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Kitchen Kid TV!

Santa Monica residents... don't miss the chance to see Kitchen Kid on TV!

Four adorable young chefs have a blast cooking up quiche cupcakes and rainbow salad. But in the kids' own words, the best part of class is "eating!"

The show, Get Out! airs daily at 11am, 5:30pm, and 10pm on Channel 16 and 99 in Santa Monica.

We will also be posting the segment here, and at kitchenkid.com soon.

A Summer Angelenos Can Be Proud Of

No sooner did I walk out of my doctor's office, boasting my healthy ways, and proudly admitting "I don't eat junk food" did I find myself staring at my guiltiest pleasure in the world.

Unfortunately that was at Costco. And now my family has the daunting task of eating 24 ounces of these:

Our 4th of July picnic can't come soon enough.

This is the quintessential chip of my childhood. These crispy, light, perfectly salted chips taste of beach picnics, BBQ's, and poolside lunches. Each bite is filled with memories of salty summer air, from dockside picnics with Food Buoy sandwiches in Woods Hole, to birthday parties at Amelia's house in Cambridge, and fresh mozzarella and Kathleen's Bake Shop chocolate chip cookies at Kate's in Bridgehampton. These are the chips of good friends and great memories. The chips even filled our guests' welcome bags at our wedding last summer. And that was no small feat. We got married in Utah. (Indeed, as the boxes of chips arrived on my mom's doorstep, shipped dutifully from my mother-in-law straight from Hyannis, I began to ponder my life as a bootlegging importer of all things delicious.)

I've lived in LA now for 4 years. And each year I wonder, desperately, "how on earth will I make it through another summer without my beloved Cape Cod Potato Chips"? If they can import water from Fiji to every continent around the globe, and turn San Francisco sourdough into an American staple, why, on earth, aren't Cape Cod Potato Chips sold in SoCal!?

Thus, every summer I return to the East Coast for weddings and reunions, each time happily gorging on Cape Cod Potato Chips from the moment I land at Logan. (Eventually, I eat so many chips it seems like a good thing they aren't sold in LA.)

But that's all about to change. Armed with 24 ounces of my favorite summer snack, this summer I'll be making new memories, one crispy chip at a time, right here in sunny Santa Monica.

May...?

Indeed, that month is inexplicably missing from my recent blog posts. But I assure you, it wasn't for lack of activity. Just a massive lack of time.

In May... Kitchen Kid took it's first official vacation, and I found a terrific new culinary coach to teach my classes while I was gone. We spent a week in St. Barth's celebrating our good friend's wedding. A Caribbean island with French flare, the food in St. Barth's was incredible. Mahimahi tartare, beef carpaccio, lightly grilled squid with intense aioli. All over looking a sparkling blue sea in 85 degree sunshine.

In May... we had a Sunday Funday BBQ for my birthday and served Gourmet Magazine's Ancho and Cocoa Carne Asada for the nine-hundredth time since it appeared in the March magazine. Copy down this recipe and cook it tonight. You too will make it nine-hundred more times in the next 2 months. Yes, it really is that good.

In May... Kitchen Kid was touted in Pregnancy Magazine for helping Charlie Sheen's daughters, Sam and Lola, make personalized lunches and mash their own guacamole at the baby shower for his new twin boys, hosted at Adrienne Maloof's home.

(photo courtesy Spantman Photography)

In May... I was filled with energy, excitement, and enthusiasm after hearing Alice Waters speak at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica. It was a true pleasure to meet her and be part of an audience filled with encouraging hope. Moreover, I was blown away by 16-year old Sam Levin who spoke with the charisma, professionalism, and ease of a natural-born orator committed to the belief that "better school food is not a privilege, it's a right". He kinda stole the show. The message of the night: edible education is essential to raising healthy, happy children.

