This week's Philadelphia Weekly, one of the city's two alt-weekly papers, features a fascinating story about a chef who decided to take a job in a juvenile day treatment facility, teaching kids to cook.
The author, a teacher who hailed from RI's Johnson and Wales Culinary Academy, isn't exactly a wuss (he had a rough childhood, barely making it out of high school, and as a line cook, once was the victim of a stabbing), but his challenges are immediate and immense.
The kids were the products of all sorts of difficult upbringings, and often brought their fears, anger, and frustration into the cooking classroom. Several admit to drug use (the author cites a study: "between 2002 and 2004, at least one in every six full-time food service workers used illicit drugs in the month prior to the survey, while 12.1 percent of restaurant industry workers had used alcohol heavily.") And upon the presentation of a hummus platter with pita and roasted red peppers, one boy yelled, "That's rich people food, and I ain't eatin' it!"
The story is definitely worth a read - it's a testament of the combined power of dedication, determination, and the joys of cooking and food.
The old story was that expectant mothers should eat fish to help their growing babies' brains. Then we heard that eating fish was dangerous to the health of the baby. If you're pregnant, no fish!
Obviously, fish was never really bad for expectant mothers; it was simply that some certain types of fish that had high levels of mercury. All the news about "fish," "mercury," and "pregnancy" must have been confusing. The most recent research doesn't seem to sound like anything new, just a reminder that fish is, in fact, good for the brain, as "Preschoolers whose mothers regularly ate low-mercury fish during pregnancy may have sharper minds than their peers...Researchers found that among 341 3-year-olds, those whose mothers ate more than two servings of fish per week during pregnancy generally performed better on tests of verbal, visual and motor development."
Just remember that it's fish with low levels of mercury, so make sure you do your homework.
On a recent trip to Whole Foods, I discovered First Blush gourmet grape juices. It comes in four different varieties that map directly to different types of wine: Cabernet, Merlot, Rosé, and Chardonnay. This is the perfect drink for the yuppie in training. If they get to know their grape juices, it's just a small step to becoming a proper wine connoisseur (when they reach legal age, of course). Who knows - the early start might just be the extra edge they need to help them impress their dates and close business deals. Call it the training wheels of the wine industry.
Each variety is 100% juice and so tasty that you may want to drink it along with the kids. I've been mixing mine with some sparkling water to create a light and refreshing "grape fizz".
And you thought the green-beret'd Girl Scouts and their cookies were enterprising little kids?
In Victorville, CA, the latest trend at schools is an underground sugar trade. With candy and other "bad" snacks banned from school campuses, kids are selling contraband Snickers and Twinkies right out of their backpacks.
According to Jim Nason, principal at Hook Junior High School in Victorville, it's become quite a lucrative business for the dealers. Kids bring things like candy bars, soda, and even energy drinks from home in their "sack lunch" and turn around and sell them for a healthy profit, with some kids walking around school with upwards of $40 in cash.
While I understand this is a bit of a problem for the schools and parents, I have to hand it to the kids -- at least we can count on them to be very good businesspeople when they grow up.
Despite urges from various British food organizations, the European Food Safety Authority decided against banning additives in food.
Their reasoning? A recent £750,000 study, which found a link between eating food loaded with additives and colorants and impulsive/hyperactive behavior in kids, was not a substantial enough reason to ban the additives entirely. In the study, eight and nine year olds who had ingested food with additives could not sit still long enough to complet simple tasks, like a 15-minute computer exercise. (Yeah, but neither could most of the eight year olds I know, with or without stimulants. Heck, most 25 year-olds I know don't have the patience to finish a 15-minute computer task).
But the study did prompt some retailers to change their ways: Marks and Spencer, a British department store that sells everything from shirts to iPods to gourmet foods, vowed to stop selling food and drink that contain additives by the end of the month.
The study results should not be ignored, but I don't blame the EU for not jumping to conclusions. Banning food with additives falls along the same lines as banning food with trans-fats, and I have the same opinion in each case: use your own good judgment and discretion. If packaged foods make your kid hyperactive, don't buy the foods, or at least limit their intake. Simple as that.
While I'm not a parent myself, I've spent quite a lot of time in my life providing child care, and so I know that entertaining kids can sometimes be a bit of a challenge. One surefire way to keep the younger set happy is to give them either an art project or a cooking project. When you can combine the two and give them an artistic project that then turns into something they can eat, all the better!
