Have you ever said that about your family and their eating habits? So, you start out with a great plan–meals for each day of the week, each with balanced nutrition and lots of variety. And then, on the first day of your healthy family eating adventure, your youngest refuses to eat more than one bite of the main dish and your significant other kindly shares how much they enjoyed the meal, BUT….
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January is really perfect for Soup Month. Here in Minnesota it’s usually bitter cold and filled with snow. Though this year is non-standard with 50 degree days and barely any snow, but, just like a cup of hot cocoa, soup is one of those foods that warms you up, even when it’s not that cold.
We don’t make a ton of soup here at the Two Kids household, mainly because the two kids don’t eat it–actually mostly the girl kid. We do have a couple that Alex and I enjoy, that you can find here: Corn Chowder, Two Kids Squash Soup. BUT, you really don’t need a recipe to make soup.
Yep, I said you do NOT need a recipe. And for us, no recipe means lots of experimental fun. There are some tips for making a soup we list at the end, but you can choose as a family what to include and what not to include. Here’s what you do:
Pick a Base: Broth Based – For broth based soups, you can use chicken, beef, vegetable, or fish stock. Or, if there’s a stock/broth type I’m missing, you could use that, too. Milk/Cream Based – For a creamy soup, you can still start with a neutral broth, like vegetable, and supplement with milk, half and half, condensed milk or cream. You can also a non-dairy milk substitute.
Meat (or not):
If you decide to add meat to your soup, pick your favorite kind: chicken, beef, pork, fish, venison, turkey…whatever you prefer. Soup is good without meat too, so don’t rule out an all veggie soup.
Select a Starch:
Technically, you don’t have to add a starch, but personally, I don’t know why you wouldn’t. The standards are Potatoes, Rice, Noodles or a combination. There’s also things like dumplings, if you want to try making them and beans or even barley.
Veggies:
With veggies, you can add a lot of different kinds, or a lot of only one or two kinds, it’s up to you. Depending on the ‘theme’ or flavor of the soup you’re making, certain veggies are better than others.
To make your do-it-yourself sup, all you have to do is pick something from each category and you’re ready! Add all your ingredients to a big pot, cover with your liquid of choice, bring the soup to a boil and then let it simmer away until all the veggies are cooked through and the liquid is to your desired consistency.
Here are some tips:
If you use meat, you can cook it first, but it’s not necessary (this is a great use for leftovers)
Try and cut all your veggies to a similar size.
For super small veggies, like peas or corn, add them closer to the end of the cooking time so they don’t get mushy
Add startches like noodles or rice at the end. If they are uncooked (i.e. not leftovers), once you add them, cook the soup the additional amount of time equal to their cooking time. Otherwise, just ’til they warm up.
Remember to season with herbs and salt and pepper.
Build your soup on a theme, for example: Creamy Fish Chowder would be great with a cream base, a white fish, potatoes, onions, corn and some thyme, salt and pepper
Soup making is perfect for doing with the kids, because with all the various ingredients, there’s always something someone can chop, pour or measure. So, grab the kids and pick out some ingredients from the pantry to whip up your own batch of Do-It-Yourself Soup!
The kids are with me every other week. Most weeks, we try to cook at least one meal together if our schedule allows. If we’re taping a show, the menu is preselected by the topic, BUT, other times, we get to decide what we’re going to make during our time together.
Sometimes these family time cooking recipes come from one of the kid’s cravings, sometimes they come from our list of ‘must-try’ recipes and sometimes they come from a recipe book or magazine. Here are three simple ways to get your kids involved in recipe and menu selection:
1. Ask them what they’re in the mood to eat/cook that week. On the weeks the kids will be with me, I try to do a menu plan for the week. I say ‘try’ because some weeks I am better at this than others. BUT, even on the weeks when we don’t have a formal menu plan, I ask the kids for ideas on what we should eat that week, and if there’s anything in particular they’d like to make. In addition to helping me come up with dinner ideas, it gets them excited for the meals we’ll be cooking and eating together.
2. Go through some recipe books or magazines. If you want to do something special or new, and you and the kids are strapped for ideas, we find that paging through our recipe books and cooking magazines always generates ideas. You can find some of our favorite Kids Cooking Books right here on the site. Some of our favorite magazines include: FamilyFun, ChopChop, Taste of Home, All You, and Fitness. Fitness might seem a bit odd, but they have lots of healthy, tasty recipes in there.
