Kids In The Kitchen
by Alexandra Jamieson, CHHC

The health and obesity crisis that is affecting our children is finally at the top of the American agenda. The USDA has released new guidelines to help provide practical help, schools all over the country are banning sugar-filled snacks, kids themselves are taking a hand in reshaping their cafeteria’s lunch programs, and families everywhere are eating healthier meals around the dinner table. What an exciting time!

Involving the Little Ones
One of the best ways to get kids involved in learning new, healthier eating habits is to engage them in choosing, preparing and cooking their own food. What better way to get a real understanding of where your food comes from than to actually take a hand in creating it? Begin a weekly process of sitting with your children and presenting cookbooks and healthy family recipes. Find out which vegetable-based recipes your child would like to help prepare. Create a shopping list together and talk about what aspect of the preparation s/he can help with. All kids like to help and feel that they had a hand in creating something important. These simple exercises will give them a boost in self-confidence as well as getting them excited about cooking - and we all need to get excited about cooking!

Getting Up Close and Personal
Spring is a perfect time of year to explore these ideas. Across the country farmers markets are beginning to burst with locally grown, seasonal produce. Making weekly or monthly trips to a local farmers market with your children will get them in touch with their food in a big way – meet the farmers, ask how the food was grown and ways to prepare it. Allowing your kids to choose these freshly picked greens, herbs and fruits will help them to take ownership of the meals and develop a deep level of food knowledge.

Grow Your Own – Or Support Those Who Do
Another fantastic way to take advantage of mother nature’s bounty and create a learning opportunity is to grow your own cuisine. Garden together as a family and prepare some dishes from your homegrown produce. If your home leans more toward the urban than the rural, then look into joining a CSA. The Community Supported Agriculture movement began in Japan as a way to support small farmers and allow city dwellers access to fresh produce. The program is simple: each family buys a yearly share in a farm for a fee (which varies from farm to farm) and receives a weekly or bi-weekly allotment of fresh food. Some farms have a central drop-off delivery and some farms require that you come to them to pick up your box of produce. CSA’s keep many small farms solvent, and provide us urbanites with a fresh supply of healthy food as well as connecting us to the natural world of food around us. Many CSA’s sponsor “shareholder days” where member-families come out to the farm and help with various farm projects, meet each other and take a hand in producing their own food. Today in the US there are over 600 farms working within the CSA movement, so check out http://www.biodynamics.com/csa.html for a local CSA near you!

Healthy Snacks All Around!
Creating healthy snacks that are fun and delicious can be easy. Try the following recipes with your kids – the more they can take part in creating their own healthy food, the more likely they are to develop long lasting healthy habits.

Tortilla Hummus Pizza

1 flour or corn tortilla
1/2 cup hummus
Toppings: olives, sliced tomatoes, sun dried tomatoes, shredded carrots, shredded soy cheese.

• Pre-heat oven to 350 F.
• Place the tortilla on a cookie sheet and spread the hummus evenly across the tortilla.
• Top with your favorite toppings and bake at 350º for 5 minutes, just enough to heat through.
• Remove the tortilla from the oven and slice into 6 or 8 pie pieces. Enjoy!

Mummy Dearest Dates

The ancient Egyptians used to eat these simple, naturally sweet delights!

2 fresh Medjool* dates per person
2 raw almonds per date
* Order fresh Medjool dates online from Local Harvest

• Using a butter knife, make a small slit in the side of the date and remove the pit.
• Insert two raw almonds inside the date and close the fruit around the almonds. The sweetness of the natural sugars will be sticky and the dates with close right up again.
• Enjoy!

Alexandra Jamieson, HealthyChefAlex.com
Alex is a Certified Holistic Health Counselor and health supportive chef. Her upcoming cookbook “The Great American Detox Diet” will be published in June, 2005 by Rodale and was inspired by her fiancé Morgan Spurlock’s experience in the award winning documentary Super Size Me. For more information about her health counseling program and cook book, go to www.healthychefalex.com or write to her at alex_jamieson@yahoo.com.