Kids Cook Real Food Blog

My family eats Caesar dressing at an alarming rate, both on salads and as a dip for raw veggies, but most commercial Caesar is made with soybean oil, highly inflammatory and NO good for us! Today I teach my 10-year-old daughter how to make homemade Caesar dressing since it’s a little bit tricky of a process and I need help keeping up with the family demand. You can learn along with her but be warned – I do a lot of “cheat” measuring! 🙂 Get the written recipe below! Homemade Caesar Dressing Video Timestamps 0:44: Caesar dressing is a little bit trickier than Italian or ranch dressing. Today I’m going to show you and Leah how to make it! 1:07: [Read more...]

This week’s Healthy Parenting Connector will be my thoughts on the challenges of raising an adult in today’s world… If you didn’t see last week’s interview with author Julie Lythcott-Haims, you are missing out! She’s amazing and had a lot of good things to say as well as some scary predictions about young adults raised by helicopter parents. But our culture isn’t making it easy… 3 reasons it’s challenging to raise an adult: 1. The judgment of others (comparisonitis) 2. When a child’s decision affects the whole family (when do we let them fail vs be fair to the whole?) 3. It’s always faster and easier to do it ourselves! (Most common reason I hear from parents that it’s hard [Read more...]

Does it sound great to have your grown-up child back in your house so that you can do their laundry, cook meals for them, and pay their bills…because they don’t know how to be an adult? I didn’t think so. We’re in this parenting game to do the best we can by our kids, and although we all want to raise healthy kids, sometimes the culture drags us into comparisonitis and we forget that part of “healthy” is “independent.” We think it means “successful.” I’m thrilled to introduce you to Julie Lythcott-Haims, lawyer turned Stanford dean turned writer, to knock some sense into all of us for a spell. 😉 She’s the author of How to Raise an Adult, a [Read more...]

Did you know 50% of girls dislike their bodies as they enter high school — and some of those habits start as newborns?!? Family nutrition expert and mom Maryann Jacobsen and I sat down to dig DEEP into how we talk about food with our kids, and why simply “not talking badly about our weight” is superficial advice destined to fail. From womb to college, this information will help you take positive steps in your parenting journey (and stress a little less at each stage). A quick overview of what you’ll learn: Why not knowing how to eat cookies developed an awful relationship with food for Maryann – and the magical moment that turned that around for her. (She knows [Read more...]

My husband is back with us again today for Father’s Day week… Let’s talk about the role of fathers in kids’ healthy lifestyles and what you should do if you just hate cucumbers! We chat about: Whether there are still foods he doesn’t like and what he does about that. How he can see our kids mimicking us as the examples in the household. Encouragement and advice to those of you who don’t feel like your spouse is on board with your healthy lifestyle goals, and to those of you who want to get on board. No time to watch the whole video? Here are the notes! Healthy Dads Video Time Stamps 0:34: My husband was on a few months [Read more...]

Will sleep become the new kale? Or the new cancer? Adults are shorting ourselves on sleep in droves in our “always-on” culture, and I’m unfortunately leading the pack. That’s why I begged sleep science coach Christine Hansen to join me for a half hour to get some important tips!! I started implementing a new way to wake up my kids immediately, and I know being a better parent means being well-rested (i.e. not angry mommy). If you feel like you’re not getting a tight 8 in bed OR your sleep quality doesn’t feel optimal, this is a must listen. We talk about: How adult sleep is so much more complicated than infant sleep. Our brain’s many jobs during sleep – [Read more...]

When we went grain-free for a while, pizza night disappearing was one of the saddest parts! Then I found a crazy-good almond flour crust, and back it came! But then…baby #4 had an egg allergy, so I had to get the eggs out of the crust…and then daughter discovered a dairy intolerance, ay yi yi, so we had to make MORE changes! We’ve added a lot of seasoning as well, and my kids (who kicked me out of the kitchen to film this) now present our… grain-free egg-free dairy-free (option) …favorite homemade pizza crust! What can we say? It’s delicious and our Sunday night tradition. The kids have been making it every other Sunday for 2 years now, and they [Read more...]

I’ve been telling everyone about this book! Ever since I read (okay, listened to) The Gift of Failure by Jessica Lahey, it has truly changed my parenting. My mindset about the mistakes my kids make and little accidents they have is totally more peaceful, and the whole time I was absorbing the information, I was thinking, “How can I interview this author so I can share her amazing wisdom with my audience???” Turns out all I had to do was post something I had done using the Failure Philosophy with one of my kids here on Facebook, and someone tagged her and now — here we are! 😀 This is quite possibly my favorite interview yet, and I can’t wait [Read more...]

Did you start to question the products you put on your kids’ skin once you were a mom? Meet Tatyana Cerullo, attorney and formulator of Kokua Suncare, who came to that realization as she saw the legal system behind the marketing. We get so much conflicting information these days about whether the sun is something to hide from or embrace, what’s safe to apply on our skin, and how to manage it all. Now as a mom of 2, Tatyana brings a nice balance to the conversation. Sunscreen is easy to buy, excruciatingly simple to spray on, but deadly hard to understand. Our family has personally tested over 100 kinds of mineral sunscreen, and Kokua is far and away one [Read more...]

Ever hear someone say, “He’s just skinny because he has a high metabolism?” Or used this one: “I have trouble losing weight because I have such a slow metabolism…” ? What about our kids? Are there things we can do, habits we can set, foods we can eat, to CHANGE their metabolism and set them up for either positive or negative outcomes? Nutritionist Sara Vance says YES! People’s metabolisms are a huge KEY to their health (and weight) and we can help them out…or mess them up royally. Here’s what you’ll learn in today’s expert interview: Did this nutritionist love veggies as a kid?? What “metabolism” actually means (and dude – it’s totally not what I would have expected or [Read more...]