In May... we were VERY busy teaching our Classroom Cooks After School Enrichment Programs. Books for Cooks was taught at Camelot Kids Preschool in Silver Lake, and Grant Elementary and Edison Elementary in Santa Monica. We were also piloting our Global Eats enrichment class at Webster Elementary in Malibu and Virginia Avenue Park in Santa Monica. Some of our newest recipes include Thai spring rolls and handmade tortillas. Delish!

In May... I went to Palm Springs for my oldest friend's bachelorette party. Good food, good fun, good friends, and great stories -- but not really for Growing Up Gourmet!

In May... we went camping at Boulder Basin Campground in the San Jacinto Mountains, and gorged on campfire food. Really, isn't car camping all about the food? Still dreaming about St. Barth's, I stuck a Trader Joe's pre-marinated frozen mahimahi fillet in the cooler. By the second day it was perfectly defrosted, and wrapped inside some foil and set on top of raging campfire grill, came out beautifully flaky.

In May... my mom came to visit from Park City to celebrate her birthday! She requested a second-annual birthday trip to Pizzeria Mozza, which I was all too happy honor! Dining on the chicken liver bruschetta, tomato & burrata salad, and pizza with English peas, cream, and guanciale has simply got to be the best way to grow another year older.

What a relief, May is finished! On to June!

Cute as a Caterpillar

Kitchen Kid was delighted to be a part of the Storyopolis community on Saturday! The delightfully inviting bookstore is a perfect place to curl up with good children's book or enjoy their wonderful weekly activities including story hour, yoga, and chess! Check out the staff's favorite reads each month and meet the Storyopolans themselves.


A special thanks to Theresa for organizing our terrific Very Hungry Caterpillar event! We were thrilled to see over 30 children designing chef hats, munching on just-made caterpillar snacks, and decorating butterfly treats that were ever so sweet!

Click here to download a copy of our Hungry Caterpillar and Beautiful Butterfly Recipes!!!

A VERY Hungry Caterpillar

Eric Carle's Very Hungry Caterpillar is turning 40...
and he is VERY hungry indeed!

Come celebrate this special anniversary with us at Storyopolis!

Enjoy story time, decorate chef hats, and cook up fun!
We'll be making tasty butterfly treats and crunchy caterpillar snacks.

Join Us!

Saturday, March 14
11:30 am
Storyopolis
14945 Ventura Blvd
Sherman Oaks

Oh, Trader Joes

For better or worse, I find myself at Trader Joe's at least 3 or 4 days each week. Sometimes I think I'm there enough to pick up a few part time shifts. While I'm shopping. They wouldn't even need to train me -- I'm pretty sure I know all the secrets. Like that Thursday evenings are the quietest nights, and Wednesday around noon is the calm before the storm. Or that the fastest checkout line is always on the far right. Or that parking on the street is a good option if more than 5 cars are waiting at the side entrance -- unless it's street cleaning. Which is 11-1 on Friday. I know that TOS means Temporarily Out of Stock, and that too often the product that's TOS is exactly what I need. I know that they recently discontinued dried mushrooms, and that one year ago they stopped making a chocolate-hazelnut spread that beat Nutella at its own game. I know that fresh squeezed Florida orange juice for $2.99 is the best price you can find on quality orange juice, anywhere, that the $4.99 Pizza Parlano is the best way to fill your freezer for nights you absolutely can't cook, and that their St. Andre brie is a delicious bargain... so long as you don't eat it all on the car ride home.

My list could go on. And on. And on. My kitchen is a walking Trader Joe's. In fact, when I cash in my Skymiles this summer, I'll have Trader Joe's to thank. Exclusively. That's how many times my Amex is swiped at my favorite grocery store.

Ahh... the trials and tribulations of a cooking teacher and avid home-cook.

At any rate, thanks thumbbook, for sharing this video with me.

If you don't shop at Trader Joe's quite as often, this video may not excite you. You'll probably think it's a bit odd. My husband did. But for me, all to familiar with things "you can't find anymore"... the mini coffee samples before noon... the friendly staff... the "strange little snacks you end up buying instead"... the bananas for 19 cents,... and yes... "the cars that don't fit in the parking lot", for me, this video really made me chuckle. A lot.

