Hounds In The Kitchen » With Kids

Lil’s Colorful Chop Salad

Rachel — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:34:47 +0000

It is afternoon, a time when summer boredom hits hardest. Lil is whiny and wants nothing to do with any of the ideas I suggest. That is, until I start working on dinner and ask if she would like to make a salad.

She runs to her garden and picks what is ripe and fresh. She brings them inside, washes, and begins to chop. Lil dices carrots finely with an adult paring knife. I teach her how to chiffonade large leaves. She mixes a vinaigrette, pours it over the salads, and serves them.

These chop salads genuinely taste delicious and make good use of our in season vegetables. More than that, Lil’s salads represent the growth of a healthy eater and contributing member of our food loving family.

Recipe for a Chop Salad, verbatim from Lil

First, we need to do carrots, then chard, then some dressing. Put herbs and done.

Tips for a Successful Salad Making Experience with a Child

1. Say ‘yes’ as often as you can. You want both the making and the eating of a child-led salad to be positive.

2. Set yourself up for success by offering to do tasks that might be frustrating for a young child, such as cutting thick parts of a carrot.

3. Be flexible about letting the child try everything they want to try. Model techniques, moving their hands under yours if need be.

4. Give them the proper tools, especially knife ware. A child will be easily frustrated with a knife that doesn’t cut well. Lil has been using an adult pairing knife since she was three, for these reasons.

5. Double check the washing. Garden vegetables, especially greens, can be dirty and grit makes for a poor salad. Kids love using the salad spinner, so employ yours if you have one.

6. Go with the child’s taste ideas. You may never have thought to pair certain herbs and vegetables, but the child’s tastes may surprise you. More than that, by allowing her creativity in the kitchen you are giving her confidence in other areas.

7. Specifically and honestly affirm the act of making and eating a healthy salad. “You worked really hard at this.” “I especially like how carefully you cut the carrots.” “Thanks for making part of our dinner! I love eating this nutritious and delicious salad.”

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Lil’s Colorful Chop Salad is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen
We love to hear from you! Please add your comments or send Rachel an email.

Guest Post: Go Geocaching with Your Kids!

Rachel — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 13:47:49 +0000

As the Hounds in the Kitchen are cooking over a campstove in Canada right now, we’ve invited some of our favorite bloggers to come fill the space here. Today’s guest post is from Kristin Marks, the awesome CbusMom.

“We found it!” Cheers and excitement filled the air as we held our first box full of hidden treasure. It was a small gray box placed inside a tree log and inside the box were small gifts left behind by someone named namaste98. My children, a good friend, and I traipsed through Whetstone Park of Roses for almost three hours on our “Family Stroll in the Park” mission in search of this gray box. We were hot, sweaty, and tired, but determined to find that box to complete our very first Geocaching adventure.

Geocaching is basically high-tech scavenger hunting. Seekers use their GPS device (be sure it offers longitude and latitude) to locate a “geocache” which could be a box, bag, tube, or whatever the hider uses that is weather resistant. The website offers all the information you will need to go hunting: www.geocaching.com.

My experience was a really great one for the first time. I went online to sign up for a free membership and began searching for a geocache in my area. Turns out there are tons of geocaches hidden around Central Ohio and people have been doing this for years! I phoned my friend and asked her to come with me because I was a little apprehensive doing it alone with two kids. We chose the mission I mentioned above “Family Stroll in the Park,” mainly because namaste98 stated it was family friendly and had trinkets for children in the box.

We tried using only the google map we printed off the site’s page, but it gave a very loose frame of location for the geocache. So, I downloaded a free app for my Droid that told us where we were in regards to longitude and latitude because the basic GPS on my phone did not. Once we understood how to read where we were in regards to degrees North and West, we were on our mission.

The search lead us into the woods, we crossed over streams, patted nice dogs…and kept retracing our steps. The satellite signal to my phone kept bouncing off the trees and giving us incorrect longitude and latitude numbers; but, we reached the correct area, incredibly determined to find that geocache. Now, these geocaches aren’t always found. Sometimes you can search and search and not find it – and that is okay. It is the adventure of trying to find it that is fun.

After we knew we were in the correct area and not finding the hidden geocache, I was almost ready to call it quits. My friend asked “are you sure you checked every hollow log?” So I pouted a little and checked again. Wouldn’t ya know it?! I found it! Hidden by a broken branch in a hollow log was the little gray box we had spent hours trying to find. We opened it up and gazed at the little treasures inside. My daughter chose a piggy and my son chose a car; and if you take something you need to leave something, so we left a pirate figurine and some beads. We all felt accomplished and my kids got rewarded for their scavenger hunting abilities. When I got home I went to geocaching.com and logged my experience. The hiders sent me a congratulations email for finding their geocache. I’ll definitely do it again, and try not to pout next time.