3. Keep a list of those ‘must-try’ recipes. Whenever I’m reading a blog, magazine or cookbook and a recipe strikes me, I make a note of it. I have a folder in outlook called ‘recipes to try’…I just email myself links to the recipes I find online. If they’re in a book or magazine that I own, I make a note and email it to myself with the magazine title, issue, page and recipe. Back before I was technologically inclined, I used to just clip out the recipes from a magazine, glue them to another sheet of paper, three-how punch it and stick it in a binder…I still have that ‘recipe book’. Sophia does the same thing and usually writes up an ingredients list to be sure we’ll have everything on hand–if she finds something she wants to make, we usually try it right away. Alex is less aggressive with the recipe searching than Soph, but he does call my attention to particular things he finds from time to time. Sophia’s finds are usually desserts, Alex’s are usually meat related–big surprise
Next time you have no idea what to make for supper, get the kids involved…I’m sure they’ll have plenty opinions on what to make.
Every parent knows that life with kids is always busy. Be it a birthday party or a dance class or a baseball game, there is an unending supply of activities that need to be attended. Parents also know that kids grow up fast…the time really does fly. That is the reason why I enjoy the time the kids and I spend cooking together. I cherish every moment I can squeeze in with those kiddies.
Plus, everyone has to eat. That means, if the family cooks together, they get to spend some quality family time together AND they get to eat!
Incorporating family time into the cooking process without adding stress can be more simple than you might think. There are three three simple tips I always follow when the 2 Kids and I are in the kitchen:
1) Choose a day and a menu together
Pick out a day of the week that works best for everyone. Alex, Soph and I cook together a lot, but there are days that we prefer, like Mondays or Fridays, when we get home from school earlier. Whatever day will allow the most relaxing, non-rushed experience is the best to pick.
Choosing the menu should also be a group decision. If everyone in the family actually likes the menu, or at least parts of it, the whole experience will be much more enjoyable.
2) Go over the game plan before starting
Just like with any group event, when everyone on the team knows what the goal is, the whole process goes much more smoothly. Every time the kids I make a recipe, we run through what we’re going to be doing first. Then, once we’ve all got the same picture in our heads, we divide tasks and work our way through each step. By choosing tasks in advance, we also prevent arguments over who will do what while we’re in the middle of making the meal–and we all know that’s a good thing
3) Plan for fun, not perfection
If you’re looking for everything to go perfectly smoothly…well it won’t. Even with the amount of time Alex, Sophia and I spend in the kitchen, we still end up with extra salt in the marinade, or half an egg in the bowl, or a tipped-over bottle of lemon juice, or–I think you get the picture. The thing is, it’s these little imperfections that make the whole experience fun. Plus, the memories you make will be priceless.
Yes, life is busy, but we all know that kids grow up fast. Family time is precious and cooking together is one way to get some of that time back.
Now go, get those kids and cook something together!
If you like cooking, you probably like cooking with your kids. Cookies, pizza, meatballs and snacks are some of our old stand-by’s, but sometimes spicing up the recipe or kitchen activity requires outside influence. For us, that means one of three things is going to happen:
1. Cook Book Searching – When Alex and Soph get bored and a hunger for that elusive ‘something’ sets in, one of the first places they head to is our book shelf, filled with various cookbooks. Alex also refers to online sources, but for the most part, our cookbook shelves are the first choice for cooking activity research.
2. Let’s Try Mixing Stuff Together – the kids are both big fans of science, especially science experiments. I try to keep baking soda and vinegar on hand at all times, just because it provides a quick ‘kitchen science fix’…although it never stops there. So, this mom decided to step in and organize these ‘mixing’ sessions.
The first thing I did was get online and do a bit of research. I found some websites and a few books, here’s a list of the resources I found and that we refer to:
3. Kids Cooking Club & Kids Cooking Lessons- Another option we might choose when we need some fun that isn’t in our standard repertoire is a recipe from the Kids Cooking Club. We’ve only been members since September, so we don’t have that many of the monthly recipes yet, but, each month has additional recipes and menus from their website and they’ve recently started a forum where visitors can learn and share (if you’re a member, stop by our page and say hi!)
We also have started working through Kids Cooking Activities eBook, ‘Kids Cooking Lessons.’ It’s 67 pages of recipes, lessons, activities, glossaries and certificates for kids ages 6 to 18. It’s divided into age-based sections – Assistant Chef, ages 3 to 6; Chef-In-Training, ages 7 to 11; Junior Chef, ages 12 to 15; and Senior Chef, ages 16 to 18. Each section contains 13 lessons and is packed with great information that facilitates kitchen fun and learning.
Sooo, if you and your kids get that urge to venture into new territory and try something different in the kitchen for the New Year, maybe one of our methods will help you find the perfect activity or recipe to scratch that itch.
November is now here and that means Thanksgiving is upon us–as well as this Mom’s birthday (which is the 29th ) So, to get the month off to a tasty start, we’re sharing one of the recipes we’ll be demonstrating in our Halloween episodes of Two Kids Cooking. This one is one of he birthday month Mom’s favorites–Bacon Sage Squash Bites.