Make a New Year's Kitchen Resolution!!!

For many kids, New Year’s Eve means chowing down on pizza and soda while watching movies with the babysitter.

But my childhood tradition on December 31st was very different. For me, New Year’s Eve meant driving 2 hours into New York City to shop at the specialty market, Zabars. It meant donning my fanciest dress-up clothes, costume jewelry, and experimenting with Mom’s make-up. New Year’s Eve had little to do with balls dropping or resolutions, but had everything to do with my favorite, once-a-year gourmet goodies from the Upper Westside “Epicurian Emporium”. We’re talking imported caviar on fancy rye toasts, smoked salmon with dill and marinated mushrooms, pickled herring, cured black olives, and (shhh) a few sips of champagne. Earlier in the day, I’d carefully prepare a hand-drawn menu of the evenings’ specialties and help my mom polish our proper silver and fine china. For our tiny crew (me, my mom, our dog Penny, and my stuffed animals) this was a very fancy occasion.

Admittedly I wasn’t the first child with such extravagant tastes (a six-year old in one of our after-school cooking classes lists escargot as her favorite food!). But today we tend to hear more about childhood obesity and picky eaters than kids who gorge on fancy fare.

Most American kids could use a few lessons on expanding their palate (and I don’t mean force feeding sushi to fish-hating first-graders). With busy schedules and over-worked parents, the temptation to serve chicken fingers instead of homemade pot-pie and frozen French fries as opposed to baked sweet potatoes is too great for many families. Family mealtime as Norman Rockwell would recognize it has become a long-forgotten American pastime. And in turn we are raising a generation of picky eaters who think peaches come from cans and have little interest in eating a nutritionally balanced meal.

The solution? Cook with your kids. It has been proven time and again that kids who help out in the kitchen are much more likely to become adventurous eaters. Kids with culinary instruction not only cultivate a more diverse palate, but also experience increased self-confidence, discover the important role nutrition plays in our physical and emotional wellbeing, and build the foundation for healthy life-long skills. Here are some other great reasons to cook with your kids.

In the spirit of the New Year, there’s no better time to change the way your family eats. This January, resolve to cook dinner with your family one night a week. If families that eat dinner together raise smarter, safer, and more secure kids, we can only imagine what will happen when families start cooking together! Regardless of your culinary prowess, or your tolerance for mess, this shouldn’t be as daunting as it sounds.

Here’s the plan:
Join me in making a New Year’s Kitchen Resolution! Commit to a Family Kitchen one night each week when soccer practice and PTO meetings won’t have you eating in the car. Earlier in the week, decide on a menu theme (Greek? Comfort food? No-silverware-required finger foods?) and plan and shop for the meal. On the night of Family Kitchen, make sure each family member lends a hand. Remember, this meal is much more about the process than the product. So take time, have fun, and enjoy your too-crowded kitchen. There are appropriate kitchen tasks for every family member, young and old.

With a happier, healthier family, Family Kitchen is one New Year’s resolution you’ll be grateful for well into spring. And maybe by next January when your kids watch the ball drop, they’ll trade roasted vegetables and baked salmon for those infamous chicken fingers and boxed mac and cheese.

"Point, Blast, and... Cook!?"

Here's a perfect case of "just because it's organic, doesn't mean I want to eat it."

In a recent dedicated email, Daily Candy recommended the next time my kids offer to help make breakfast, I "get [my] brood involved sans hassle with Organic Batter Blaster Pancake and Waffle Mix."

I'm usually pretty favorable towards the products and services Daily Candy recommends. But just because this pancake batter is organic, doesn't mean I can endorse a food product whose marketing slogan is "just point, blast, and cook!"

The promotional video really says it all: "for years and years, people have made pancakes and waffles the same old-fashioned way. With milk, eggs, flour, mixing bowls, measuring cups, and all that mess..."

