A friend recently asked me if I could recommend some "kid cookbooks". He wanted something he and his wife could use with their 4 year old son - fun recipes they could prepare together and would enjoy eating together. The research that I did to accommodate their request managed to open my mind up a bit.
The kids help me cook all the time, but they help me cook whatever it is that I had planned to make. I don't believe in making special recipes for kids. There shouldn't be any reason to "hide" veggies in a spaghetti sauce. If you feel like you should have to "hide" food it simply sends the message that this food needs to be hidden. Our job as parents is to provide healthy foods to our children - to expose them to a wide variety of healthful foods. Their job is to decide what and how much of it to eat. This is a soap box of mine that can go on for hours so I am going to stop there.
No offense, Emilio, but looking for kid's cookbooks wasn't the most exciting request I have gotten lately. Part of the problem is that I am still fuming at the title of one cookbook that got a lot of press recently- "Deceptively Delicious". Really? You have to be deceiving to get your kids to eat vegetables? Come on, now. Nonetheless Emilio's request made me do some exploration (both literally and figuratively) and I was quite inspired by what I found.
Chef Bobo's Good Food Cookbook (English)
(ISBN: 9780696221507)
Synopsis: A leading chef and culinary instructor introduces more than 150 of his tasty, easy-to-prepare recipes for healthful dishes for the entire family, accompanied by tips on how to involve the entire family in creating home meals, advice on how to cook with kids, suggestions for healthy eating, personal anecdotes, and full-color photographs.
Recipes written for adults, but easy enough for older children to make. Robert Surles was a former instructor at the French Culinary Institute. "The Calhoun School, a private school serving kindergarten to 12th-grade students in New York City, was searching for a chef to revolutionize school lunch and kids' eating habits. And that's where you'll find him today...." - from the publisher. Nominated for 2005 IACP Award in the Health and Special Diet Category.
William - Sonoma: The Kid's Cookbook
(A Great Book for Kids Who Love to Cook! - ISBN: 9780848726072 )
Synopsis: Provides more than fifty easy-to-follow recipes for menus that cover breakfast and lunch, dinner, side dishes, snacks, and desserts. This Williams Sonoma spiral bound cookbook by Abigail Johnson Dodge has more than 40 recipes with easy to follow instructions. Classic cooking techniques are explained with lots of photos. A glossary of ingredients includes photos for easy identification. Recommended for ages 9 and up.
Real Cooking for Kids
(Inside-Out Spaghetti, Lucky Duck, and More Recipes for the Junior Chef - ISBN: 9780762413232)
Synopsis: Introduces basic kitchen equipment and techniques, and offers recipes for stuffed foods, egg dishes, meatballs from around the world, items to put on skewers, snacks, and other dishes. Real Cooking for Kids is full of recipes that will introduce kids to the fun and exciting world of the kitchen. Rob Seideman, president and founder of the renowned Cooking School of Aspen, has collected more than 40 of his favorite recipes from the school's hugely popular children's classes. Kids and adults alike will enjoy his entertaining recipes, as well as his lighthearted but informative presentation of cooking basics. Recommended for ages 9 to 12.
I gave Emilio the above list and he went to the bookstore to see what he could find. He ended up buying another cookbook that was not on the list. He brought the book for me to look at and I really liked it. "C is for Cooking" is an aesthetically pleasing cookbook that is spiral bound (important feature of a cookbook in my world) and has beautiful pictures on glossy pages (also important to me and the kids). The cookbook is built around our Sesame Street friends and is written by a Registered Dietitian (RD). I loved the layout and the format.
And so now my mission is to build a library of awesome kid's cookbooks - one that teach kids how to love and appreciate food. I want my kids to appreciate the flavors and colors and textures that whole foods offer. I want them to understand that preparing food can be an awesome way to show love to the people around you. I want them to understand that choosing a wide variety of healthful foods is a way to show their body that they respect all the great things it has done for them!
In Health,
Yo
