Teen Cooking Program - Easter

This is a major throwback to a program I did over a year ago.  It was in April of 2014, in fact.  I think this was before I decided to do a Chopped program with them.  In fact, this may have been what kicked off that idea.  I'm not sure.  Anyways, with Easter coming up, and me not necessarily wanting to do an egg-dying program, we came up with something else.  

The teens were going to make their own deviled eggs.  Rather than me tell them how to make them though, I just set out a bunch of ingredients and let them come up with their own recipes.  It was an adventure to say the least.

I cooked the eggs at home, and made about 4 dozen or so. Then I gave them mayo, mustard, relish, wasabi, soy sauce, sriracha, bacon bits, scallions, chives... there may have been more, but I really can't remember right now. Then I just let them go to town. There were only 4 of them, and in the end, I wanted everyone to try everyone else's.

While they were busy making theirs, I had my own recipes, one of which is a delicious wasabi and sriracha egg, found here.When it came time to taste them, they were not too thrilled with my eggs. In fact, I'm pretty sure some refused to try them.  Their parents liked it.  I guess pearls, swine, blah, blah, blah. I *think* the other was just the standard - mayo, mustard, relish.

You can see that some had a little trouble with ratio of ingredients and had a different way of cutting their eggs.  Others certainly kept plating in mind while working on their recipes.  They all had fun, and we ate a TON of deviled eggs that day.

This is a great way to do a cooking program without *really* doing a cooking program.  It lets them be creative too, without going too far out of the box.  I suppose I could have given them things like anchovies and olives and things like that, but I do have budget constraints, and at the end of the day, I did want them to actually eat whatever they came up with. There will be more teen posts, I'm just having trouble finding pictures, and this is the first one I ran across.

Cooking with Kids: Farm to Table Edition

So to explain how I came up with the themes for all these Cooking with Kids programs, what I did is pretty much list all the books that I thought I could pull recipes from (or knew already had recipes). Then I started grouping them together in whatever way I could to squeeze a theme out of them. Sometimes it was easier than others.  Farm to Table wasn't hard, but most people would argue that you don't exactly "farm" bananas anywhere in the US.  Fair point. It pretty much should have been called Fruits and Vegetables, and we probably would've gotten the same amount of attendance.  Which is to say, hardly any at all.  Actually, I only had 2 grandmothers and their grandchildren.  Why the sudden drop-off in attendance?  I HAVE NO IDEA.  Maybe all the parents knew their kids were WAY pickier than I realized and they wouldn't try what we were making. *shrug* On to the books!

Carrot Soup by John Segal. This is a story about a rabbit who LOVES carrot soup. He plants the carrots, waters them, etc. When it comes time to harvest them, they're gone.  He asks all the animals, they all deny taking them and say he should ask someone else.  At the end of the day, he goes home dejected and carrotless to find that his friends harvested the carrots, made the soup, and have thrown him a surprise party. There's a recipe for carrot soup in the back of the book, and while I was unsure how it would taste, we went for it.  OMG!  Have you ever had carrot soup before?  It was so good!  It was basically carrots, onions, and celery sauteed together and simmered in chicken stock, then blended together. All the adults in the building liked it.

Apple Farmer Annie by Monica Wellington. I talked about this book in my post about apple-themed story time. Simple book about an apple farmer harvesting her apples, making baked goods, and then selling them at the farmers' market in the city. There are several recipes using apples in the back, but we decided to keep it simple and make the applesauce. No, the library does not have the resources to do this kind of cooking, so both my coworker and I had to go home and do this. Applesauce was a little easier to convince the kids to eat. Both this and the carrot soup were almost impossible to do a cooking demonstration on though, so instead we focused on the next book and recipe.

Gladys Goes Out to Lunch by Derek Anderson. Again, another book I've talked about in another post. Gladys the gorilla loves bananas, but goes in search of something else to eat when she smells the most delicious food. She searches high and low, and finally she finds it - banana bread. There is a recipe for this in the back of the book (so convenient!), and since I *can* make bread in a toaster/convection oven that's what we did. 

I had two 6 yr olds helping me, so needless to say, it was an adventure.  I set one to cutting up the bananas with a butter knife, while the other helped me measure out the ingredients. I have to state at this point that we had slightly green bananas because dummy me didn't buy them far enough ahead of time. Multitasking with two kids is certainly interesting, but I try to do it when I can to show that it *can* be done! (Though I'm sure most moms already know that).   Their bread may not have been as uniform as mine was, but it still tasted great.  The kids loved it of course because it was sweet.

