My friend Susannah is a dietitian and we have been working together on a Healthy Family Meal presentation for our school district.  We were asking around to find out what issues families might want to learn about, from a health and ecological perspective.  Tuna was at the top of their list – people wondered how to navigate the grocery store aisle and select the “best” can on the shelves.

Image from scraptv.com

As you might expect, there is a ton of information “out there” but most of it is scientific jibberish and is difficult for the average over-extended parent to translate.  Have no fear – I think I got a handle on it, and am happy to share.

Here’s the lowdown on sustainability.

• If you want there to be tuna left in the oceans for your grandchildren to enjoy, you should eat pole-caught Albacore.
• The way that tuna is harvested matters – some techniques are less labor intensive for the fishermen, but result in lots of unintended casualties, such as dolphins, sea turtles and marine birds.
• “Line caught” is a misleading term – and if you see it on your can of tuna, you should be suspicious.  The best fishing technique is called “pole caught.” Picture a guy in yellow waterproof overalls at the back of the boat with a fishing pole.   They are looking for Albacore and throw back everything else.  Enough said.
• “Long Lines” are particularly pesky – they trail behind the boat, sometimes for miles, with hooks and lures throughout their entire length.  Yes, they catch tuna.  But they also catch lots of other critters that happen to get hooked or tangled.
• Bigeye and bluefin tuna are endangered.  Do not order them if you see them on a restaurant menu.  Ever.
• Remember, you are voting with your fork – and if you pay for something you don’t agree with, it will keep happening.

Here’s the lowdown on health.

• Smaller, younger fish have less toxins accumulated in their bodies.  So it makes sense that these fish contain less mercury and pcb’s and are healthier to eat.
• Albacore that are pole caught are young fish that forage closer to the surface.  This is the healthiest choice!
• Albacore that are caught on long lines are much larger fish, living deeper in the water – these fish contain more chemicals and are not as safe to eat.

Breaking down the vocabulary:

• Bycatch (as defined by the Monterey Bay Aquarium): unwanted fishes and animals caught accidentally in fishing gear and discarded overboard, dead or dying.
• Chunk White tuna is always albacore.  Don’t automatically grab it, though – check how it was harvested first.
• Chunk Light isn’t always albacore, and may not be harvested sustainably.  Look for cans labelled Skipjack, and you can feel good about buying those.
• Tongol tuna is not the same as Albacore tuna.  Over 90% of Tongol are found in the waters of Thailand, Indonesia, Iran and Malaysia.  In all of these locations, except for Malaysia, fishing regulations are not enforced.  So if you need an acceptable alternative to Albacore you can purchase Tongol from Malaysia.

If you are curious about the other types of seafood to enjoy or avoid, you can download your own Seafood Watch pocket guide.  There’s even an app for that.  Of course.

Before you head out to buy ingredients for dinner, I’ll leave you with this TED speech from chef Dan Barber.  Let’s call it food for thought.

Where do you buy fish for your family? We’d love to hear from you.

Many thanks to my friend Aviva, the founder of The Six O’Clock Scramble, for sharing this post about spending time in the kitchen with her nephews.  (Don’t miss her special offer for What’s Cooking fans below!)

When your kids are cooking, do you let them take the lead (assuming they are old enough), or do you closely monitor their every action?

I remember the shock and sadness I felt when I read Jeannette Wall’s account in her memoir, The Glass Castle, of getting badly burned at age three while making a hot dog for her lunch. While few, if any, of us would let our children tend to a boiling pot on their own at such a young age, many of us do wonder what age is safe for our children to learn to handle a sharp knife or fry their own eggs. There is no definitive answer, but our fear of cuts and burns or, perhaps even more common, our reluctance to have more messes to clean up, or meals off schedule, often hold many of us back from ever getting our kids started in the kitchen. But if we don’t get over our hesitation, our kids may turn out like our friend Larry: who literally cannot boil an egg or even make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, although he is in his 60’s.

Last week I flew to California to help my sister recuperate from surgery. One night my nephews and I decided to make dinner for the whole family. I was thrilled to see that my 15-year-old nephew, Jared, has become a confident cook since I first taught him how to make enchiladas when he was about 12 (a warm memory that he and I share).

My 12-year-old nephew, Eli, on the other hand, has mostly avoided the kitchen, perhaps intimidated by his older brother’s growing confidence. In spite of (or maybe because of) his reluctance, I insisted Eli take the lead. I showed him how to safely wield a knife to cut a head of broccoli into florets. Then I let him loose (to his brother’s horror), cheering him on as he chopped. I could sense his growing confidence as he smashed the garlic to add to the marinade for the halibut. By the time we served dinner, Jared and Eli had chopped, juiced, minced, and basted. There was no disguising their pride as the family devoured the meal they had prepared mostly on their own.

