Archive for May, 2010
Real Food For Healthy Kids
School may be nearing the end for the year, but the changes to the lunch menu in Baltimore County Public Schools are just beginning. You may remember my post last year bemoaning the state of school lunches in the public schools where I live. Things like chicken nuggets and frozen pizza are staples for entrees and children can choose from gummy snacks, chips, even funnel cake for extra items. This is particularly distressing when contrasted to the Baltimore City Public Schools, just a few miles away, where they are doing things with their lunch program that are light years ahead of the county. A group of parents and community members has just formed to help bring healthy change to the Baltimore County Public Schools lunch menu.
The name of the group is the Baltimore County Healthy Kids Coalition and the goals are straightforward:
- Reducing the number of processed-food entrees
- Adding more fresh fruit and veggies to the menus
- Buying local produce, meat and poultry when feasible
- Incorporating healthy-eating lessons into the curriculum
It is exciting to see people coming together for the purpose of improving the nutritional value of the food we feed our children. Providing children with fresh, healthy food and modeling healthy food behavior is the best way to ensure that the future generation will be healthy and have less diet related diseases. Implicitly telling children that it is okay to eat processed food and sugar and salt filled snacks at every meal by making these the principal offerings on the school lunch menu is not modeling healthy food behavior. As a founding member of the Baltimore County Healthy Kids Coalition, I am proud to be one of the voices calling for change.
Won’t you join us?
Okey-Dokey, Artichokey!
We had artichokes for dinner tonight. Not marinated artichoke hearts – the real deal. At the store yesterday, there was a display of approximately 2,000 fresh artichokes. My daughter was intrigued. I remembered how exotic I felt the first time I ate an artichoke as a child and bought 4 of them, one for each family member.
My elder daughter, who was not on the artichoke shopping trip last night, declared that she did not want artichokes for dinner because she doesn’t like that type of fish. After explaining the difference between anchovies and artichokes she was open to trying them. The little one, feeling quite superior because she knew all about artichokes after seeing them in the store yesterday, was ready to try to eat this prickly veggie.
I cooked them by boiling in a pot of water for about 20 minutes. The artichokes are done when they feel tender when pierced all the way through. I made the traditional lemon butter for dipping the leaves and put it in little cups for each person. Chicken sausages and little bitty potatoes rounded out the meal.
We sat down to eat. I demonstrated how to scrape the “meat” off the ends of the leaves with my front teeth. As the Oxford Companion to Food states, a good set of front teeth and some patience are necessary when eating an artichoke. The girls quite enjoyed the process of consuming an artichoke: peel off a leaf, dip in lemon butter, scrape with teeth, put used leaf on little plate, repeat. They both declared the artichoke their new favorite vegetable. My husband was not as enamored, saying that it was too much work for too little food. It is definitely a something that is best eaten when there is plenty of time for the meal.
These delicious veggies, actually buds that are members of the thistle family, are worth a try if you have never had the experience of eating a fresh artichoke. They are full of fiber, vitamin C, folate and magnesium. Not sure how to eat one? Here’s a video to show you how!
Parent/Child Cooking Class on May 30th!
Farmers Market: Cooking With What’s In Season
Parent & Child Class
May 30, 2-4 p.m.
The wide variety of fresh, local produce available at area farmers markets can be overwhelming. Make the most of these healthy foods by learning about what’s in season and available now and how to prepare some familiar and not-so familiar produce. This is part of a regular series throughout the summer and fall and will change depending upon what’s in season.
Cost: $45 per adult/child duo, each additional family member only $10 each. Includes all materials, including food and take-home recipes and tips.
Register in advance for 4 month Farmers Market series for special price of $140!
To register: email classes@nourishfamily.com or call 410-370-0415
Chicken Kebabs on the Grill!
This past weekend a friend who I haven’t seen in almost 10 years and her family came over for a dinner cookout. Since I know my friend reads this blog, I had to impress her with my mad culinary skills (!) but since it was a Saturday, I also had 26 things to do during the day with my family, which didn’t leave much time for cooking. Of course, it had to be something that a bunch of children would like, but burgers and dogs seemed too ordinary for such an occasion. Solution: marinated chicken kebabs!
Most recipes for marinated grilled meat call for marinating at least overnight. This clearly wasn’t going to work for me because I didn’t even make it to the grocery store until the morning of the cookout. Instead of marinating whole pieces of meat, I cut up the chicken into kebab sized cubes and marinated it for about 6 hours in the fridge. Skip the bottles of marinade from the store – it is almost as easy to make your own at home and it will taste a million times fresher and will have less sodium and no preservatives. Some lemon juice, olive oil and snipped herbs grown in pots on my deck – voila! To round out the menu I kept with the food-on-a-stick theme and made some veggie kebabs, coconut rice and guacamole and store-bought chips.
My kids loved these kebabs so much that they raided the fridge later in the evening and ate the leftover chicken. “Mom, these are so good I wish we could have them every night!” It is so easy to make the marinade ahead of time and they grill so quickly, there is no reason not to make these during the week as well.
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