One of the most popular cooking class series that we teach is called Recipes from Books and Movies.  In honor of my friend Amy, who recently came to town compliments of Bush’s Beans, I thought I’d share this class favorite.

Step on the Gas Baked Beans
Cars, by Pixar

Almost every time I make beans with my students or my own children, they launch into the catchy tune, “beans, beans, the musical fruit…”  You know the rest, I am sure.  But you may not know what makes beans actually act as a “musical” food, causing fragrant bursts from the hineys of our otherwise respectful children.

Beans and other gassy foods contain sugar molecules that don’t get broken down small enough to be digested.  Our bodies don’t have enzymes (chemicals that break down molecules) to break them into manageable sized pieces.  So the bacteria that live in your large intestines step in and chow down.  Unfortunately for us, the bacteria releases gas as they break down their supper – and it escapes through the only opening available in your digestive tract.  Yes, the one down there.  Stop blaming the dog.

Ingredients:

2 Tbs olive oil
1 medium-size yellow onion, diced as small as you can
1 (15-ounce) can tomato sauce
1/2 cup light molasses (not blackstrap)
2 tsp mustard powder
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground allspice
1 bay leaf
2 (15 ounce) cans small white beans (drained and rinsed)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350ºF.
2. Preheat a medium-size oven-safe pot over medium heat. Sauté the onions in the oil for about 10 minutes, until they are browned (but not burned)
3. Add the garlic and sauté for one more minute. Add the tomato sauce, molasses, mustard, salt, allspice, and bay leaf, and cook for about 5 minutes.
4. Add the beans, then cover the pot and transfer it to the oven for an hour. Give it a stir just once, about 30 minutes into the baking process. The sauce should thicken and sweetened.
5. Keep warm until ready to serve.

CALL THE KIDS:

• If you have a food chopper, children of all ages can help you chop the onions.
• Or, if you don’t mind the dirty dishes, you can have toddlers press the button of your food processor as you PULSE the onions into small pieces.
• Older kids can use a knife, with supervision.
• Measure molasses, dried spices
• Drain the beans in a colander over the sink, and rinse thoroughly
• Older children can open the can of tomato sauce.
• Pour the sauce into the pot

What?  You don’t have extra hours every day to spend in the kitchen? C’mon, it’s not like you are busy working, folding laundry, cleaning the cat box, being a taxi driver or networking on Facebook and Twitter…. Okay, if you want to serve healthy food to your family, but could use a few tips on how to speed up the process, here are a few ideas:

• Plan ahead:  Select all of the recipes that you plan to use for the week, so that you don’t have to shop at the last minute or resort to fast food.  If you are organized, you can shop for most of your ingredients in one trip.  For healthy and seasonal menu ideas, subscribe to a fantastic online menu planners, like the Six O’Clock Scramble.
• Involve Your Kids: While you are working on preparing dinner, put your dirty tools and dishes into a large bowl filled with soapy water in the sink.  Kids love to get their hands wet, and can scrub the tools as you add them.  You will be surprised at how well they can do the job, and how it will save you the time instead of doing the whole job yourself.
• Slow Cookers or Crock Pots are a fantastic way to prepare a family meal with little fuss.  Simply take a few minutes to prepare some ingredients the night before.  In the morning, just toss them into the slow cooker and the meal will be ready in time for dinner.  I have been known to forget to get the ingredients into the crock pot before leaving the house, so I put it on the counter, along with any canned ingredients the night before, so that it jogs my memory in the morning. My friend Stephanie O’Dea wrote a great cookbook called Make It Fast, Cook It Slow – check it out.
• One-Pot Meals can save you time during meal preparation.  Instead of cooking separate recipes for your protein, carbohydrates and vegetables, try making one that includes all of these components, such as Turkey Cornmeal Casserole (see below) or Lasagna. Keep reading →

A huge thanks to my friend Christine Koh, from Boston Mamas, for this week’s installment of What’s Cooking with YOUR Kids.  Christine and I met nearly two years ago (Gasp! Has it really been that long?) when I started writing for her awesome website, Boston Mamas.  She must be wonderful if she still lets me write for her site, even though I am from the opposite side of the country!  But despite our geographic distance, she and I share a very similar parenting philosophy and care a lot about all things eco and philanthropical…So it is with great pleasure that I am able to share her tale about her young daughter, Laurel.
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Given my love for cooking and baking, I have always encouraged my daughter in the kitchen. As a toddler Laurel particularly enjoyed dumping in and mixingingredients. As a preschooler, she started to measure and really liked being the teacher (e.g., instructing me which order to fill cupcake tins). And as a 5-year-old, she has become facile in chopping. And boy did that pay off recently.

