After experimenting with some ingredients, I came up with a way to offer Spinach. The spinach teriyaki sauce was well received. It doesn't look fantastic, but it tastes great and it serves as a dipping sauce for a kid who loves to dip. 
More importantly, ever since i discovered that he likes to graze throughout the day, I have been carting around a choice of snacks he can pick at whenever we go out. In fact, even if at home I let him have a set of side by side bits and bites that he can nibble on. This week's new addition is cantaloupe. It really has been a shift for us, as I am not so worried if he is getting the right amount of nutrients. It works out great. 
Three cheers for lots of choices!

My son loves to dip in sauces. He will eat grilled cheese with ketchup, quesadilla with BBQ sauce, avocado sushi with soy sauce, and he will eat chicken fingers in sweet and sour sauce. So i decided to experiment with carrots.

This turned out great! and better yet, the boy likes it. A carrot based sweet and sour sauce, who knew? And this feels like a real win because he won't choose carrots in any other capacity. 
For my next trick, I will try to incorporate spinach. I am thinking a home made teriyaki sauce, although we are having trouble picturing that. smile emoticon Stay Tuned!

Nutrients

(Kira Post) 

I think the most challenging thing to deal with as a teacher will come as a big surprise to non-teachers ... It's actually food. What children eat throughout the day has a profound affect on their learning, their energy levels, and their behaviour. 

Over the last 15 years, I have watched child after child cycle through sugar-highs and sugar-lows and that terrible 2:15 sugar crash where they literally can't keep their eyes open. 

It is rare for a child to come to school having eaten a breakfast that provides them with sufficient energy to make it to lunch time - that is if they had time to eat any breakfast at all. I fully appreciate how challenging it is to get a child up in the morning, ready for school with everything they need, and out the door. 

I teach middle school which means the children have access to money and stores. They stock up on candy and pop and chips. Our classroom has a "sugar-free" policy and the children are often surprised when we wont let them eat their chocolate dipped granola bars, chocolate milk, or fruitopia drink. While chocolate milk is dairy and provides some calcium, did you know it contains nearly 50% of the suggested daily sugar intake?!

A child who has eaten protein and carbohydrates has an increased chance of learning. Hungry children daydream, get distracted, get cranky, can't concentrate, and often misbehave - mostly because they don't know what is making them grumpy or frustrated or angry. 

It is hard to teach math to hungry children, which is why we keep oatmeal, cheese, crackers, milk, yogurt, bananas, and apples on hand. 

Traditionally I have taught nutrition by focusing on "healthy eating" and "healthy choices". 

But this year I decided to take a completely different approach. 

Teachers can have a major influence on children and the ways in which they see both the world and themselves. Teaching what is "healthy" has to be balanced with not evoking shame. It is also crucial to recognize that children come from all different families. They may not eat the same foods as I do. They may not have access to a wide variety of fruits and vegetables like I do. Children don't always have choice over what groceries are purchased. And have you seen the price of cauliflower?? Not every family can afford to have a fridge full of vegetables, a full bowl of fruit, and a loaf of multigrain bread. 

The foods that go on sale are not organic pineapples and red peppers. It's white bread, Kraft Dinner, pizza pockets, and Lucky Charms that have great deals. 

Not to mention, when I was a kid, there's no WAY I would have touched a slice of bread with grains and seeds in it, let alone whole wheat. I was a Wonderbread kinda girl. 

So teaching about healthy food choices means bringing up so many complex issues that can include access, poverty, cultural differences, and family dynamics. The way a teacher approaches this subject can be empowering or shaming. 

This week my class has been learning about nutrients. Not the food groups that have been drilled into them since kindergarten, but nutrients: protein, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals, and fat. By specifically focusing on the nutrients needed to survive, we have been able to look at what is missing from our meals as opposed to telling the children what I think they should or shouldn't be eating. 

Once we explored what types of food provide the different types of nutrients, we used volunteers to share what they had eaten. It was really important that the next step was not to shame the children, but to ask them what nutrients they should focus on for the rest of the day. 

One child had had waffles with syrup for breakfast, and chips and a can of pop for lunch. Rather than shame her about those choices, we talked about which nutrients she had consumed so far (carbohydrates and fat), and what she should focus on consuming over the rest of the day (protein, vitamins and minerals). She was also able to identify that she had already had more than the recommended amount of daily sugar intake and could switch to drinking water for the rest of the day. 

By focusing on the key nutrients for survival with an aim to increase the intake of these nutrients, no one was shamed about their food choices. 

We have started keeping boxes and wrappers from the foods we eat in school so that we can compare and contrast nutrients in the different items. I have been able to say to children at the end of the day, "I noticed you didn't have much protein or vitamins today. Do you think you could try to add that tomorrow?" Which is a completely different message than "I saw you ate chips for breakfast and a chocolate bar for lunch. Tomorrow you have to bring a sandwich."  

By creating these integrated ingredient recipes, Olivia is providing ideas for how to incorporate the nutrients children need into foods they will enjoy. Having vegetable muffins available in the morning that a child can grab on the way out the door when the family is running late, is a much better alternative to a donut or to nothing at all. 