Read Kristin’s website, CbusMom for more fun family friendly ideas.

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Guest Post: Go Geocaching with Your Kids! is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen
We love to hear from you! Please add your comments or send Rachel an email.

Rest In Peace Chester

Rachel — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 23:02:04 +0000

Chester, our beta fish of two years, died today.

Lil was extraordinarily sad, as young children are when a pet dies. We helped her sit with her grief and choose what to do with the fish body. We never thought to ask him his final wishes.

Lil chose to make a bed of flower petals in a small box for his coffin. I helped her write a note on the top that says ‘This fish died just when he got his new home. I really miss him.’ The ‘new’ home is a tank we got three months ago…

We buried the box in Lil’s garden and talked about how Chester’s flesh and bones will decompose and fertilize the soil. I took pictures and later Lil and I put together the collage pictured above.

Lil called all her aunties to tell them that Chester died. On her second birthday, my sisters, the aunties, bought her the fish tank and I think that’s where Lil had the idea that they would want to know about the death in the fish family.

Now Frog is living alone in the fish tank. We talked about getting a new beta or perhaps other fish when we return from Canada. In the meantime I’m sure we will keep talking about Chester. The circle goes round again.

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Rest In Peace Chester is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen
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Raising Children with Chickens

Rachel — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 19:19:53 +0000

There is no doubt that the true chicken keeper of our family is four and a half year old Lillian.

She named the chickens and feeds them scraps. She takes them on bike rides and returns them to the coop after free ranging in the yard.

Lil recently petitioned to be in charge of collecting eggs. This is no small feat; Lil climbs headfirst into the coop and reaches into the nesting area. She pulls out eggs one at a time and gently carries them into the house.

Sometimes the chickens have had enough child’s play. Recently Lil came crying to me with a blemish on her eye lid. I asked what happened. “I was holding Sussy by the wings and pinching her comb.” I don’t have a lot of sympathy for her injury but hopefully Lil learned something about treating animals gently.

Here are Lil’s thoughts about the chickens in her own words:

We have come to learn that a flock of laying hens is a delight for most children, including Lil. Keeping livestock teaches responsibility and biology with a healthy dose of fun.

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Raising Children with Chickens is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen
We love to hear from you! Please add your comments or send Rachel an email.

Kids Cook Summer Camps

Rachel — Wed, 12 May 2010 14:59:37 +0000

I am excited to offer four summer day camps for kids who love to cook and eat!

Each camp will be an extended edition of the weekly Kids Cook series. In an open, creative environment, kids will taste and reflect on local healthy foods. All the senses will be engaged through story, hands on cooking, and art.

What’s special about Kid’s Cook camps? We will explore every part of the ingredients from how they’re grown to tasting raw to how they are cooked. We also cook everything from scratch giving children experience chopping, measuring, and mixing. Finally, children will direct the menus this summer. They will choose dishes THEY want to make. Join me for one or more of the camps listed below!

Kids Cook Breakfast – From waffles to eggs, fruit to frittata, kid cooks will plan breakfast menus, make meals, and record their experiences in their breakfast cookbook. Children will also have the opportunity to decorate a reusable cereal bowl.

Tuesday June 15-Thursday June 17 at Sprout Soup, 4310 N High Street 43214. 10 am – 12 pm ages 3 – 5 years, 1 pm – 3 pm ages 6 and up, $75, register here

Kids Cook Lunch – Together we’ll choose and make dishes for daily picnic lunches. Kid cooks will decorate a reusable lunch bag and illustrate a lunch cookbook.

Tues. June 29-Thurs. July 1 at Sprout Soup, 4310 N High Street 43214. 10 am – 12 pm ages 3 – 5 years, 1 pm – 3 pm ages 6 and up, $75, register here

Kids Cook Dinner – Cooks will create dinner menus and cook favorite hearty recipes from local foods. They will also hand dye an apron sized just for them to encourage making dinner at home.

Tues. Aug 3-Thurs. Aug.5th at Sprout Soup, 4310 N High Street 43214. 10 am – 12 pm ages 3 – 5 years, 1 pm – 3 pm ages 6 and up, $75, register here

OpenHeartART Food Camp- Explore nutrition and food through cooking, music, and art at the OpenHeartART studios. In this camp, children will have the opportunity to create edible art, used edibles to make art works, and even make instruments from food packaging.