The other week I was about to start making dinner and Laurel declared that she wanted to make dinner. Adamantly. To be honest, I was really hungry and just wanted to knock together some soup quickly, but she really wanted to make it. Laurel isn’t a bossy kid but for some reason, in this case, she wasn’t going to take no for an answer. She said, “Mommy and Daddy, just go and sit and relax on the couch while I make dinner.”

Um, okay. No brainer on that offer.

Inspired by a recent soup recipe posted on Boston Mamas, I laid out the ingredients for Laurel to prep and told her what order to drop things in the pot. I cut the onions and potato because I was concerned about letting her use a knife with those hard vegetables (not to mention the stinky onion factor); otherwise, Laurel cut up the tofu, mushrooms, and zucchini.

[Two notes regarding prep: First, Laurel used to use a Zyliss plastic knife, but she now is able to safely use a small paring knife. It depends on your kid of course (when in doubt, err on the side of overcautious), but we feel OK with this because Laurel listens well to us, is extremely careful, and has proved with repeated supervision that she can handle a small knife. Second, when you cook with kids I think it’s critical to let go of perfection. Let them experiment and experience. Spill some flour? Not a huge deal - just add a little more. Veggies not all perfectly cubed? Who cares?]

Once Laurel finished prepping the ingredients, I set up the step stool at the stove, gave repeated reminders about the heat source, and she went at it. She added two “blobs” of olive oil (“ooh, it looks like binoculars!”), sautéed the onion then potato, added water, added five “shakes” of sesame oil and ten of soy sauce (from spigot-top bottles), then added the rest of the chopped veggies, frozen corn, and dumplings. She stirred until bubbling then called me to check on doneness while she made the toasted cheese sandwiches.

Laurel and I set the table together then we all sat down as a family to taste her work. And I swear, everything tasted better by her hand. Laurel’s soup and sandwiches were infused with so much love it breaks my heart a little to even think about it.

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Christine Koh is a music and brain scientist turned freelance writer, editor, and designer. She is the founder and editor of Boston Mamas, the designer behind Posh Peacock, and writes a personal blog at Pop Discourse. She resides in the Boston area with her husband and 5-year-old daughter. She tweets about it all at @bostonmamas.

Do you have any fun stories and photos to share about cooking with YOUR kids?  I hope to share at least one reader story every week and can’t wait to hear about your adventures in the kitchen with your kids. Here is what you need to do.

p.s.  Pass it on!

I am pretty good at staying on track, but sometimes, I just need to veer off the path a little.  Call it a change of scenery. Normally, I blog about cooking with kids, family mealtimes and saving the world helping others.  But tonight, I just wanted to give a little shout out to my friend Amy who was in town over the weekend.

Amy e-mailed me about 2 months ago, bursting with excitement bout her trip to the Napa Valley with Bush’s Beans.  She wanted some restaurant recommendations – and I told her about the great meal we had at Ad Hoc.  (Disclaimer – my sister works there.  But she doesn’t know I am writing this post.  Yet.)  I offered to help her make reservations – and then invited my husband and myself to join her!

Oh, what a night.  Side-splitting laughter, tasty eats and a blogging friend turned into a true friend, “in real life.”

I was nearly giddy with anticipation for our first meeting with the food service administrators from our school district this afternoon.  I was nervous that they would be defensive, or that they might have a laundry list of all of the reasons why they were unwilling or unable to make changes in our current food service program.  Would they hate me for being outspoken and blabbing about these issues on my blog?

I was relieved to find out, though, that while they started off on the tense side, they were very open to suggestions from the parents and staff that were in attendance.  They admitted, later, that they weren’t sure what to expect, either.  Were we going to come in with a list of unreasonable demands? Would we be sensitive to the fact that change comes slowly, especially when there is lots of red tape and beaurocracy involved?

