkie for desert? If so, what other "rejuvenile" foods are you eating?

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