We always have handouts of the recipes, and when possible, other books that fit the theme.  Here's what we came up with for this one:

Farmer Will Allen and the growing table by Jacqueline Briggs Martin

Green beans, potatoes, and even tomatoes: what is in the vegetable group? By Brian P. Cleary

Growing vegetable soup by Lois Ehlert

I eat a rainbow by Bobbie Kalman

The vegetables we eat by Gail Gibbons

Apples grow on a tree by Mari C. Schuh

Muncha! Muncha! Muncha! by Candace Fleming

The Ugly Vegetables by Grace Lin

Eating the alphabet: fruits and vegetables from A to Z by Lois Ehlert

Gregory, the terrible eater by Mitchell Sharmat

A fruit and vegetable man by Roni Schotter

Pick, pull, snap!: where once a flower bloomed by Lola M. Schaefer

Tap the magic tree by Christie Matheson

How are you peeling? by Saxton Freymann

Cooking with Kids: Asian edition

The first 3 times I did my Cooking with Kids program went SO well, I had the *brilliant* idea of doing it 7 MORE TIMES.  3 before my summer programs and 4 after.  From here on out, I'll just do one post per program.  The first one I decided to do was Asian themed.  Why?  Because I'm absolutely crazy, that's why.  This was such a hard program to do - 1. Because I just don't have the skills to pull this stuff off the way I wanted to. 2. Because it wasn't well attended. 3. I was asking kids to eat stuff they may have never tried before - and that's always an interesting prospect.  Let's just get to the books.

Yoko by Rosemary Wells.  It's a about a cat named Yoko from Japan, who now lives in the United States and is going to school. The kids make fun of her lunch, so the teacher sets up a world food day.  Still, no one touches the sushi they bring, until one little boy tries some and they become good friends.  It's such a cute little story.  I've been eating sushi since I was 8 or so.  My parents thought it would gross us out like a lot of the food they made, but we loved it!  I was in NO WAY prepared to make sushi for my patrons, BUT a few of my regular patrons own a restaurant called Wasabi and were awesome enough to donate some for me!  The kids loved it (we did shrimp tempura and maybe some spicy tuna) and so did the parents, of course.

Dim Sum for Everyone by Grace Lin.  It's a good thing I got the sushi donated, because this next one killed me.  If you've never had dim sum before, this just talks about a family that goes to a restaurant and they all get little plates and share.  A lot of the time you go, and there's lots of little dumplings.  I decided I was going to make some steamed pork dumplings - from scratch.  This is actually not that impressive because I've been making them for years, but normally I've been boiling them.  STEAMING IS A TOTALLY DIFFERENT BALLGAME, PEOPLE!  I'm talking hockey vs. tennis.  Whoa.  I totally ruined half my dumplings before I gave up and boiled them.  Ugh.  What I managed to salvage were tasty though.

Bee-bim Bop! by Linda Sue Park  A simple rhyming book about a kid trying to help cook bibimbap.  There's a recipe in the back that details out instructions for the kids and the parents.  It's great!  This dish turned out the best, and I think people liked it, though I def. had enough leftover to have as my lunch the next day.  The dish doesn't take long to make, you just have to cook everything separately.

Other books I'd recommend for this theme (but I just didn't have the resources to cook):

Cora Cooks Pancit by Dorina K. Lazo Gilmore.

The Ugly Vegetables by Grace Lin.

Round is a Mooncake by Roseanne Thong.

Cooking With Kids

Since I brought it up in the last post, I thought I should go ahead and start the series of posts about this.  This all started about a year ago, when I was cleaning out my office and found a book of recipes that were to be paired with children's stories like Goldilocks and the Three Bears and the Little Red Hen.  At the time, I was desperate for programs to fill the gap between my summer and fall programs and something that would help fulfill some goals on my 5 year plan.  I really like to cook, and we'd had cooking programs for adults, so voila!  Cooking with Kids was born.

The first one we did was nursery rhymes and stories.  We made a quick wheat bread (source: here) for the Little Red Hen, Pigs in Blankets for the Three Little Pigs, and a snack platter for various nursery rhymes, including; Humpty Dumpty, Three Blind Mice, and Curly Locks.  We really tried to emphasize literacy for all ages, from reading the recipe aloud, to picking out the correct measuring cup.  We had the kids tell us the stories, and then chose a few to come up and help us make the recipes.  It was good, but the kids got restless, so we changed the format.

