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Green kids in the kitchen: Healthy snack tips
Showing kids how to eat in an eco-conscious way starts at home, so this week's tips provided fun ideas and teaching moments to enjoy spending time making food with the youngsters in your life.
Tip #1: Create Tasty Treats Without Waste
Packaged snacks are so prevalent that sometimes we don?t even notice how much we?re throwing away. To cut down on the waste, provide kid-friendly refreshments that don't require any wrapping at all. Making commonly packaged treats at home is fun, especially if you prepare the foods with your child. Cool off with DIY popsicles, try out some flavorful fruit leather, or give kids healthy energy with organic granola bars.
Tip #2: Find a Trusty Cookbook
Making food at home lets us have more control over what we're feeding our families. Plus, homemade food means fewer factory emissions, less packaging, and limiting the harmful chemicals we can ingest with processed foods.
Looking for inspiration? Online cookbooks (think paper-free!), including AllRecipes.com and Cooks.com, offer excellent kid-friendly options. For cooking with children, check out Petit Appetit, a book of organic recipes, Better than Peanut Butter & Jelly, a collection of easy vegetarian recipes, or the classic Betty Crocker kids' cookbook.
Tip #3: Bring the Kids Along
Tasks such as picking out produce and meat at the store before preparing a meal offer opportunities to show kids the importance of shopping smart. When you've got children along, explain the difference between organic and nonorganic food and its effects on our bodies and planet. Learning about pesticides can be scary, so show kids how to get clean fruits and vegetables. You can also bring children to a local farm; seeing the plants and animals that we eat is a great reminder, even for adults, that food doesn?t just magically appear at the store.
Tip #4: Find kitchenware for the kids Help kids get excited about cooking at home by providing them with some items to get them started. Don't go crazy buying new stuff ? but if you do buy something new, keep it green. You can visit a thrift store or garage sale to find aprons, keeping an eye out for cast-off cookie cutters. Recycled-aluminum bakeware works well for treats like vegan cookies, and these attractive biodegradable liners make baking organic cupcakes fun. Many of the kitchen tools you already have can be used by children, if they're supervised.
Re: Green kids in the kitchen: Healthy snack tips
My Lunch Blog
I agree with all of those. I'd also add a few other things:
Have your kids help you grow your own small garden or even herbs in pots. Use your bounty in the kitchen.
Compost and have your kids help you dump your kitchen bin and turn - monitor the breakdown progress and enjoy the worms that invariably make their way into the compost.
Recycle the unavoidable packaging.
Have older kids research and compare cooking methods and energy consumption (ie. is it better to roast this chicken in the oven or in the crockpot).
Teach kids how to properly load a dishwasher for maximum cleanliness and fill capacity so that they can fit in as much as possible in a load (I swear my husband can load 3 plates and 2 cups and the stupid thing looks full because he's loaded it so poorly).
Any other ideas you'd add? My little guy is only 2.5 but he already loves to help me "cook".