Cooking with Kids: Snack Plates

Sometimes I have what I think are brilliant ideas to simplify my programs. Then sometimes I don't plan ahead and I don't have what I need to do said program. Sometimes that happens with the same program.  This was that program.

When I went through and did my list of books that had food in them, there were several that had LOTS of foods, and I thought, "What better way to incorporate kids helping than to do snack plates?"

I had it all planned out, and then a week or so before the program, I realized that one of the books had been on reading lists for school during the summer. Curses! I put myself on hold for it, but it didn't come in until AFTER I did my program.  Figures.  I had to scramble the day before and try to find a replacement book/recipe that I could use to fit the theme of snacks.  Here are the books and recipes I wound up using:

Heckedy Peg by Audrey Wood. This is about a mother who has to go to the market, and has to leave her 7 children at home. She very specifically tells them - "Don't do the thing". A stranger comes up to the door, and what do they do? The thing. Stranger is a witch who turns them into food and takes them home to eat them. Mom finds the witch and eventually the witch will give her children back if she can figure out which one is which. She does so by what they asked for from the market. There's a LOT of food mentioned in the book - most of which a lot of children probably wouldn't eat, but cheese and crackers are mentioned, and so we decided to do a ploughman's lunch. You can get really fancy with it, but we didn't - we buttered some crusty bread and had an array of cheeses the children could choose. My grandmother used to have a cheese slicer I used all the time as I kid, but I don't have one now.  I could have had a kid come up and sliced it with a butter knife, but we were trying to be mindful of time. 

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. Again, lots of food mentioned, especially at the end of the book, but we decided to focus on the fruit. (I'm not going to go through the plot - this book is so famous, you *must* know it). We made little fruit kabobs, but we needed something for the kids to do, so we decided to make a dip for the fruit. Super easy because all you have to do is mix, so I think I asked a three-year-old to come up and help me. And they did such a good job! I think a lot of kids skipped tasting it though because they had no idea what it was - which is weird because they normally LOVE sweets.

The Beastly Feast by Bruce Goldstone. Sooo this was not the book I had originally planned on doing that day. It's cute though, with bears bringing pears,  parrots bringing carrots, mosquitoes bringing burritos, and so on. I figured that carrots would be the best bet, since a lot of kids eat that for a snack anyway. But we couldn't just give them carrots. I mean we could, but this is a cooking class. So I decided to make homemade ranch dressing. Again - this is something that's not *too* hard - a lot of mixing and measuring. There's some herb cutting, but that can be done with scissors. And there's the garlic mashing, but I have a mortar and pestle and so that helps make short work of that. It was delicious, but way different than the bottled stuff. The kids seemed to enjoy it.   

In case you're wondering, the book I originally intended to do was Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett. It talks about drifts of cream cheese and jelly sandwiches, and I thought that would be a perfect recipe that EVERYONE could make. That's ok though. There were other books I didn't get to do in this series, and there are other foods mentioned, so I may be able to work it in some other time.  

Cooking with Kids: Breakfast Edition

This week was a little harder to put together the books.  It seems like a no-brainer, right?  Of course there should be plenty of books about breakfast.  We found them, and recipes to go with them obviously, but it was a struggle at first.

 

 

There were a couple of books that we looked at for pancakes, including Eric Carle's Pancakes, Pancakes, but we went with Pancakes for Supper by Anne Isaacs (illustrated by Mark Teague, who we have already established that I love). I remember my grandmother reading me the story Little Black Sambo, and this is a retelling of that set in tall-tale fashion with Western pioneers. I love Anne Isaacs Swamp Angel books, and this one is just as good. (Almost - I really like Swamp Angel).  We made chocolate pancakes from scratch with the children.  Really easy.  All they have to do is measure and dump. If you're feeling brave they can help pour and flip the pancakes too.  We just topped them with a little powdered sugar, but honestly? They really didn't need anything.
 

 

The most obvious choice (to me) for this program was to make green eggs and read Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss. (Totally unrelated and random side note: as I was reading back through this, I realized how big of a nerd I am because I originally typed Doctor Seuss instead of Dr. Seuss. Whovians will understand me.) I'll admit, we didn't do any ham, but I don't think that really bothered anyone. With this one I had a set of twins help me with this dish.  They have been coming to my programs for quite awhile now, and man are they a handful.  I let them tag team, so one cracked all one dozen eggs and beat them for me (and no shells ended up in them! :D). Then the other came up and I had her use scissors to cut the herbs up into the eggs (chives and parsley) and add a couple drops of blue food coloring.  That's right, blue!  Remember your color theory, people! I think I let her start to scramble them, but she wasn't too keen on that part, so I finished that up.  The kids were not as keen on this one - mainly because they were a little freaked out at watching the girl cut up "grass" into their eggs.  The ones that tried it enjoyed it though. This is one that we had to make right there in front of everyone.  Most other recipes we do the "magic of TV" trick and have stuff premade so they can sample it.