Little Red Hen's Quick Wheat Bread

Ingredients

½ c white whole wheat flour

1 tsp salt

½ c sesame seeds (optional: extra for top)

½ c flax seeds (optional: extra for top)

1 tbsp sugar

4 tsp dry active yeast

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

2 ½ c water, warm to the touch

Directions

Prepare a bread/loaf pan by lining with parchment paper. Perfectly fitting to the an is not necessary as the dough will help weigh it down and expand to fill out the pan.

Combine flour, salt, sesame seeds, flax, and sugar. Make a small well and add yeast. Mix vinegar and water, and pour into flour mixture. Stir until well

combined. The dough will be sticky, no need to knead.

Spoon the dough into the loaf pan. Smooth the top with the back of a spoon. Top with extra seeds, if desired.

Place loaf pan into a cold oven. Set oven to 350° F (Yes! You will preheat the oven with the bread inside). Bake for one hour, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Let cool and slice.

The next one we themed around princess stories.  This one we decided to make interactive for ALL the kids, so we made a sign-up sheet and had enough for every kid to make some.  The problem with that?  Some who signed up didn't show, and some who showed up had never signed up.  Doesn't seem like that much of a problem, but I had like, 15 people who hadn't signed up show up and I turned them away, they left, and then it turned out I could have accommodated them. :/

We did Snow White - again, having the kids tell me the story- and then we made dip for apple chips (found here). (You'll find other recipes for apple dip that also have granulated sugar and toffee chips, but for children?  Less is more, right?  Do you really want children hyped up on sugar in your library?)  I had them tell me the story of The Little Mermaid, and then I let them try kale chips I had made. (Almost all of them tried it and wanted more!) Finally, they told me about Alice and Wonderland, and we made cucumber sandwiches together.  This one I had a couple of kids less than thrilled about.  One wanted it without the cucumber.  Or without the cream cheese.  I can't remember.

Finally, we tweaked it one more time.  We decided to do a picky eaters edition, and this time we read the books (which was a way more viable option than before).  The first book we read was The Sandwich Swap by Queen Rania Al Abdullah.  A wonderful story about two friends who have a little disagreement over a hummus pita and a PB&J sandwich.

I've done this book before and we made PB&J sandwiches and I had premade hummus to try, but with allergies nowadays, I just decided to try and make my own hummus.  One of our kids' cookbooks had a recipe for pizza hummus, so I went for that.  It came out a little grainy, but overall tasty.

The second book we read I featured in my food-themed story time.  I Will Never Not Ever Eat a Tomato by Lauren Child.  I was planning on making mashed potatoes to go with this book, because that's one of the first things my grandmother let me help cook.  We have VERY LIMITED cooking resources at our library, however, so I just read the story and told that little anecdote, encouraging parents to do the same with their children.

Finally, we read D.W., the Picky Eater.  A classic book, and one I'm sure many of my parents of picky eaters could relate to.  D.W. has an EXTREME hatred of spinach and acts up SO much, that she's banned from eating out with her family.  The finally relent for her grandmother's birthday, and she chooses something off the menu in a hurry.  When she tries it, she likes it - and it turns out to be essentially spinach pie.  

So I made spanakopita! And because I'm a total glutton for punishment, I made the little triangles, and not the pie.  Remember - people were trying samples, so it was easier to give them a triangle than a slice of pie.  It just took waaaay longer for me to make.  The kids were not so thrilled with it - especially since I wouldn't tell them what was in it at first.  The adults kept coming back for this.  The kids?  The pizza hummus.

I will be doing more of these posts! From now on, however, each one will probably be devoted to the different themes we did.

Food, glorious food!

There are SO many books about food.  Really.  We made a whole program series called Cooking with Kids because of that fact (also because I like to cook and I thought it would be a good idea - there will be upcoming blog posts about this).  I'll try to keep it to the ones that we actually use for our food-themed story time.

Eat Your Peas by Kes Gray.  The tale of a mom who offers her kid more and more outlandish things in a desperate attempt to get her to eat her peas, to which she replies "I don't like peas".  I get the kids to do that part when I read the book - and by the end when I'm going through this mile-long list of all the things Daisy would get if she'd eat the peas, they're screaming "I don't like peas".  It's great.

Gladys Goes out to Lunch by Derek Anderson.  A gorilla smells something AMAZING, so rather than having boring old bananas, she goes out.  She tries pizza, French food, and ice cream, but none of it is what she wants til she goes back to the zoo and finds it at a food cart.  Honestly?  I've never seen this at a food cart, but ok.