WAIT just a minute! Since when weren't pancakes made with milk, eggs, and flour? Isn't that what makes a pancake a pancake? Sure, our grocery stores are filled with fake foods -- non-dairy cheese. Meatless hamburger patties -- but I'm a pretty big proponent of the "real thing". (Sorry soy.)

I'll admit, it does look like fun to squirt the CO2 cartridge. And it's true that the potential for mess is non-existent. In fact, the simple ingredients probably taste better than other store-bought pancake mixes. But if a child asks to help make breakfast, chances are they want to break the eggs. They're eager to show off some math skills and measure 1/3 cup flour. And they're literally starving to whisk it all together until it's smooth. So what if you have to wipe a little flour off the counter. That is precisely what cooking's all about!

Thanks Organic Batter Blaster, but I'll save my pointing and blasting for other things. Like paintball, perhaps.

Mark Bittman's Everyday Pancakes

(nb. I chose this recipe because he writes, "pancakes are made from a simple, forgiving batter...everyday pancake batter whips up in no time and can be stored in the fridge for a couple of days..." Preservative-free, it sounds like a better Batter Blaster to me.)

2 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 tbsp sugar

2 eggs

1 1/2-2 cups milk

2 tbsp melted butter, + more un-melted butter for pan

mix-ins (frozen blueberries, ripe bananas, chocolate chips, etc)

And, you guessed it, REAL maple syrup. (Even organic Aunt Jemima belongs with the Batter Blaster.)

Heat non-stick griddle or skillet over medium heat. Mix together dry ingredients. Beat eggs into 1 1/2 cups milk. Stir in melted butter. Combine dry ingredients with milk mixture. Mix gently until flour is just moistened, adding more milk if batter seems too thick. Add desired mix-ins. Place a little butter on the skillet, and when it foams add a spoonful of pancake batter. Cook about 2-4 minutes each side, flipping when small bubbles appear in the center of the pancakes. Serve warm with syrup.

Same ol' Veggies + Fun New Twist = "More Cabbage, Please!"

Some may call the combination of tomatoes, cucumbers, shredded lettuce, sprouts, and carrots a salad. But paired with a bagel in Kitchen Kid's after-school enrichment "Books for Cooks" class, it's aptly called a Brown Bear Bagel Face. (Even if these bears look more like a team of crazy bearded clowns with whiskers.)

After an animated reading of We're Going on a Bear Hunt, this class of kindergartners got right to work adding cabbage eyebrows, egg yolk eyeballs, and shredded carrot beards to their sprouted whole wheat bagels. The 5-year olds loved being so creative with these unlikely art supplies.

Better yet, they loved eating them. Every. last. bite. Even a mom told me, "I never knew bagels with vegetables could taste so good." This was the perfect after-school snack for these budding young chefs, who discovered red peppers really are sweet, and how kids can be real chefs 'chopping' them up with tiny craft scissors. The bagel's complex carbs boosted their energy level, and the kids were well on their way to eating enough fruits and veggies to meet the recommended 5-a day.
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But don't worry, kids don't need to create artistic masterpieces every time you want them to eat their vegetables. It only takes one delicious Bagel Face for them to discover how tasty and crunchy veggies can be. The next time, your kids might be plenty content eating them straight from their plate...

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Recipe: Brown Bear Bagel Faces

1 whole wheat bagel, halved

2 tbsp cream cheese

1 hard-boiled egg, sliced or crumbled

Assorted crunchy, tasty, and nutritious vegetables, (chopped into appropriately-sized facial features) such as: shredded carrots, sprouts, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, bell pepper, purple cabbage, and black olives

They'll Even Eat Radishes

There's been a lot of research lately which suggests children involved in preparing their own meals are far more likely to cultivate a diverse and nutritious palate.

