Cooking with Kids

Stacie and Simran are both Bay Area moms who recently started a kids' food adventure blog called “A Little Yumminess”. They cover easy recipes (often with an international twist), food-related adventures you can have with your children in the Bay Area, cooking with kids and basically how to have fun with food and your children (vs. think of it as a chore or a challenge).

Stacie is also a talented artist and often shares her food related “doodles” on the blog. You can often find Stacie eating, reading cookbooks, and thinking about her next meal. She also enjoys drawing, painting and growing vegetables in her foggy San Francisco garden. She enjoys the challenges and rewards of eating with a two and a half year old.

Simran is often tinkering around the kitchen and coming up with ethnic recipes that kids will enjoy. You’ll also find Simran and her daughter roaming the streets of San Francisco and the rest of the Bay Area seeking out the ultimate food ‘venture. According to her father, Simran thinks about food 97.3% of the time— it makes you wonder what she fills the rest of her time with.

Do check out A Little Yumminess (alittleyum.wordpress.com) for some fun food related ideas! Here's Simran's recipe for Fake Bake Tandoori Chicken—a wonderful and tasty dish that appeals to adults and children alike. You can also read the recipe as one of Stacie's delightful "doodles".

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Summer's almost here, school's out (or is about to be), and this means that it's time to come up with some cool summertime snacks for active young children. Our friend and fellow Marin mom Michelle Stern of What's Cooking has provided us with some fun, easy, healthy, and tasty summer recipes and snack ideas.

You can find more of Michelle's recipes, plus other informative posts on nutrition, food, and family, on her What's Cooking Blog. Michelle also offers cooking classes, cooking-themed birthday parties, and summer camps.

Looking for a unique hands-on birthday party for kids ages 9–15? Celebrate your child's birthday with a fun and delicious cooking party at Sausalito's Pine Point Cooking School! The guests and birthday girl/boy will learn to prepare a tasty Mediterranean-inspired lunch or dinner, and of course eat it, too.

Partygoers will cook appetizers, marin courses, side dishes, and dessert. Possible dishes include Greek cheese triangles, roast polenta, chicken saltimbocca, and pizza. The menu is planned with the birthday honoree's tastes in mind. The lesson turns into a party as everyone eats what they've cooked around the dining table (parents are invited, too). The celebration wraps up with party favors and a rousing chorus of "Happy Birthday" over dessert!

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Get the kids into the kitchen and create these tasty heart-shaped pizzas for Valentine's Day! They're easy to make, reasonably healthy, and children can have fun customizing them to their taste. We made these in our kitchen and had a lot of fun. And we got to eat them for lunch, too. This recipe was inspired by the great ready-to-use pizza carried by Trader Joe's—you can get all the other ingredients there, too. You can of course make these any time (heart-shaped or just plain round).

When it's rainy and you're stuck indoors, it can be fun to get the children involved in the kitchen with an easy, kid-friendly recipe. My kids love to help make these easy applesauce muffins almost as much as they enjoy eating them. With a crunchy brown-sugar topping and a hint of spice, they're perfect with breakfast or an anytime treat.

Kids can help to stir and mix the ingredients together, spoon the batter into the prepared muffin pan, and test the muffins to see if they're done. (Keep little hands away from hot ovens and pans, though—safety first!) One thing I often do to make the whole process go more smoothly is to measure out all the ingredients first and array them on the counter. That way they're waiting for the kids when they come into the kitchen to help.

For many of us, the holidays mean it's time to bake cookies and other seasonal treats. It's always fun to get the kids involved, and this gingerbread cookie recipe via What's Cooking's Michelle Stern is a perfect one to use. It doesn't take a long time to make (no rest time in the refrigerator), and it can be worked and shaped like play-dough. Unlike a lot of cookie doughs it holds its form and doesn't melt into a shapeless blob in the oven.

Gingerbread Cookie Play-Dough

5 ½ c. flour
3 t. baking soda
1 ¾ c. dark brown sugar
¼ c. dark molasses
4 ½ t. ground cinnamon
3 t. ground ginger
½ t. cloves
¼ t. salt
1 c. melted butter
½ c. boiling water
1 egg, beaten

Two Marin-based and mom-run businesses—Studio 4 Art and What's Cooking—have teamed together to present Soup—The Bowl that Keeps Feeding, a benefit to help fight childhood hunger in our community. The event takes place Sunday, November 15, 2009, from 11 am to 2 pm, at Fresh Starts Cooking School, located at 1385 N. Hamilton Parkway in Novato.

Tickets are $10 in advance, $12 at the door, and include a meal of soup and bread as well as the bowl of your choice. All proceeds from Soup—The Bowl that Keeps Feeding will be donated to Homeward Bound of Marin's Emergency Family Shelter.

One of the unique features of this event has been the way it's gotten children involved in their community. The soup will be prepared by children from local schools under the guidance of What's Cooking, and the hand-thrown bowls have also been created by kids at Studio 4 Art.

Everyone loves cupcakes! The little personal-portioned cakes have been favorites for birthday parties and other festive occasions for as long as anyone can remember, and they're currently experiencing a resurgence in popularity. These new artisan versions feature high quality ingredients and innovative flavors (as well as many of the classics we all know and love).

SweetFace Bakery, a gourmet bakery using local and organic ingredients and owned and operated by Marin resident Lena Shagoury, specializes in these tasty morsels (as well as full-size cakes and cookies), and offers a new take on birthday cupcakes: the mobile cupcake party. SweetFace's SweetRoll, their mobile bakery truck, will bring all the cupcake party ingredients—"naked" cupcakes, frosting, decorations, equipment, etc.—to your party site where partygoers can have fun creating their own ultimate cupcakes. And then eating them, of course.