I Will Never Not Ever Eat a Tomato by Lauren Child.  Lola is a fussy eater, and Charlie has to feed her, so he tricks her by telling her all the foods she refuses to eat are really these other things.  The book is long, and I sometimes wonder if my young kids really get it, but I love the book, and they do well listening to it as long as I ask them questions.

Gator Gumbo by Candace Fleming.  I love this book, but my coworker refuses to do it because she can't do a Cajun accent, lol.  It's a twisted take on the Little Red Hen, and I would definitely recommend it more for elementary age children.

Stone Soup by Heather Forest.  There are many authors who have done versions of this story, I just like the illustrations in this one.  We tend to do this as an interactive story, where all (or a lot of) the children get some sort of vegetable they can come up and throw in the pot when we get to it in the story.

Today is Monday by Eric Carle.  While this is a fantastic book, we actually don't use it during this story time.  Rather, we have developed a song based on the book.  We pull out a whiteboard, write out the days of the week with spaces next to them, and then ask the children what their favorite foods are.  Then we do it like the book.  Ex:

Monday: Chicken nuggets

Tuesday: Hot dogs

Wednesday: Carrots

Today is Monday. Monday, Chicken nuggets.  All you hungry children, come and eat it up.

Today is Tuesday. Tuesday, Hot dogs. Monday, Chicken nuggets. All you hungry children, come and eat it up.

Today is Wednesday. Wednesday, Carrots. Tuesday, Hot dogs. Monday, Chicken nuggets. All you hungry children, come and eat it up.

And finally, I *do* have a fingerplay I do with this theme.

5 Fat Sausages

(place one hand on top of the other and wiggle fingers to "sizzle")

5 fat sausages sizzling in the pan, 1 got hot and it went BAM! (clap)

4 fat sausages sizzling in the pan, 1 got hot and it went BAM! (clap)

3 fat sausages sizzling in the pan, 1 got hot and it went BAM! (clap)

2 fat sausages sizzling in the pan, 1 got hot and it went BAM! (clap)

1 fat sausages sizzling in the pan, it got hot and it went BAM! (clap)

No fat sausages sizzling in the pan.

Super Kawaii! Candy sushi!

That's right folks - I tackled candy sushi and lived to tell the tale! This is certainly one of the messier programs I've done recently, but one what was definitely a hit. That's not all though- I also made Domo-kun cupcakes with my teens during that same program. It was sugar overload!!! (Ha ha and then I sent them home to their parents)

Things needed for candy sushi:
-Fruit Roll-ups or fruit leather
-Marshmallow fluff (or you can use butter and melt marshmallows)
- Green Sour Punch Straws (for wasabi - I used green icing though)
- Gummy fish (I used Swedish Fish)

- Chocolate syrup optional (for soy sauce)

-Rice Krispies or other rice cereal

If you know how to make sushi, then there's really no explanation necessary. In case you don't, make it was follows:
-Mix together a couple of tablespoons of marshmallow fluff and about a 1/4 cup of Rice Krispies.
- Spread out Fruit Roll-up on a piece of wax paper, and spread marshmallow mixture on it, leaving about a 1" gap clear on one side of the roll-up.
-Place fish and any other ingredients in the middle of the rice, and then roll up, starting on side with the rice, and finishing with the blank side.
- If you have the time, it wouldn't hurt to put it in the fridge to allow the marshmallow to set up. Otherwise, take your roll and cut it up into bite-sized pieces. Enjoy!

I am lucky enough to have a coworker who owns a lot of sushi dishes and chopsticks, and she lent them to me for this program. There were a few teens who had never used chopsticks before, and trying to show them was an adventure. I personally think it's too much sugar and wanted to puke after eating it, but they loved it!

On to the cupcakes! These are really simple, and as I had only a picture to look at, kinda had to make it up. You will need:
-Chocolate cake mix
-Chocolate frosting
-Chocolate sprinkles
-M&Ms
-Fruit Roll-Ups
-White Icing (You may omit this and the Fruit Roll-ups if you're lucky enough to get your hands on some fondant. I was working on this at the last minute, so I couldn't get that). I think you can figure out what to do with this if you look at the picture. Just take the cupcakes, cover them with icing and sprinkles, and then add M&M eyes, and a mouth w/teeth. Traditionally, Domo has brown eyes, but my teens used all sorts of colors for theirs.

Super Kawaii!