Healthy, tasty and unusual snack: East Indian Popcorn

Nov 28, 2009 by

This totally different popcorn recipe is a simple, quick and easy way to make a healthy and delicious homemade snack for kids or adults.  Popcorn is actually nutritious, if it’s not slathered in unnatural grease and tons of salt. This curry-spiced version is full of interesting flavors and textures.

When I first came across a Food & Wine cookbook recipe for “Indian Popcorn,” I looked for the “nigella seeds,” aka “black onion seeds,” it called for. Not finding them, I substituted sesame seeds. They ended up burnt to a crisp on the bottom of the pan.

Since then, my garlic chive plants have blossomed and are now dropping their little black seeds. I thought maybe I could use those seeds…

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The Tempting Apple: How to make raw fruits and vegetables appealing to kids

Nov 21, 2009 by

This post was featured on Food Renegade’s Fight Back Friday on Feb. 5, 2010

Let me just say right off the bat that the best ways to make raw fruits (and vegetables) or anything else that’s healthy more appealing to kids are:

1. Avoid giving them junk food. Ever. Kids who eat junk food develop a taste mostly for junk food.

2. Also: catch them when they’re hungry. Food plus hunger and nothing else equals kids eating.

3. Perhaps most important: do not push them to eat whatever it is. At all. Ever. Kids who are never pushed to eat will naturally like raw fruit. Kids who aren’t pushed do not develop food resistance.

Other posts here expound upon those topics at length. But here is a bit more on the topic of making raw fruit appealing.

The other night, I went to…

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Do it yourself: save money, eat better by making your own yogurt

Nov 17, 2009 by

Do you dream of getting your hands on some raw, local, organically produced milk from grass-fed, pastured cows at a reasonable price? Do you love the idea of making your own simple, old-fashioned cultured milk products?

Where there’s a will, there’s probably a way.

I am getting three gallons of good raw milk every other week from a farm in the area. I make four quarts of delicious and nutritious yogurt for about $7 every other week.  It’s extremely simple and satisfying.  It’s an easy way to be more self-reliant and less dependent on industrial food corporations. It’s also a great way to give your kids a closer relationship to food and its magic.

The sources for good raw milk tend to be more underground than otherwise, but such sources…

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Getting Kids to the Dinner Table: What is the parent's job?

Nov 13, 2009 by

The proper attitude for parents at the dinner table (and a lot of other places) is “engrasa y aprieta,” a Spanish expression meaning literally to grease and to tighten.

A balance of both greasing and tightening is generally needed to successfully bring order out of chaos in your family meals.

If you are joyless and grim about what, where, when and how much your kids eat, you need to lighten up.  Make it fun, make it delicious. If on the other hand, you are haphazard and careless about how, when and what they eat, you need to tighten up.

Bringing in some structure requires discipline on the part of parents and children, but maybe not in the ways you might think.

Knowing when to grease and when to tighten is easier if you know what your job is a parent and what is the children’s, with the labor clearly divided.

The parent’s job description:

DO:

  1. Be in…
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How to get kids to the dinner table: get an attitude

Nov 9, 2009 by

I like to say it’s never too late to change. While in theory, it’s never too late, the reality is that sometimes, for various reasons, it just is.

Whether it’s too late for you to start serving real meals and getting your kids to…

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Grease and tighten: How to Get Kids to the Dinner Table

Nov 2, 2009 by

It’s one thing to cook dinner regularly and sit down to it together at the table daily from the start of your life as a family. It’s another to come under the conviction that it’s something you should have been doing all along, when the children are five, ten or 15 years old.

How can we get kids used to sitting down and eating regular meals at the table when they’ve become accustomed to doing things altogether otherwise? Where do we begin?

There’s a Spanish expression, “engrasa y aprieta,” meaning “to grease and tighten,” that describes the proper attitude for the parent undertaking such a major family overhaul. While you restrict and require, you also make it enjoyable. Both parts are needed.

It’s similar to the way logic and emotion work…

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