Monday Wednesday & Friday August 16, 18 & 20 at OpenHeartART, 280 W Lakeview 43202. Ages 3-5 10am-12pm, ages 6 & up 2pm-4pm, $75, Register at OpenHeartART

Please contact me with any questions about summer programs. I hope to see you and your little one at a camp this summer!

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Kids Cook Summer Camps is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen
We love to hear from you! Please add your comments or send Rachel an email.

Build a Salad Container Garden

Rachel — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 02:12:21 +0000

Yesterday I lead a edible container building workshop for members of Food Matters Columbus. We claimed a few picnic tables at Whetstone Park and planted away.

Today, Lil wanted to make a garden just like the workshop. So we did!

Lil was happy to get her hands dirty filling the container.

She planted a tomato seedling, radishes, endive, and basil for me and mint for her.

Could her hands be any dirtier? I say that one good measure of a child’s happiness is the variety of grime on their body.

Lil decorated each label with her interpretation of what the vegetable looks like.

Just before going in for bed, Lil used the rain barrel hose to water her new garden.

I will repeat the container building workshop with families this Saturday, April 17, from 2 – 3 pm at Sprout Soup. Each container that participants will fill with soil, seedlings, and seeds costs $20. Spaces are limited! Reserve your experience by emailing me. Or, make your own salad garden by following the steps below:

Supplies:

Container, preferably at least 20 inches wide by 7 inches deep

Potting soil or topsoil mixed with peat moss

Seedlings (herbs, tomatoes, radishes)

Seeds (lettuces, spinach, radishes)

Row markers, tongue depressors, or popsicle sticks

Trowel

Procedure:

1.Label row markers with the plants you choose. At a maximum, choose one variety of tomato, two herbs, and two seeds.

2. Fill container with soil to within one inch of the top, mixing in two scoops of peat moss if you have it.

3. Place row markers. Tomatoes should be planted at an end so they will not shade everything. Herbs and lettuce need 4 or 5 inch spacing.

4. Plant seedlings by hollowing out a small hole in the soil. Plant deep enough that the dirt covers a quarter inch of the stem. Cover with removed soil.

5. Scatter seeds (five to eight seeds per variety).

Care of the Container:

1. Place in a sunny location. If necessary, move throughout the day to chase the best sunlight. Orient the container such that the tomato will not shade the rest of the plants (generally towards the north east).

2. Water immediately upon placement. Continue watering whenever soil is dry a half inch deep.

3. Watch the weather for hard frosts. If one is forecast, bring your container inside for the night or cover with a sheet or tarp for the evening.

4. When plants develop, harvest tomatos by plucking them off the vine. Lettuces and herbs can be snipped with scissors or gently torn from the plant. They will continue to produce new leaves.

5. If herbs or lettuces develop flowers, snip or pinch those off. When plants go into flower production, the leaves become bitter. If you remove the buds you can enjoy the leaves longer.

6. When it gets very hot, lettuce will become bitter. Remove the plant. In late August or early September you can replant lettuce and it will grow outdoors until the first fall hard frost.

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Build a Salad Container Garden is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen
We love to hear from you! Please add your comments or send Rachel an email.

Starting Seeds

Rachel — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 14:06:22 +0000

There are oodles of books about starting seeds from people far more qualified than me to be dispensing advice. If you really want to know everything, I suggest searching out references at your local library.

What we do here is a casual process guided mostly by the backs of the seed packets and our own yearning to be outside.

Indoors we will soon start some peppers, tomatoes, and herbs. Our setup is a simple plastic tray with peat pots and a hardware store fluorescent light suspended on top.

As soon as we can work the soil, around the end of March, we will sow potatoes outdoors in our potato tower (post in progress). Peas, shallots and greens will come soon after in early april. Greens can be started indoors but with our limited seed starting space we just start them outside.

This year we’ll add asparagus to the garden and sow the crowns sometime in mid April. They need deep and well drained furrows according to the OSU extension fact sheet. The extension publishes fact sheets on most varieties of home garden vegetables and are worth a look. They are hybrid and chemical proponents, so just ignore that advice if you are going for a more natural approach.

Everything else will be direct sown around May 1. The traditional frost free date is May 15, but I am usually willing to take the risk by May 1. I cover beds with old sheets for the night if there is a late frost.

Direct sowing is one of Lil’s favorite garden projects. She is good at punching her finger down to make holes and covering the seeds back up. We label rows with old plastic silverware, popsicle sticks, or whatever else is available. I lust after reusable metal row markers.

