The Kitchn Archive: Sep 2020

We usually leave this type of thing for our friends over at Ohdeedoh, but we’re absolutely in love with this interactive “Press-Out-And-Play” cooking book for kids! So much so that when it came time to hand it over to its intended 3-year-old recipient, we had a hard time letting it go. Take a look for yourselves!The book takes kids through making breakfast, toasting bread, assembling a sandwich, and creating an ice cream sundae.

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy) We are big believers in eating together as a family and feeding our children wholesome, not-dumbed-down food. But good intentions can easily get sidetracked when there’s a toddler underfoot or a picky six-year-old who will. not. touch. the. kale. Susie Cover has vast experience cooking meals that everyone (everyone!) will like, and this book offers more than 100 recipes that aim to please.

Are you a new parent, or know someone who is about to be? With the arrival of a new baby, food and cooking become a rather different set of challenges — snatched in between sleepless nights and the blissful absorption into every aspect of this new being’s life. But once the friendly meals and Taco Boxes stop coming, you do need to feed yourself in the middle of this new family landscape, and that’s where Debbie Koenig’s smart new book can help.

Meat carcasses hang from the rafters. There’s blood and sawdust on the floor. Doll-sized butchers stand in front, looking severe. (One is even holding a knife.) A historical mock-up for a museum, you think? Nope. This is an actual toy butcher shop for kids, circa 1850, and it was a runaway hit at the time.Collectors Weekly has a terrific little article on their website right now on the history of toy food.

Ordinarily, if another parent tells me they put a homecooked meal on the family table every night of the week I’m rolling my eyes in my head thinking they’re either lying or bragging. (Frankly, bragging is worse.) But when Jenny Rosenstrach, whose blog I’ve been reading religiously for the past two years, says it and documents how she does it in a cookbook, I’m all ears.

I was out of town for five days. I left food, real food, like vegetables and fruit, all easily indentifiable. I left enough vegetables for a large stir-fry, which I made as an afternoon snack the day after my return, so the aging produce wouldn’t go to waste. I married a man who knows how to cook, a man who shuns junk food, who once shamed me for my fast food drive-through habit. I had three wonderful sons with that man. Somewhere along the way, he chose pizza as a food group.

When I was little, “happy meal” meant food in the shape of a face. My parents weren’t fans of fast food and, with four kids, it wasn’t even a bargain. Banana slices with peanut butter for eyes, an apple wedge for the mouth and broken crackers and cheese for all the other features. It was fun! These days, the game has changed. I’m no artist, and my food faces are pretty lame compared to what the internet has to offer.

First of all, that chasing thing is sort of a myth. Toddlers are slow, forcing their parents to move at a snail’s pace. I used to speed walk from place to place, but those days were over. Many toddlers reach an age where they don’t want to go in the stroller any more. Maybe you can force them, but then you get those judging looks from other parents, wondering why you won’t let your toddler have any exercise. Also, the screaming can be hard to endure.

Everyday Food The fact that I hadn’t heard of these videos before now is a bit embarrassing because besides being a huge cooking video watcher, I make my living writing about food so I’m supposed to be on top of these things. But now I’m hooked. Do you know who Sarah Carey is and do your kids watch her, too? Maybe it’s her crazy mop of bright red curls or her energetic, friendly, and occasionally goofy way of presenting, but kids sure think that Sarah Carey is cool.

We know Popeye loved the stuff, but the question is: why spinach? The answer, it turns out, all goes back to one little mistake. In 1870 German chemist Erich von Wolf correctly ascertained the amount of iron in spinach, but while transcribing his notes, he accidentally misplaced a decimal point: instead of recording that spinach had 3.5 milligrams of iron per 100-gram serving (as is the case), he wrote that it had 35 milligrams. This is a huge amount.

Katie Morford is a food writer, a registered dietician and a mother of three children. These qualifications show in her book. I’ve read lunch box books before that made me balk. The recipes were complicated, or I found myself thinking, “Sure, my kids will eat this in theory, but at the lunch table under the watchful eyes of their peers? Not so much.” Katie gets it. Her ideas are simple, healthy and varied enough to appeal to any child. Think you know it all?

The Sylvia Center has one basic mission: to get kids excited about good food. Through classes around New York City and field trips to their farm in Hudson Valley, the Center gives children hands-on experience with fruits, vegetables, and other ingredients — showing them where all these ingredients come from and how make them into a meal.

More than anything else, I think parents need ideas for what to put in their kids’ lunches. Heck, it’s hard enough coming up with interesting things to eat ourselves — doing this for small humans with their very own and very loud opinions is an even greater challenge. Help is here! It comes in the form of Catherine McCord’s latest book of kid-approved foods, Weelicious Lunches. Lunchtime? Game on.