First, peel the Butternut Squash with a peeler. This is a good job for older kids, or for a parent to do before getting younger kids helping.
Once the squash is peeled, cut it in half to remove the seeds. Then cut it into 1 inch or so shapes (I say shapes, because with squash, 'cubes' are not always possible).
While an older sibling or parent is prepping the squash, a younger child can get the sage ready be removing the leaves from the stems. They can also rip the larger leaves in half.
Before starting assembly, the bacon strips should also be cut into thirds. I do this before separating each piece from the collective.
Assembly
To assemble, take a squash piece, one sage leave, or part of a leave, and one piece of bacon.
Place the sage leave on the squash piece and then wrap the bacon around it, covering the sage leave.
Secure the bacon with a toothpick.
Place the assembled bites onto a foil covered baking sheet.
Baking
Bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 45 minutes, until squash soft and bacon is browned and crispy.
Special family food nights for us range from a picnic dinner at the pool, to movie nights, to eating on the ‘fancy’ plates by candlelight. The kids and I will pick a night–during the school year, it’s usually a Friday–and then pick a menu. It’s my job to make sure we have all the ingredients and then on ‘the day’ we get home and start prepping food and cooking.
The ‘prepping food and cooking’ isn’t just a precursor to our family nights though, it’s part of them. Sometimes it’s the most fun part. While we prepare our meal together we talk, goof around, get excited about the presentation and taste—lots of tasting most of the time. Many of the ‘remember when’s’ we talk about later come from the time we spend together preparing for the actual event. Don’t they say life is about the journey, not the destination…
I have to admit though, lately we have not been doing our special family food nights. It’s not because we’ve been overwhelmingly busy with school activities either, I’ve just been working too much on other things. It’s time to refocus. The kids and I are going to work on having a special family food night at a minimum of one night a month, ideally two (the kids are only with me every other week, so every week they’re with me, we’ll try to do a special family food night). I think this might be something we need accountability for too, just like the veggie variety goal. We’ll be facebooking and tweeting how successful we are
What about your family, do you do special family food nights? Share with a comment!
In the July heat, cool and juicy melon is always tasty. This week Alex & Soph share one way we like to add a little pizazz to our melon by demonstrating how we make Melon Pops.
Our inspiration for this recipe came from: FamilyFun Magazine Whenever we’re feeling less than creative, this magazine is great for generating ideas that are family-friendly and fun. We usually throw in our own spin, but making a recipe your own is part of the joy of cooking, right?
We hope this recipe inspires you to create variations that your family will enjoy–from using a different melon, or smaller cookie cutters–get creative and enjoy the show!
Happy Family Cooking Everyone!
Alex, Sophia and Kelly
P.S. Our next episode will be up the first week in August and we’ll share some summer beverage experiments we’ve been working on–don’t miss it!
We’ve been participating in the ‘The Kids Cook Monday‘ initiative for about a year now, so you’ve probably seen our posts about ‘em, or at least have a vague recollection of us mentioning them before; But, guess what? They have officially launched their awesome website! It’s filled with great resources to help families get in the kitchen together and have some fun.
What exactly is The Kids Cook Monday? Well, it’s an initiative that encourages families to keep-up or start a tradition of family dinners. When Monday is family dinner night, the meal becomes a fun event, ensuring that parents and kids spend quality time together every week, all year round.
You don’t have to be an expert cook to make a family meal together either–Parents can explore cooking with kids even if they’re novice cooks! The Kids Cook Monday website is filled with recipes that come with age group suggestions as well as “parent”, “kid’ and “together” cooking tasks. There’s also an information packed toolkit to help get your family started.
Studies show that children who engage in regular family dinners eat more nutritious diets, get better grades in school and develop better communication skills, so how can the modern family incorporate a regular, family mealtime? Alex, Sophia and I, along with ‘The Kids Cook Monday’ and the other organizations and bloggers on board are here to help your family answer that question. Go check out www.TheKidsCookMonday.org, look through their suggestions and ideas, and then get in the kitchen and start having fun!
For this weeks episode of Two Kids Cooking TV, the kiddies and I share one our favorite game day snacks. For us, ‘game day’ usually means video and board games, but these chicken wings are great for devouring with friends while cheering on your favorite team, too.
Although the separating of the wings into their multiple parts is better left to parents or older kids, younger chefs can help out with this recipe, too. Seasoning the chicken before it heads into the broiler, and preparing the sauces are tasks that most ages can help with, and helping get any sides ready is an essential part of the presentation–we recommend celery, carrots, blue cheese and ranch dressing.
Enjoy the show and happy family cooking everyone!
Alex, Sophia and Kelly
P.S.
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“We’re gonna eat healthier!”