Marie at Make and Takes did a really fun activity with her kids recently, in which she added food coloring to bowls of milk and used them as edible paint that they then used to color bread. The bread got toasted and eaten. They ate their painted toast dry, but you could butter it or give it a glaze with a bit of honey.
Coolio is back (check out our interview with Coolio here) with another episode of his new cooking show (on My Damn Channel), Cooking with Coolio. This time he is a little bit more family-friendly and safe for viewing at work, as he makes "Spinach Even Your Kids Will Eat." It was nice to see him interact with Ethan in this video and the spinach he cooked up looked pretty darn tasty as well. So far, I'm liking what he's doing.
If you're enjoying watching Cooking with Coolio, consider leaving a video response. The best comment will win an autographed bell pepper. Imagine how much you could get for that thing on eBay!
We've already heard all the reasons why soda is bad for kids, so we won't go into them. Again.
However, we will say that just as bad as soda is the thing that makes kids thirsty for soda in the first place: salt. According to a British study published in an American Heart Association journal, kids who eat salty snacks and meals get thirsty and often turn to sodas to quench their thirst. Researchers go on to say that the salt isn't coming from the salt shaker, but from manufactured food.
The solution? Cut back on salty, processed snacks.
When I was a kid, I wasn't a picky eater, but I was difficult when it came to school lunches. I hated buying lunch at school, but I wasn't a big fan of sandwiches, mostly because of the squish factor. I also got tired of things easily, which made it hard for my mom to keep track of acceptable lunch bag contents. I really liked taking yogurt and granola to school, but I got teased mercilessly for having food that seemed too healthy (you must remember that we're talking about the late eighties here, when eating locally and organically was not the norm).
Cookbook author Keri Fisher currently has a post up over at Culinate that addresses the question of the lunch box. She talks of her own struggles making lunches for the kids in her household and offers a few of her suggestions for successful and kid-approved meals. I particularly like her Frog in a Bog Muffins, as they are essentially a healthy version of a corn dog. And who doesn't like corn dogs?
These and other equally pressing questions were answered recently when Cookie Monster (and Cheryl Henson, Muppet creator Jim Hensen's daughter) were interviewed for NPR as part of the station's "In Character" series. Henson revealed that Cookie Monster's large black mouth is actually a hole in the puppet costume, where most of the food is deposited (directly on top of the puppeteer's head). The rest is mashed into crumbs and flies around his head during his frenzied eating.
Cookie was asked several questions similar to the format adapted by Inside the Actors' Studio host James Lipton. We've summarized them here for you, using actual quotes from Cookie himself, to reveal just a little bit more about what goes on inside that big furry blue head of his.
Favorite word: COOKIE! Ahahaha....What did you expect? Least favorite word: "OUT OF COOKIES! Does that count? Okay...how about pusillanimous?" What sound/noise do you love: "Anumumumum!" (the noise that he makes as he's devouring cookies) What sound/noise do you hate: Snoring. Favorite curse word: "Well, me have favorite dirty word: Oscar the Grouch! That is one dirty word." Who would you like to see on a new bank note? "Bert. Me think he'd look really nice there, just the shape of Bert's head would fit nicely in the center of the bill." What profession would you least like to try? Ophthalmology If you were reincarnated as another animal, what would you like it to be? A Snuffulupagus. If heaven exists, what you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates? "COWABUNGA!"
If you're hungry and willing to fork over the cash, there are plenty of companies that will be willing to deliver you a meal. MSNBC recently noted a few companies that are now bringing their goods right to your front door (or, in some cases, your kid's school).
For $100, California-based RAWvolution will send you a box filled with two soups, four entrees, four side dishes and two desserts, all - you guessed it - raw and organic.
For parents who are way too busy to throw an apple and a pb&j in a paper bag for their kid, they can schedule to have Freshlunches deliver Junior a healthy, organic lunch (about $4-$7 per day), just like mom would make. Except...she didn't. Some company did. Oh, well - guess it's better than Lunchables, right?
Three Potato Four will send you a week's worth of food (or so they say), which includes four organic vegetarian entrees, two side dishes, soup, salad, dessert, and bread. Heck, they even throw in some flowers for ambiance!
