The Golden Rule and Helicopter Parents at the Dinner Table

Sep 2, 2009 by

1097863_stock helicopter

I’ve just started hearing about “helicopter parents.”  A new term, maybe, but certainly not a new phenomenon. The tendency of modern parents to hover is especially manifested at feeding time.

Driven by fear, overbearing, over involved, fussy, these anxious parents worry out loud and take on responsibilities that don’t belong to them in attempting to make things perfect in their children’s lives, from eating to education.

“Feeding is a metaphor for the parent-child relationship overall,” writes Ellyn Satter, author of How to Get Your Kid to Eat… But Not Too Much.  “Parents will probably treat a child in other areas the way they learn to treat her in feeding.”

read more

Eating Mindfully: How to keep kids from getting fat by turning on to better food

Jul 22, 2009 by

Stock kid gourmet American parents today have just two main choices today: go gourmet or go unhealthy. You might be both, but you pretty much have to be one or the other.

Feeding kids is not for the faint of heart or uncommitted today.

If we home cooks serve our families foods that are healthy but that have nothing else to offer, we are going to fail. Healthy foods have to be as engaging as the tastily manipulated and temptingly marketed junk food in today’s battlefield for our tastes. We have to beat our opponents at their own game.

Processed foods today are engineered with salt, fat and sugar to be as seductive and addictive as possible, what food…

read more

Poached Eggs with Peach Salsa

Jul 20, 2009 by

Stock salsa 

Eggs with salsa was a new concept for me. I lived much of my life without ever hearing of salsa—all those wasted years! It offers unlimited variety and is the perfect partner to lots of foods. Salsa with eggs is such a great idea for an inexpensive, super easy, super quick, super healthy meal. It’s tasty as well, of course, and makes for an impressive and appetitizing presentation.

Rub or spray a little olive oil in small dishes for poaching eggs. I used little glass dishes. My mom has special stainless steel ones. Crack an egg (truly free range farm egg if you can get it)…

read more

Good Egg/Bad Egg?

Jul 14, 2009 by

Giving up eggs because of the fat in them is like leaving a good husband because he won’t let you get the plastic surgery or go gambling in Vegas, and using that as an excuse to run away with the more seductive, gun-toting gangster boyfriend.

Eggs played a limited but complementary and valuable role in the original human diet, which every human was eating up till about 10,000 years ago. This ideal diet provided for all nutritional needs.  This most basic, complete and primal diet, the first…

read more

“Tuna on Tuna” or Fresh Tuna with Tuna-Pickle Sauce

Jul 10, 2009 by

Stock tuna I only recently really discovered fresh tuna. I might have eaten it a time or two before, but recently I found such a recipe and such tuna!  It’s one of the most delicious things I’ve made lately.

Quite a different animal from canned tuna, good fresh tuna is worth the expense once in awhile.

While our gourmet grocery store, Central Market, sells sushi- or sashimi-grade tuna for $16 a pound, it’s only $8.99 at HEB, the average-Joe grocery owned by the same company. So it seems like a bargain, though I think that’s still pretty steep. The four of us can put away $14 worth of fish with no leftovers. Yet, it’s a real steal…

read more