Of course, those of us who cook with children don't need fancy studies to prove this. We see it every day. Like when a self-proclaimed salad hater devours his "Let-Us Rap" romaine leaf, stuffed with dried fruits and nuts, and quickly makes a second.

Today's New York Times has gone ahead and called "sending children out of the kitchen during meal time [to be one of] the most common food mistakes parents make". In fact, parents who choose to make dinner in the cloak of secrecy are actually doing their children a considerable disservice. In this latest study from Teachers College, children who learned to prepare their own whole grains and vegetables were even more likely to choose those same foods in the cafeteria. Yup, bitter radishes included.

So don't get stuck as a short-order cook, get cooking with your kids today.

A Kitchen Resolution

While the rest of the world has to sit around and wait for January to start things anew, families are lucky. Back to School season is a time for all things new: new shoes, new locker combinations, new books, and New (School) Year’s resolutions. And I propose one resolution to start right away: cook dinner with your family one night a week. If families that eat dinner together raise smarter, safer, and more secure kids, we can only imagine what happens when families cook together. Regardless of your culinary prowess, or your tolerance for mess, this shouldn’t be as daunting as it sounds. Chances are your kids are already eager to unleash their inner-chef, and after a summer in front of the Food Network, they’ll jump at the thought of feeding their family.

The plan: commit to “Family Kitchen” one night each week when soccer practice and PTO meetings won’t have you eating in the car. Earlier in the week, decide on a menu theme (Greek? Comfort food? No silverware finger foods?) and plan and shop for a few recipes. On the night of, make sure each family member has a hand in all of the recipes. (Click here for some kid-friendly kitchen tasks.) Remember, this meal is much more about the process than the product. So take time, have fun, and enjoy your too-crowded kitchen.

What can you expect from this family adventure around the stove? Maybe something you can’t find at the table: An extra bite of middle school gossip? A surprised “mmm” from a 5-year old sneaking broccoli? A covert opportunity to test your 4th-grader's division skills? The Family Kitchen is one New Year’s resolution you’ll be keeping well past February..err... October.

What I Did on Summer Vacation

It's almost August... you've been to the beach, the park, the fair, and to see Grandma. Twice. Your kids took horseback riding lessons and learned to write HTML at computer camp. You've picked them up and dropped them off from more places than you can remember and more times than you can count. And yes, they are driving you crazy. And yes, there are still 42 MORE DAYS UNTIL SCHOOL STARTS!

Who's idea was this staycation anyhow?

But wait... there's a way to keep your kids busy AND have fun AND learn a thing or two along the way. (Oh, and in the process they may even help you make dinner -- and a margarita.)

The Unofficial Guide to

Getting Your Kids Cooking During the Dog Days of Summer

Teach your kids to...
juice limes

salt glass rims (see where I'm going here...)

zest lemons
tear basil

cut mint
wash veggies

wash lettuce

tear lettuce

spin lettuce

peel veggies

remove herb leaves from stems

slice cucumbers with a plastic knife

chop zucchini with a plastic knife

make pizza

dry-rub a steak for the grill

remove the seeds from red peppers

make hamburger patties, and wash their hands after

whisk a marinade

break eggs

pound chicken breasts
measure ingredients

taste-test the spice cabinet

make popsicles

make a salad dressing

blend smoothies

grate cheese

and....

Take a field trip to...

a u-pick farm for blueberry season

the Farmers' Market

a local dairy farm

the grocery store for an A-Z scavenger hunt (hey, it is air-conditioned!)
the grocery store for a global foods scavenger hunt

an ethnic neighborhood's market

a different Farmers' Market

On back-to-school-night, how pleased will you be to read your son's essay hanging on the classroom wall: "This summer vacation was the best ever! I helped make dinner for my family."

and for when you don't feel like chocolate...

...try fruit popsicles, or Mexican paletas.

Or as Mark Bittman writes, "Mexican summer on a stick".

Try his tasty combinations for these refreshing icy pops, like berry and lime, banana, and pineapple.