In teaching kids to cook, I have learned that it is so important to let go of our own fears and standards, and to let them learn through doing, and to try to avoid micromanaging them. Of course, the first lesson is always safety, especially around knives and ovens. But after showing them how to safely peel a carrot or slice a potato, or remove a pan from a hot oven, I have found that I need to step back and hold my tongue (even if I may be screaming inside!).

Naturally, things won’t be done exactly as we would do them; cucumber slices may be uneven, clumps will remain in the soup, and frosting won’t evenly cover every bit of cake. But if we continually correct our children, it probably sounds to them a lot like criticism, and their interest in cooking may quickly wane. I have found that the key to cooking with kids is to try to keep things positive, make almost all of my words encouraging, and to give them more responsibility than I may at first feel comfortable with. So far, no one has lost a digit on my watch.

As they grow, let’s pledge to try to let the kids take the lead in the kitchen more often. After all, they aren’t just making a meal. They are learning a skill that will serve them, and their families. Setting an adventurous and positive tone will affect how they feel about spending time in the kitchen for many years to come.

Chicken Tikka
Prep (15 minutes) + Cook (15 minutes) + Marinate
6 servings

Our dear friend and devoted Scramble subscriber Karen Murray of Southold, New York, shared this delicious recipe with me. The yogurt marinade makes the chicken very moist and flavorful. To make the Indian feast complete, serve it with basmati rice and Curried Carrots with Dill.

1 1/4 cups plain reduced fat Greek or traditional yogurt (use soy yogurt for dairy free alternative)
1 tsp. minced garlic (about 2 cloves)
1 chunk (1-inch) ginger root, peeled, and minced (use 1 – 2 Tbsp., to taste)
1 tsp. ground cumin
2 tsp. curry powder
¼ tsp. salt
1 lime, juice only, about 2 Tbsp.
1 1/3 Tbsp. peanut or vegetable oil
1 1/2 – 2 lbs. boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut in half crosswise
1 Tbsp. butter 1/2 cup mango chutney, for serving (optional)

1. In a food processor, blender, or by hand, mix together the yogurt, garlic, ginger, cumin, curry powder, salt, lime juice and 1 Tbsp. oil until it is smooth. Reserve 1/2 cup of that yogurt mixture in a small bowl and refrigerate it to serve with the cooked chicken later
2. Place the remaining yogurt mixture in a shallow container. Cut thin slits in the chicken breasts; add them to the yogurt mixture, and turn to coat them well. Cover and marinate them, refrigerated, for at least 4 hours and up to 24 hours.
3. (Start the rice and carrots, if you are making them.) When you are ready to cook it, remove the chicken from the marinade, scraping the excess marinade from the chicken and discarding it.
4. Place a large nonstick skillet over medium to medium-low heat and add the butter and remaining 1 tsp. oil. When the butter has melted, add the chicken breasts in a single layer. Sauté them, flipping once or twice, until the chicken starts to brown on its surface and is no longer pink in the center, 10 – 12 minutes. (If the outside is cooking much faster than the inside, reduce the heat slightly and partially cover the pan.)
5. When the chicken is cooked through, remove it from the pan to a cutting board and slice it crosswise into strips. Serve it immediately with the reserved marinade and the chutney (optional) or refrigerate it for up to 3 days.

Scramble Flavor Booster: Double the cumin and use 1 Tbsp. curry powder.

Tip: Ginger root freezes well, but before freezing, it is best to break the ginger into smaller pieces (without peeling it). Wrap the individual pieces tightly, and keep them in the freezer for up to six months. Grate or chop as needed — no need to thaw first.

Side Dish suggestion: Cook 1 1/2 cups of basmati rice according to the package directions. To make authentic Indian-style basmati rice, cook the rice using chicken or vegetable broth instead of water, and add a stick of cinnamon, 6 whole cloves and 2 cloves of peeled garlic to the liquid with the rice. Remove the cinnamon, cloves and garlic before serving.

Side Dish suggestion: To make Curried Carrots with Dill, heat 2 tsp. olive oil in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add 4 – 6 large carrots, sliced, 1/2 tsp. curry powder, 1/2 tsp. dried or fresh dill, to taste, and a pinch of salt. Sauté it for 2 minutes, stirring occasionally. Cover the pan, reduce the heat, and steam the carrots for about 8 minutes until just tender when pierced with a fork.