Around mid May there’s an inevitable trip to the garden center and we can never seem to resist buying a few more seedlings. This year we plan to visit Jon Fisher tomato greenhouse on the recommendation of neighbors to add some variety to our tomato plantings.

We sow many seeds two or three weeks in a row to extend their production. Peas, squash, beans, carrots and greens are all good candidates for this. In the fall after early season vegetables (peas, broccoli, greens) have gone by, we will sow late season vegetables like carrots, beets, chard, kale, and lettuces in their rows.

To keep everything in order, I generally arrange seed packets in a box based on their planting date. I put them at the back of the line after they are planted.

A friend just shared this awesome planting calendar calculator. I will probably print a copy for the seed packet box so I don’t have to keep everything in my head.

What’s your seed starting plan?

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Starting Seeds is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen
We love to hear from you! Please add your comments or send Rachel an email.

Black Bean Salsa and Smashed Beans

Rachel — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:00:31 +0000

This week we cooked two black bean dishes at the Kids Cook class. Beans of all kinds are high in fiber and protein. The following two recipes are easy for kids to make and enjoy!

not the most attractive pictures but I decided to show what they really look like after help from kids

Black Bean Salsa

1 avacado, chopped into half inch pieces

1 green onion, chopped

1 red pepper, chopped into small dice

1 clove garlic, chopped

1 16 ounce can black beans, drained, or 2 cups cooked from dry beans

1 tbsp fresh cilantro, chopped or 1 tsp dry

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. ground black pepper

1/2 lime, juiced

Mix all ingredients together. Serve with corn chips or celery sticks.

Smashed Black Beans

1 16 ounce can black beans, drained, or 2 cups cooked from dry beans

2 tbsp tahini or fresh ground sesame seeds

1/2 lemon, juiced

2 tbsp olive oil

1/2 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp kosher salt

Mash beans and salt together with a fork or potato masher. Stir in the rest of the ingredients until smooth. Serve with tortilla chips, pita bread, or carrot sticks.

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Congratulations to the three winners of the Columbus Home and Garden Show tickets: Jamie, Mimi, and Kellie!

Thanks to all who entered!

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Black Bean Salsa and Smashed Beans is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen
We love to hear from you! Please add your comments or send Rachel an email.

FEAST and Kindness

Rachel — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:10:45 +0000

You know that I love playing with food. I recently submitted a grant proposal to the Couchfire Collective FEAST program. I want to hold a day long open workshop for all ages where we create art with our food (and then eat it!).

Instead of a stodgy review process, the $1000 grant winner will be decided by diners who come to an exclusive party at Haiku restaurant in the Short North. For $40, you can reserve a seat at the amazing 5 course dinner. (Dinner details, including a menu and reservations, here: http://www.thecouchfire.org/feast/feastdinner.html) You’ll also be given 3 votes for proposals.

I’ll be there representing the Play with Your Food idea. My detailed proposal is here: http://www.thecouchfire.org/feast/playwithyourfood.html. You can even donate directly towards a Play with Your Food event if you wish.

All the action happens next Monday night February 22 from 6:30 – 9 pm. I hope to see you there!

<3 <3 <3

Did you know that February 15-21 is National Random Acts of Kindness Week? Panera Bread is celebrating Random Acts of Kindness Week with a new campaign called “Panera It Forward.” I participated as a Secret Good Will Ambassador.

I headed to my favorite store, Sprout Soup, and found a busy bunch of moms and kids getting ready for the store’s Sprout Swap. I handed out coupons for a free Panera coffee and bagel to each family. I encourage everyone to perform more random acts of kindness. You never know how you might be rewarded!

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FEAST and Kindness is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen
We love to hear from you! Please add your comments or send Rachel an email.

Here and There

Rachel — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 23:20:39 +0000

A few random things:

I was recently invited to be a part of the newly established Ohio Moms Blog. Part of the Silicon Valley Moms Blog group, the Ohio Moms Blog is a collaborative effort of many writing mothers. This is a challenge for me, as I’m not used to writing emotional narrative. My first post is up and I will be posting there at least twice a month.

My tattoo addiction doesn’t really fit with the educational theme of Hounds in the Kitchen, so I opened Tattooed Homemaker. I envision it as a place that people can share the story of their family friendly tattoos and am actively looking for submissions.

Finally, I wrote a survey regarding the Kids Cook classes. If you attended a class, please take the survey to help me plan future classes. The survey will close December 28.

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Here and There is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen
We love to hear from you! Please add your comments or send Rachel an email.