Summer's Candy Bar

I'm hardly against kids eating sweets. Nor do I think chocolate should be relegated to their annual birthday bash. But candy bars, filled with trans fats and other unrecognizable ingredients, are an unsatisfying source of nutrition-less calories.


In a Kitchen Kid Cooking Class this week, I watched 5 kids descend on their just-made creations of chocolate covered strawberries and chocolate-dipped bananas like seagulls flocking to a bag of chips left unattended at the beach.


Now this recipe is hardly complicated, and I'm most definitely not the first to make it. But the act of melting 6 ounces of pure, dark chocolate (no additives, no big words) gave these budding chefs such genuine and unequivocal joy, made me really question the appeal of a Twix. Not to mention the process in and of itself brought almost as much pleasure as the tasty treat (albeit rich in vitamin C and yes, those antioxidants hiding in dark chocolate).


Sure, it would be great if every kid reached for fresh fruit sans the chocolate. And many do. But adding just a touch of something as forbidden as pure chocolate, and watching the kids lick it from their fingers and their lips, surely makes a case for chocolate covered strawberries, and frozen banana pops, being Summer's Best Candy Bar.


Recipe:
Melt 6 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips in a microwave safe bowl until melted, stirring every 30 seconds. Indulge by dipping 1 pint of strawberries and Popsicle clad bananas. If you crave a more sophisticated taste, stir chocolate into 6 ounces of near-simmering heavy cream. Even a 3 year old can do it: watch Mark Bittman's Mini Minimalist make this simple ganache.

Eating the Most Out of College

There's no reason your Kitchen Kid should stop "growing up gourmet" when he heads off to college. In fact, perhaps he should choose his college precisely with the interest of becoming a teenage gourmand.

In loco parentis, the Bowdoin College dining hall in Brunswick, ME gives students a taste of culinary ingenuity that, sorry moms, just can't be beat, even in your own kitchen. How about homemade potato-leek soup, freshly baked rosemary bread, and bananas foster? How about a wheatberry salad with dried cranberries and fresh herbs, Maine shrimp cakes with spicy remoulade, and eggs benedict florentine? Still not convinced? Don't forget the annual Thanksgiving dinner under candlelight or the treasured fall lobster-bake complete with steamed clams and corn on the cob. Oh, and no one can resist that hot fudge...

The New York Times today notes that Bowdoin College's Dining Hall uses Fair Trade coffee, organic herbs and vegetables grown on campus, and an in-house butcher to create an ever-rotating menu of homemade recipes. They incorporate student requests and create genuine ethnic meals that respectfully honor traditions and holidays. But as any Polar Bear will tell you, it isn't just the food, but the experience of sharing meals with friends. In the Times, Mary Lou Kennedy, Bowdoin’s dining director, notes that the students, “love the community of food. They were Slow Food 10 years before it became a movement. At dinner, they come and stay for an hour and a half.” That's a good 85 minutes more than most American families spend together at the table. One alumna recalled "feasting from 5pm until we trekked to the library at 8, brains alert and satiated on good food and good conversation." This month, College Prowler named Bowdoin, "school of the year" thanks in part to its tasty treats, and the Princeton Review rates the College's dining hall #1 in the country.

Of course, the revelation in today's Times and these noteworthy publications is no surprise to me, or my dozen very best friends who reminisced about the "DH" over emails all day. Some of my happiest, funniest, most-memorable, and most special college memories (including my first kiss to my future husband) all happened in the Thorne and Moulton Dining Halls, thanks to a wise decision to follow my heart -- and my stomach -- to an unbeatable college in Maine.

No Super Supper Tonight

Silly me. I was under the hopeful impression Americans were pining away for Norman Rockwell-style family dinners, when the whole family enjoyed mom's homemade roast chicken, and kids actually responded with engaging answers to the time-worn question, "so what'dya learn at school today." Studies even purport that family meals dramatically improve academic performance and reduce drug-use and other at-risk behavior amongst teens.