Nutritional Information per serving (% based upon daily values): Calories 280, Total Fat 9g, 14%, Saturated Fat 3g, 16%, Cholesterol 125mg, 42%, Sodium 222mg, 9%, Total Carbohydrate 3g, 1% Dietary Fiber 0g, 0% Sugar 2g, Protein 45g

If you’d like to sign up for Aviva’s awesome menu planning service, we have good news.  Fans of What’s Cooking get a special deal!!! Simply enter the code “WHATSCOOKING” when you sign up, and you’ll get:

• $2 off a 3 month sub (regularly $19.50)
• $4 off 6 months (regularly $29.50)
• $8 off one year (usually $54.50)
• This special offer is valid through the end of May

Yowza! It’s such an honor to be selected as a finalist for the Scholastic Parent & Child Parent Blogger Awards in the Green category.

You know what would be an even bigger honor?  If you would take a second to cast your vote for What’s Cooking…and tell your friends to do the same.  You might even want to tweet about it or put it on your facebook page!  Voting ends on June 4, 2010.

The more people that know about the What’s Cooking blog, the more people we can inspire to consider the environment when they are feeding their families…  The winner of each category will be featured in the August / September Issue of Parent and Child Magazine.

And guess what?  I recently agreed to a book deal – and throughout the next few months, you can look for special earth-friendly recipes to try with your kids.  I can’t wait to include you in the process

Thanks for your support.

Lots of love,
Michelle

I am always so happy to find new bloggers that I enjoy reading.  And it makes me even happier when they are eager to share a story about their time in the kitchen with children.  Many thanks to Tiffany McCauley from The Gracious Pantry for this week’s awesome article on eating “clean” with children.  Good food for thought…

We all want out kids to be healthy. We make sure they get regular Dr. appointments, brush their teeth, and that they get enough rest to handle their day. But many parents don’t fully grasp the concept of how to nurture healthy eating habits in their children.

Perhaps they were never taught healthy eating habits themselves, or maybe life is just so hectic that a quick trip through a local drive-through seems like a light at the end of a long and tiring tunnel.  As adults, we get so caught up in our everyday lives, we forget about the vital connections we need to nurture with our children, and in our homes, especially in the kitchen.

Most people have fond memories of baking as a child. Time spent in the kitchen, working with food allows us to bond on a most basic and primal level.  Teaching our children how to cook is a life long lesson that will not only serve them well as adults, but also bring the family close together in the process.

If you add to that healthy, wholesome food that nourishes the soul as well as the tummy, you’ve created memories that will last a life time as well as giving your children a healthy and basic understanding of what real food is and what it’s supposed to taste like. A lesson that even many adults could stand to learn.

The faster life gets, the more we rely on processed and packaged foods. Sadly, the only concern these “food” manufacturers have is NOT our good nutrition, but rather, their bottom line. Getting back to basics and cooking with real foods is not a difficult process. If you teach your children (or learn along side them), the art of cooking healthy foods, you are also teaching them how to nurture themselves for a lifetime. You teach them respect, discipline and patience as well as creativity and imagination. The lessons learned in the kitchen go way beyond the food prepared there.

Feeding your kids clean foods from the beginning is, of course, optimal. There’s nothing as simple as putting some broccoli through the blender to feed your baby.  But if your kids are older and already accustomed to processed foods, there are small changes you can make to ease their transition from processed to fresh and clean.

• Let them cook! Kids who are involved in the process are far more likely to eat what is put on their plate and far more likely to serve themselves healthy foods when they are made available.
• For younger children, make up names for food you want them to eat. Kids are far more likely to eat “dinosaur trees” than they are to eat “broccoli”.
• If you have a small patch of yard or even a few larger flower pots, help your kids grow a few veggies. Not only do they gain a basic understanding of where their food comes from, but they will actually be excited about eating something they’ve nurtured and waited for for so long.
• Ease them into healthier eating slowly. Sudden dietary changes, unless medically necessary, are usually not looked upon favorably by the younger folk.
• Talk to then about why you are making these changes. Talking to your kids about good health is a discussion you should start having as early as possible. It teaches kids to take responsibility for their own health.

No matter what tricks you use, teaching your children about clean, healthy eating is a lesson they will thank you for for the rest of their lives. Take the time to teach and you’ll build memories and connections that can never be broken.

I’d like to give a warm welcome to the new visitors who found my blog through Diane Elbin’s awesome 30-Days to a Food Revolution blog event!  It’s such an honor to be included with such an incredible group of moms, dietitians, chefs and teachers.

Diane hand picked 30 bloggers, one for each day of the month, to write about shifting away from processed foods to real foods.  Real foods? As opposed to what? Pretend foods?  No, what I am talking about are foods that come from REAL ingredients – you know, the types of things you can actually pronounce when you read labels.  Of course, real foods also refer to those that have been picked right off the plant, vine, bush or tree.