The meeting began with a description of the current system – how it’s organized, where the food is delivered and how it gets distributed to the schools in the district.  Let me see if I can get it straight…

1. The food service staff orders food from a variety of vendors, which include Schwan, Tyson, Sysco and many others.
2. The food arrives on palates, which are unloaded at the Central Kitchen for the district, currently located on the San Rafael High School campus.
3. The food is sorted and stored in their very crowded facility.
4. Each day, the foodservice staff for each school selects the items that they need for their breakfast / lunch programs, heats the food, and then delivers it to their school site, where it is distributed to the students. Keep reading →

I am not a sh@t disturber.  Really.

But when I see something that should be needs to be changed, I think it’s okay to speak up…especially when I provide constructive feedback.  You’ll notice that I’m not a complainer.  There’s hardly any point in that – nobody listens.  (At least with my own kids, complaining isn’t a successful strategy for getting something to change.)

After our school superintendent responded to my recent post about our sub-par lunch program, I thought I’d point out some of the good work that is being done on this issue.  See, I am not complaining.  I am just trying to consolidate good information and make it easier for everyone to see what is going on.

• This teacher is eating what her students are eating, and shares it on her blog every day.  She is fearful that she will lose her job if her administration finds out what she is doing.  I truly admire and respect her efforts.  Take a peek:  Fed Up with School Lunch
• Time For Lunch:  A National Campaign to give kids the school food they deserve
• The School Lunch Fact Sheet: the basics on how much funding is really available for each student lunch every day
• Michelle Obama aims to end child obesity in a generation.
• The Lunch Box: Healthy Tools for All Schools
• School Lunch Talk: Updates and excellent information about school lunch issues.
• For some true inspiration, take a look at Jamie Oliver’s TED award speech on changing school lunch.

Since we’re being constructive (and not complaining), please share any success stories or progress that is being made on this issue where you live.  It will help to keep us going through this challenge!

I hope you are loving the What’s Cooking with YOUR Kids series on my blog as much as I am.  I am thrilled every single time one of my readers sends in a story about cooking with their children.  One of the things I love the most is how many “types” of people are bringing their kids into the kitchen.  It just goes to prove that you don’t have to be a “cook” or nutritionist to get up the chutzpah to cook with your children.  What?   You don’t know what chutzpah (HUD-spah) means?  It’s Yiddish and roughly translates to having the nerve or the gall to do something.  Anyway…

Well, it just so happens that this week’s installment of What’s Cooking with YOUR Kids does happen to be from a nutritionist.  Deanna is an RD with Teaspoon Communications and shares this tale…

I’m a food-loving dietitian by trade (meaning, I’m all about eating, cooking, describing and enjoying all kinds of food and fitting that into a healthy lifestyle.) So I’m adamant about sharing this mantra with my daughter, Mia (2 1/2 yrs.), by getting her involved in the simplest of kitchen tasks.

For this recipe, she got into “chucking” the baked sweet potatoes into the bowl and watching the mixer for a few rotations.  We didn’t do this last step (mixing the sweet potatoes into the ice cream) until it was time for dessert.  Though she eyed her usual “vanilla” ice cream with suspicion, she gobbled it right down.  Next on our list of veggie ice cream flavors to try:  Carrots and Butternut Squash.

Mia’s Sweet Potato Ice Cream:

1 sweet potato
2 tablespoons lowfat milk
1/2 cup vanilla ice cream

1. Scrub sweet potato and cut off one end (to prevent bursting in oven.) Bake at 375 degrees for 1 hour. Cool slightly.
2. Remove skin and place in mixing bowl.
3. Whip sweet potato, adding milk to make creamier.
4. If you have time, chill in fridge for 1 hour
5. Mix 2 tablespoons of sweet potato mixture into softened ice cream. Mix well and serve immediately.

Do you have any fun stories and photos to share about cooking with YOUR kids?  I hope to share at least one reader story every week and can’t wait to hear about your adventures in the kitchen with your kids. Here is what you need to do.

p.s.  Pass it on!