But Wednesday's story in the New York Times tells us that even when moms are given every opportunity to put a home-cooked dinner on the table with ease and convenience, they'd just... well, rather not. The Times reports that meal assembly stores, the fastest growing trend in small businesses and franchising during the last three years, is on an unexpected steady decline. Companies such as Dream Dinners, My Girlfriends' Kitchen, Super Suppers, and Dinner by Design seemingly provide the busy mom's perfect answer that harkens back to more family-oriented times. In under 2 hours and with little cash, even a self-proclaimed 'bad cook' can pull up to a mini-mall storefront, prepare 24 meals with her closest friends and a glass of merlot, bring them home in freezer-ready packages, and sleep happily knowing her family of five will be eating healthy, delicious dinners for the next 3 weeks. But as the industry experiences a sharp decline in revenue and charts store closings across the country, it seems mom just isn't motivated enough. As the Times explains, last-minute convenience (think Wendy's on the way home from soccer practice and those ready-in-2-minutes dino nuggets) is about all busy families have time for.

As obesity rates in children continue to rise, and edible food-like substances overwhelm our grocery store shelves, it's unfortunate that more Americans aren't taking advantage of the easiest and quickest way to get home-cooked meals on the dinner table.

Veggies: How Many are Too Many?

I can't tell you how disappointed I was to still see Jessica Seinfeld's book, Deceptively Delicious, on the bestseller rack in Barnes and Noble this week. I've long maintained that sneaking food is merely a recipe for distrust -- one that will yield even more picky eaters who harbor an illusory relationship with healthy foods.

Thankfully, two outstanding food writers continue to remind us that the anti-sneak dialogue is resounding loudly. In this month's Bon Appetit column, "Health Wise", author Mark Kurlansky compares the veggie-laden diet of China's youngsters to the "eat your spinach... or else" rhetoric echoed by desperate moms in many American homes. He considers Missy Chase Lapine's (The Sneaky Chef) and Seinfeld's cookbooks to be "the worst possible response" to the problem of kids refusing to eat their vegetables. Kurlansky poses worthwhile solutions which "foster an appreciation for vegetables," such as growing a vegetable garden. (Think Alice Waters' Edible Schoolyard on a household scale.)

And yesterday Mark Bittman wrote on his new blog Bitten, that "the funniest thing about these two books is that the public uproar wasn’t over their approach to cooking but over which author had the idea first."

With the Bon Appetit article titled, "Eat Your Broccoli", and Bittman begging "Eat you veggies", I can't help but be optimistic that the next food-fad in kids' health will be "Veggies: How Many are Too Many?"

Food For Thought

I think I am addicted to rice. Not jasmine. Not basmati. Not even brown. Free Rice. As in, www.freerice.com. The vocabulary building game has two simple goals noted on the website: 1. Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free. 2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free. And the game is pretty simple too. Simply choose the correct definition of an English vocabulary word (there are increasing levels of difficulty -- the website remembers which one you're on each time you play), and 20 grains of rice are donated through the United Nations to help end world hunger.

You get smarter. Hungry get fed.

But watch out. The game's addictive. You might find yourself obdurately playing Free Rice while you somnambulate.

To Sneak or Not to Sneak?

Is that really still the question?!

With the controversy surrounding Jessica Seinfeld's book, Deceptively Delicious, tricking kids into eating spinach and sweet potatoes sure piqued the media's attention recently! As you might guess, I am a firm member of the "DON'T SNEAK" camp! Why hide foods that are already delicious? You'll find my argument furthered in last month's 805 Living Magazine, where I up against Missy Chase Lapine, author of the popular cookbook, The Sneaky Chef.

If you still need a reason to roast broccoli with parmesan instead of blending it up for pasta sauce, tune in to Bon Appetit's pod-cast with editor and gastrokid.com founder Hugh Garvey, and family cookbook author Lauren Bank Deen. Listen online, or read more about an "honest kitchen" in this Boston Globe article.