Kids Cook Real Food Blog

Raise your hand if you WISH your spouse felt the same way about healthy eating, natural living and/or parenting strategies as you! That would have been me for almost ten years, but all of that has changed. It’s been a long road, and today, my 10-year anniversary of helping families stay healthy without going crazy at Kitchen Stewardship, I’m interviewing my husband to share his story of being dragged along on this journey! We are 100% on the same page now, and it feels AMAZING. I can’t even tell you. But it wasn’t terrible as we worked through things the past 10 years, and today you’ll hear about how we maintained respect, the keys to helping someone learn about new [Read more...]

The very morning I did this interview, my husband was complaining about how badly he felt because of a certain number…and when I heard Heidi’s final “practical” challenge to parents, I knew we had to do it. This interview was a HUGE paradigm shift for me, and you will alternately want to turn it off as it gets challenging and find yourself cheering out loud! Heidi Schauster is an expert on eating disorders and talks with me today about how we as parents can foster a healthy relationship with food for our kids. We cover risk factors for eating disorders, mindful eating, how to handle treats at school and elsewhere, what “rules” parents should (and should not!) have for food [Read more...]

Need an easy, freezer-friendly breakfast that is homemade and will keep your kids full of energy for a busy school morning? Teach them to make homemade English muffins and then add bacon and eggs…mmmm! These homemade English muffins are so easy even kids can make them! They are a “special treat” in our house because we rarely have gluten at all and especially not white flour (they’re half and half) but they’re still so much better than commercially produced bread of any kind. And for real – the way they make the house smell is worth any time put in! Plus of course…when we empower kids to make their own food, we build confidence and show them how important they [Read more...]

We all want to raise successful children — not just in the kitchen, but in life! I’ve had over 34 “kid years” of parenting experience and I invite you to learn from our successes and failures along the way. These are simple ideas…but not always a cinch to implement! The three vital strategies I’ll go over in this video are: 1. High Expectations 2. Consistency 3. Repetition No time to watch the whole video? Here are the notes! Vital Strategies Video Time Stamps 2:46: We want to have high expectations for our kids. Most kids will never reach higher than we expect. We want to let them know that they have almost unlimited potential. There’s a fine line here. We don’t [Read more...]

When it comes to step ONE in healthy eating, I always come back to meal planning. I invited Allison Schaaf, pro chef and founder of Prep Dish, to chat with us on how to make it happen and some unique strategies she uses that are perfectly suited to families teaching their kids to cook! This week she has a special for listeners of The Healthy Parenting Connector: Join in on the 21-day Challenge. You will be prepping 21 days of healthy breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack recipes. Prep dish will create your shopping list and organize your prep to make meal time simple and effective. Check it out here. Here are some quick notes on what we covered: Most important [Read more...]

Many parents feel their kids are “picky eaters,” and we definitely find here at Kids Cook Real Food that working in the kitchen, being involved with food through our online cooking classes for kids, really helps kids be more open to trying and appreciating new foods. But it’s not magic pixie dust, and it doesn’t “work” for everyone. I’m thrilled to share this special interview with Melanie Potock, a speech language pathologist, best-selling author and expert in pediatric feeding. Maybe it blew your mind as it does mine that there are really EIGHT senses, and not just the 5 you learned in elementary school. We talk about how to use those original 5 senses to widen kids’ palates and combat picky [Read more...]

America is inflamed! Our kids are suffering in so many ways from inflammation – know any little ones with eczema, constipation, tummy troubles, recurring infections, chronic congestion, mouth breathers, bumps on the backs of their arms? You (and they) need this information about how diet will help bring inflammation down!! It even affects how responsive your body will be to a normal old cold, if you happen to be dragged down this year. 🙁 I’m so honored to host Dr. Sheila Kilbane, an integrative pediatrician, to educate us on this important issue. We talk about what fats to avoid and which to focus on to decrease inflammation in our kids. Dr. Kilbane gives 4 achievable action steps that busy parents [Read more...]

We moms always have a lot on our plates. One that I struggle with is balancing the need to cook for my family with the need to slow down and teach my little ones how to cook, and then the need to do silly things with them and play and read books and help with homework. It feels like there’s never enough time in the day! My quick tips today are designed to help you integrate your kids into the kitchen to accomplish goals one and two: with a little investment, you can teach your children skills, spend time with them, and get the return on investment of kids who can actually help in the kitchen without you having to micromanage. [Read more...]

Teaching kids about healthy eating can start from day one and you may find your picky eater will eat veggies even beyond a healthy pumpkin muffin. Making healthy eating fun is the key – ironically, learning food rules does just that.  “Can we get a real drink now?” the little girl said the moment The Lorax movie ended. I overheard a young girl bug her parents for a soda pop, or a juice, or “they even have Vitamin water!” as folks were stocking up on concessions before the showing of The Lorax in theaters. When the movie, which featured such ridiculous atrocities as bottled air and plastic grass, finally ended, she asked for that “real” drink…meaning something from the concession stand. [Read more...]

The proud look on my little ones’ faces when they make something for the family (or themselves) to eat is none other than priceless. And it’s even cuter the younger they are! Although my big kids can do quite a lot in the kitchen and have quite a list of recipes they can make, what about the 2, 3 and 4-year-old crowd? It doesn’t seem like they can do much in the kitchen other than dump ingredients and help stir while an adult is baking…but I believe they can do so much more. With a few basic skills and some special tricks, preschoolers can make healthy, fun snacks by themselves, plus breakfast and some lunch foods too. It’s all about [Read more...]