Now, these options are all well and good, but if you want healthy food delivered to your family, why not join a CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) program, and support your local farms while going easy on transportation emissions in the process? And if you need some company to make your kid's lunch every day, maybe you should re-assess your super-busy schedule, no?
Chances are, if you're reading this blog you're something of a foodie. If you have kids, you may want them to also develop a love of food and cooking. But who has time to inculcate the next generation in the ways of the culinary world? The Young Chefs Academy has just the thing!
The organization was founded with the purpose of teaching children as young as three the basics of cooking and kitchen safety. Young Chefs Academy, started by Julie Fabing Burleson and Suzy Vinson Nettles,now has franchises in many cities. They offer classes, mini camps, and birthday parties. Each class includes kitchen safety, food handling and preparation, cooking/baking techniques, presentation, table setting and manners.
Young Chefs Academy is a great way to give your kids a safe and fun environment to learn how to cook, or at least a place to start. So if getting your kids to learn culinary basics is important to you, the Young Chefs Academy may be a smart choice. There's no time like childhood to start a child on a lifelong love of food.
When I was 16, I spent three weeks of my summer vacation in Poland. I was there with a small group of teenagers from the Unitarian Church in which I grew up, helping teach English at a summer camp. While I was there, I came down with a nasty cold. There was a doctor on staff at the camp, and she recommended to me that I try taking a spoonful of honey three times a day to help with the cough and sore throat that accompanied my cold. I leaped at the suggestion, as I had always enjoyed eating honey straight. Thankfully, it also helped with the coughing (my roommate also appreciated it's cough suppressant effects).
Once I returned to the world of easily accessible cough syrups and drops, I mostly forgot about this natural remedy. Yesterday afternoon, I caught a report on NPR's Day to Day program in which they were discussing a recent study that has shown that honey does work as a cough suppressant in children and is an effective alternative if you don't want to give your kids the over the counter medicines. It brought that trip to Poland flooding back and made me wish I had remembered honey when I was in the midst of a nasty cold last week. So next time you start to feel cruddy, reach for your honey bear instead of your bottle of cough syrup.
When I was a kid, my mom was one of those health-conscious parents* who refused to pack chips, twinkies or Halloween candy in my lunch. Occasionally, my sister and I could wear down her resistance enough to convince to buy fruit snacks (gussied up gummy bears) or fruit leather but those days were very few and far between. I think though, that had she been aware of this recipe for homemade fruit roll-ups, I could have gone through the lunch period each day in elementary school feeling incrementally less deprived, as it would have given me a treat that would have looked very similar to the stuff that the rest of the kids were eating.
*I cursed her in those days, but am now pretty darn grateful that she was being so careful that we ate well.
Sometimes I wish I could go back and be a kid all over again these days. Because they are making some really cool stuff for kids right now. Take, for instance, this game that Matthew Amster-Burtonwrote about today on Serious Eats. It is called Crazy Chefs and is a game where the point is for players to complete the dish on their card. They turn over tiles until they match up all the ingredients. When I was a kid there was nothing that made me happier than pretending to grocery shop, cook and eat my plastic creations. I particularly remember a plastic fried egg that I served to my parents over and over again. These tendencies are part of the reason it surprised no one when I started writing about food.
It sits alone and untouched at the end of a long buffet table -- a bowl full of apples and bananas, maybe a seedy orange tossed in as an afterthought. Don't let your fruit salad meet this awful fate, spruce it up instead!
This week's Philadelphia Weekly, one of the city's two alt-weekly papers, features a fascinating story about a chef who decided to take a job in a juvenile day treatment facility, teaching kids to cook.
We've already heard all the reasons why soda is bad for kids, so we won't go into them. Again.
Chances are, if you're reading this blog you're something of a foodie. If you have kids, you may want them to also develop a love of food and cooking. But who has time to inculcate the next generation in the ways of the culinary world? The Young Chefs Academy has just the thing!
When I was a kid, my mom was one of those health-conscious parents* who refused to pack chips, twinkies or Halloween candy in my lunch. Occasionally, my sister and I could wear down her resistance enough to convince to buy fruit snacks (gussied up gummy bears) or fruit leather but those days were very few and far between. I think though, that had she been aware of this recipe for 
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