Making Healthy Kids Meals often sounds like utopia.
Children often end up shuffling the food in their plate, and leave it largely uneaten. This does make our dedicated efforts sound wasted, and can get discouraging for hard working moms.
But here’s a little trivia about me: I am famous for making food children clamor for.
I have given countless children cooking demos, still do. Here is a link to a Healthy Kids Meals cooking demo series I recently gave at a summer camp, which I aptly called The Children Real Food Revolution: It will give you a pretty good idea how I earned my popularity with little people. You would think I started the healthy kids meal revolution, judging by how many little rebels follow me, and happily eat veggie burgers, soup, energy bars, crepes, steel-cut oats pots de creme (fancy shmancy name I give to some delightful oats cooked in coconut milk, a smidgen maple syrup and cocoa powder). Love it when kids meet me and ask me excitedly, Are you… Levana?…. The cook? That’s when I know Mom cooks from The Whole Food Kosher Kitchen Cookbook (I highly recommend it! Just sayin’!)
My children, Yakov and his wife Elisheva, run Chabad of Washington Heights. Elisheva runs the Day Care Center in the Schul: Perfect natural choice, as she is not just a great educator, but she is also entirely devoted to cooking with whole foods. I was thrilled when she asked me if I would give a healthy kids meal cooking demo at the Schul, to usher in a happy and healthy new year, with all the right eating habits, and encourage the parents to make healthy meals from scratch and without fear of getting daunted or intimidated. You bet I would!
The central point I always want to make with moms is,
Children will eat whatever food they grow up with.
So, growing up in Morocco, I assure you our snacks were not potato chips, Fruit Loops, Coca Cola and whatever dreadful “Healthy snacks” The American food Industry heaves relentlessly. We certainly did have snacks, but real food snacks. In fact, when my children were growing up, I based my snack selection entirely on what I enjoyed at home growing up: Popcorn, dark chocolate, fruit leather, graham crackers, dried fruit, fresh fruit, nuts, unsweetened fruit sauce, sunflower seeds, baked sweet potato, etc… You get the picture.
Another secret to Healthy Kids Meals:
We all sit and eat the exact same dinner.
If I may be so bold as to make a recommendation: Avoid at all costs planning along the lines, child A will never eat this, child B only eats that, child X would rather starve that eat THAT! This will turn you into a disgruntled slave, or worse, it might make you throw in the towel, and think, oh what the heck, who has the energy to fight, get them anything they ask for. Just remember:
Well Fed Kids are Healthy and Highly Functioning Kids.
One of the demo guests got a kick out of my mantras:
Never divide a recipe! Multiple it!
Too much Soup? Too many Energy Balls? Leftover Crepes? Too many Muffins? Oh my gosh that’s terrible! I mean of course that’s wonderful! Put away the uneaten portions in the freezer, duly dated and labeled, carefully wrapped and easy to reach. Oh boy, you’ll be happy to get your hands on a muffin or a container of soup when you are running out that door, either for your office, or for dinner on those evenings when you get home too late to fuss with cooking from scratch.
The best part of our Healthy Kids Meals demo was:
We sneaked Levana™ Nourishments in every dish we made.
And parents were totally amazed, not only at how delicious and how easy all the dishes were, but also at how unobtrusive the flavors of Levana™ Nourishments were when included in the dish: They do their unseen magic, quietly and efficiently, to turn a good and healthy dish into a good Superfoods dish. And because there is so much good stuff going on in each Levana™ Nourishments powerful little pouch, recipes get totally streamlined: The fantastic Recipe Section on our Site will bear this out.
Ok. Enough said. Here is the feast we made at our Healthy Kids Meals Cooking demo:
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