Happy cooking and happy eating! 

Making Recipes

Our goal is to try and offer items like cauliflower or broccoli, in different creative ways that my child might enjoy and eat.
We aren't particularly focused on a type of diet or health food or quick-to-make food, although, the health part seems like it will be a natural side effect of offering fruits and vegetables. Our goal is simply to make up ways of offering previously rejected food, into new offerings that he might enjoy. All the while, recording our journey so that we have a handcrafted cookbook at the end of it. That is the whole purpose in a nutshell.
Our intention is to reward those who have donated to the cause with a copy of the cookbook. The book will be a combined effort of art and food crafting. Original illustrations by Kira and original recipes with instructions by Olivia.
This is a project in progress and we thank all those who have taken the time to like and share our page.

http://bit.ly/1PRVnj4

(Picture of Kira with Olivia's little fussy eater)

Please get in touch if you would like to be a recipe tester!

Isn't if tunny when your child will eat something at Daycare or School or Grandma's house, but won't eat it at home? and by funny i mean, frustrating.
On the one hand you are relieved that he is trying something new, but then it is frustrating because all you can ever get him to eat are the same five things. 
I get it, it's the same reason we attach feelings and moods to certain food. We don't totally let that go; cinnamon hearts on Valentine's Day, Turkey at Christmas, cookies in bed..teehee. This is especially the case for little minds that are just putting the world together and making connections.

Perhaps this is one of the highlights of getting them out and around other people and places. It exposes them to new adventures, other ways of seeing the world and attach new meaning and emotions to food. It gets them to try new things.
Speaking of which, the cauliflower pizza crust was a hit last night. Husband and kid approved. One more entry for the cookbook!

Combating Guilt

(Olivia Post) 

Combating guilt is a hard one. I want my son to eat healthy and I want to offer him nutritious choices, and I try. 

But there are days where he is interested in little else but gummy bears! I often feel like all he eats are chicken nuggets and beans. It's not that I don't try to offer him other things, he just won't eat them.

I have to remember to embrace the fact that he can make choices and just guide him by offering a plate of items that i know he likes (some of the time anyway). Then I can hope for the best.  

Are there other moms out there that feel this way too? Am I the only frustrated one?

The Importance of Choice

(Kira Post)

So often, children are such picky eaters that it is frustrating to feed them. Sometimes we become beside ourselves with worry (or guilt) over them not getting the nutrients that they need. We have looked at other cookbooks on the market aimed at helping parents and caregivers to get these important nutrients into their children. Many of these books have all sorts of wonderful suggestions of putting fruits, vegetables, and sources of protein into other foods so that they are more palatable to the picky child.

Our book is different from the others because we are focusing on making these important foods a choice rather than a deception. Instead of disguising broccoli in a muffin, Olivia told her toddler that she had made broccoli muffins. Despite his refusal to eat a piece of broccoli, he chose to try the muffin. And he loved it! The most important part of the whole experiment was choice. He wasn’t tricked into eating a vegetable that he didn’t like and didn’t want to eat. He was offered the very same vegetable, but in a form that he found tasty.

As children, many of us we were either forced to eat food, or allowed to make our own choices about food regardless of what those choices were. Both situations can lead to an unhealthy relationship with food – which, as we know, is essential for our survival. By forcing children to eat, the control over their body has been taken away from them. I certainly don’t want to be forced to eat when I am not hungry or when someone has cooked with an ingredient that I don’t like (in my case, fish!). A person who feels a lack of control over their bodies can develop an unhealthy body image and the need to find other means of control.

Studies have shown that adults who were forced to eat foods they did not want, or to finish the food on their plates, have an inability to self-regulate when it comes to appetite. If they were never given to opportunity to make choices around their food as children, then how can they be expected to make these choices as adults? If I were forced to eat carrots and spinach every day, I would be much more inclined to reach for the cookies later to make up for it.

By creating recipes that present these nutritious foods in appealing ways, children are able to enjoy the foods that we as adults know are important for their health and for their growing bodies. A wise woman once said to me, “if you don’t like multigrain bread, and only like white bread which you know isn’t good for you, then let’s find a lunch option other than a sandwich.” Meaning, children can be guided to make healthy choices when given options that make sense to them, and that taste good.

It is important to remember that children learn so much from the hidden messages they are given every day. Forcing them to eat when they are not hungry, or to eat foods that they do not like, teaches them that they are not in touch with their own bodies, and that their own hunger cues and tastes are not to be trusted. This is why the lack of deception in Olivia’s recipes is so important to us.

We are aiming to balance the best of both worlds with our food philosophy: eat when you are hungry, and eat what you enjoy. This does not mean allowing your child to go for days without eating, nor does it mean allowing chocolate pudding and potato chips for every meal. What it means is that forcing your child to eat green beans doesn’t accomplish anything except an unhappy child who ingested some vitamins and minerals. We believe that there are ways to offer nutritious food that can be appealing to those picky eaters out there.

Stay tuned for the next exciting experiment!