 

 

Finally, we rounded out with making strawberry shortcake overnight oatmeal, and telling Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Or rather, we did another one of our interactive retellings where we had the kids help us tell the story.  It should be a familiar one to most kids, and it's a good test of comprehension and retention skills. Since I needed strawberries chopped up, I had an older child help me with that part, while I had a younger one help me mix the rest of the ingredients. As with most other recipes, we premade this so it would be ready in time. I had the stuff made in the program for breakfast the next day.  Unfortunately, the girl spilled a *bit* too much salt into the batch, and you could really taste it. :/

 

We were really lucky this summer in that our local newspaper was super enthusiastic about covering our programs. A reporter was here that day, and we had a nice front page, full-color spread about the program. Here's a couple of the photos:

 

 

As my friend Lacey texted to me the morning this came out, I was "hardcore reading that book". Lol.



 



Cooking with Kids: No Recipe Needed

Our second (or really third) round of Cooking with Kids programs we did towards the end of our summer this year.  It was to bridge the gap between our 6 weeks of heavy summer programming and our fall schedule. As such, we decided to take it easy on ourselves as much as we could.  So we came up with the No Recipe Needed theme.  Self-explanatory and simple, right? Nothing can ever be simple with us. *sigh*

Stone Soup by Heather Forest. We did not make soup for this.  Sometimes we did recipes for each book, other times not.  This time not. We did read the book though, and it illustrates perfectly how easy soup can be to make. "Take what you got, put it in the pot." Granted, some flavors may go together better than others, but when you're making vegetable soup, you really can't go wrong. I think there *is* a recipe in the back of the book, but you really don't need one.

Curious George and the Pizza by Alan J Shalleck. George goes to a pizza shop, and when the owner has his back turned, decides he can try to make pizzas too. It's a disaster of course, but he makes it up to the owner when he is able to help him deliver pizzas when no one else can.  We did garlic bread pizza for this.  My coworker makes these all the time with Texas toast, but since Publix had a sale where you got a free loaf of bread with the purchase of their garlic spread, we went with that.  A little sauce, cheese, and pepperoni - and boom!  Pizzas!  I had a younger child come up and help me with this since it's such an easy thing to make.

Dragons Love Tacos by Adam Rubin. Dragons love tacos. Dragons love parties. What do dragons love more than both? Taco parties. But they absolutely HATE spicy salsa. There cannot be ANY spicy salsa at the taco party. BAD THINGS will happen. Mild salsa is served, but someone didn't read the label. It says "now with spicy jalapeno peppers".  Uh-oh.... We did little teeny-tiny mini tacos. I had a kid come up and help me cook the taco meat, and then we had them assemble their own in little Tostitos Scoops chips.

This program was almost as popular as the sweets one.  You think these children had been starved for DAYS before coming.  They just kept coming up for more and more food.  There were kids that had sixths, I swear. They weren't children, they were hobbits. Hey - it was less leftovers for me, and I know they loved the food.

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: Sweet Tooth edition

After the semi-disaster that was my Asian theme, and needing a boost in my morale, I decided to do one devoted to all things sweet.  While this means a little baking at home on my part (because baking dozens of cookies in a toaster/convection oven is hell), it was worth it.

   The Seven Silly Eaters by Mary Ann Hoberman (Illustrated by Marla Frazee, who I LOVE).

This is about 7 children who all will ONLY eat one thing, and of course none of them are the same thing.  Their poor mother gets run ragged, and so for her birthday they decide to surprise her by all making her their favorite things.  It's all a disaster and they hide the mess in the oven.  Well, the 7 things they love all combined to make a cake.  The author has a recipe, which we linked, but ahhh anything that's a fraction doesn't show.  Soooo you have to look up other recipes and kinda fudge it.  It turned out well, but I will say that it helps to do a lemon glaze on it for extra flavor.

Then the Doorbell Rang by Pat Hutchins. 

Of course we made chocolate chip cookies to go with this book.  The kids were pretty good with following directions, and once they were cooked there were no complaints from anyone.

The Donut Chef by Bob Staake.

About dueling donut chefs who keep getting fancier and fancier, and when someone comes in asking for glazed, one realizes just how far afield he's come.  We made donuts, and if you think I brought hot oil into a room full of kids you are CRAZY.  Y'all - there is no shame in a biscuit donut, especially one that is baked, and that is EXACTLY what I did.  But were these shaken in a bag with powdered sugar?  Oh no, they were glazed.  Did they still taste like biscuits?  Yeah.  But did the kids care? Of course not.  This recipe is easy enough that you can have 2 and 3 year olds help you too.

Other books you could use for this theme:

Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parrish.

Really, you could use any Amelia Bedelia book.  Seriously - pick one.  I guarantee you she bakes in it.  In fact, it frustrates me that in the book where she gets fired they hire her back because she bakes so well! (spoilers)  Why not give her the money to start up her own bakery?!  *sigh*

Cupcake by Charise Mericle Harper.

Whopper Cake by Karma Wilson.

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.