Jamie Oliver led an amazing food revolution in one community – and it is up to us to be sure that it continues everywhere.  As a cooking teacher for children, I am certainly doing my part – and I hope that with a little encouragement, you can do yours, too!  Be sure that you visit Diane’s Blog to read all of the amazing ideas that came from this challenge.  And don’t miss my post about cooking farm fresh food on top of hay bales with kids (who said that cooking has to be done in a kitchen?).

Yesterday was our third annual Great American Bake Sale / Music For The Hungry extravaganza to raise funds for Share our Strength‘s efforts to fight childhood hunger.  And I am pleased to say that it was a smashing success!  We raised over $2500 and had a day filled with music, delicious food and community.

As you could have expected, I got pretty darned emotional during several portions of the day – like when our principal dedicated a song to me (about eating locally and feeding the hungry) and when a little boy set up a stand to sell some of his toys so that he could make a donation to Share our Strength.

Pictures speak louder than words – so I will let the images speak for themselves…

Many thanks to Trader Joe’s, Costco, Dierk Herbermann and Kristine Kelson for their generous donations.  And thanks to Donna’s Tamales for providing delicious tamales at a discount!  Everyone loved them!

Many thanks to Christie for this awesome and detailed post about what works when she cooks with her kids.

Michelle asked me to put together a little post about the kids in my kitchen after I commented on her some-time-ago entry regarding what young children can reasonably do in the kitchen.  In tossing around the idea, I thought it might be useful to highlight some of the things that helped me start cooking with my twins when they were two.

Although I’m talking up a few specific items here, there’s no paid endorsement involved and your mileage may vary.  What you don’t need is to spend a lot of money or redo your kitchen.  Obviously, every home and every family will have unique circumstances and needs.  These were important for me and my own children.

A kid-size table.  It’s really important for children to have a sturdy surface that they can easily reach, bearing in mind that they are often more comfortable standing to work.  For us, an IKEA table & chairs similar to this worked really well (it’s in retirement now, but we’ll pull it out again when our new baby is old enough to need it).  This surface could also be a Lego or train table with toys removed and flipped to the flat side (cover w/newspaper or a dedicated tablecloth if needed), or the kitchen table or counter if you have a way to get the kids up there.  These days my children (first-graders) do a lot of their kitchen work standing next to a counter-height stool, with the bowl or cutting board or whatever on the seat.

Sturdy utensils.  You want tools, not toys (though if you can find something that’s scaled down in size without sacrificing quality, it’s worth considering).  You don’t want your tools to fall apart, and you definitely don’t want to have to worry about your preschooler breaking something in his/her enthusiasm.  Let them use the regular utensils that you use, with appropriate precautions in place.

Aprons or messy shirts.  Aprons are cute, and I’m a big fan of the chef’s hat concept, but a largish T-shirt or smock for your child to wear when doing messy work (not limited to cooking) will clear your mind and let your kid focus on the task at hand.

Good resources.  We have cooked a zillion times from Mollie Katzen’s Salad People and Pretend Soup cookbooks.  They feature a standard copy of each recipe for adults to read and use for prep, and then each recipe is transcribed into a picture format on two pages, so that children who can’t yet read are able to do the cooking themselves. The helpful adult is really the sous chef.  We just got Katzen’s Honest Pretzels, which is for older children who are able to read and follow a recipe, and I’m excited to dive in.   I also really appreciated Mary Ann Kohl’s First Art, which focuses on toddlers and twos; it helped me focus on process and to understand what my very young children were capable of in terms of motor skills.

Preparation.  Have your ingredients, utensils, dishes ready to go.  Premeasure, unless your child can handle that and would benefit from it.  If you have to scramble around finding things, you will lose your audience.  Don’t forget a damp cloth in a bowl, for wiping sticky fingers without having to shift gears too dramatically.  When you’re working with more than one child at a time, it’s helpful (though not strictly necessary) to have more than one set of measuring cups and spoons available.

Patience.  I have one child who wants to finish the project at all costs, always, and one child who has about three minutes to devote to any given thing before taking off.  Let them go when they need to go, and be prepared to finish it yourself if necessary.  This is supposed to be fun for them, remember?  Understand that most children will probably want to smoosh fingers into the flour and smell the nutmeg and eat the sugar with a spoon.  (Use your own judgment on that one.)  Cooking with children takes longer than doing it yourself because they are exploring as they go; allow lots of time for the process and for cleanup.  I’ve found, too, that preparing the food is not a guarantee that the child will EAT the food.  My son loves to make glazed carrots, but he doesn’t really like eating them; for a long time, my kids would happily spin the salad greens and complain mightily when the salad appeared on the dinner table.  Have them try it and move on.

We enjoy cooking together, and I’m seeing that my children are more adventurous about food as they grow (they do eat the salads now, for example).  I hope this information helps someone else get started, and I’d love to know: What has been useful in your kitchen as you work with your children?