Dr. Seuss: A Celebration of Green Food

Dr. Seuss — the creator of unforgettable characters such as the Cat in the Hat and the Lorax — would be 109 years old Saturday. Amongst all of his books my favorite is Green Eggs and Ham. I use it for cooking classes, and I read it again and again when my children start separating the greens off their plate, when they refuse to eat something they've never tasted before, and when I just want to have a big laugh.

The idea of making eggs and ham green always amuses me — because, honestly, there's something about kids and green food aversion that I don't quite understand.

Here's a collection of natural-colored green recipes and posts that celebrate Dr. Seuss' birthday, and the awesome writing that helps generations and generations of parents encourage their kids to try something new on their plate, or in their lives!

Shakshuka - This Israeli staple for brunches is one of our favorite ways of making "green"eggs.

Spring Pea Dip - Darienne's recipe is a great way to eat greens. As green as it gets, it is good-looking and useful for sandwiches. When I make it I add some garlic and for a vegan version substitute tofu for Parmesan.

Green Crepes - This is a great way to make eggs green. They also can be filled with Pea Dip or even ham for added drama.

Hass Avocado Muffins - I am still working on this recipe for a more tangy taste. It's a fun way to use California avocados and surprise people with something different!

Popeye Sauce - Even if you think the sailor man is not a good role model, at least he ate his greens. This is a versatile sauce for pasta or vegetables.

4 tips to cook with kids at school

Classes started and I am planning a handful of recipes to make with kids at school. Sometimes they will be theme-oriented, inspired in some children's book or even about chemistry. But invariably they will involve lots of fun, and, of course, some messy activity to clean up after...
My 7 years old had already two years in a row of Cooking Club, which had been really fun, as some of the recipes were first tested with Darienne and her boys. My now 5 year old under, though, is going to have his first year of cooking classes, and can't wait to start. It looks like Cook Play Explore is going again to be full powered for Fall! We can't wait!

As a good friend of ours suggested, here are some tips if you are willing to volunteer at your kid's school, or maybe just wondering how to have a structured playdate with kids and cooking with them, the easy way:

• Portable electric equipment is always a good choice to use if you're working in a classroom or even your dining table. Griddle, ice cream machine, pasta machine, crockpot and hand blender are some that I've used for from scratch recipes and worked just perfectly.
• If baking is the plan, and you have access to a oven-  think always about mini-muffins and mini all things to reduce baking time, and, therefore, anxiety from the kids.
• Safety is, obviously, a big concern. Practice had taught me that serrated plastic knives from party-ware packages  are very useful and good to cut strawberries, bananas and other types of fruit and vegetables. Very clean children sized scissors are also a good idea. 
• Always work close to the teachers to find out about any allergy in the classroom. Try to adapt recipes to avoid frustration, but if not possible, have the parents of the kid with allergies to send some alternative ingredients or snack so not for him to be excluded. 

Here's a little list of of many times tested recipes at school and with the Cook Play Explore boys:

Banana Bonbons

Delicious raw candies that took some prep before the activity and was inspired by the awesome I'd like to Eat a Child book.

Be Bim Bop 

Two electric griddles made this possible. Kids had lots of fun cutting vegetables and savoring the wonderful rice.

Scissors Salad 
24 new scissors were donated to make the activity possible and clean. A portable mini oven was used to make the croutons, and peer pressure made some kids to eat lettuce for the first time.

Ben and Jerry's Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream 

This was a delicious treat enjoyed by kids and teachers with fruits on the top. Icre cream machines made it possible!

Stone Soup 

The old revisited folk tale inspired this recipe which had a bit f a different stone in the soup.

Enjoy, and, of course, never forget to invite the little chefs to wash their hands with soap and water before every cooking session. Have fun!

Cooking with Kids: "Snowballs" Winter Soup

Isn't it nice when something happens at random while you're cooking and leads to a surprising solution? That just happened while we were cooking with kids at school: The original plan was to cut snowflake shapes from slices of baked potatoes, add them to a very colorful vegetable soup, and play with their imagination. But the project of cutting the potatoes with the cookie cutters didn't work:  The potatoes were too mushy to allow the neat plan.

So, instead of getting disappointed, I was taken by a very fast experiment that ended up working perfectly: They mashed potatoes with their own hands and made snowballs with them. Roasted cauliflower was cut in thin slices to make the  pretend-to-be snowflakes. All was fun when the kids enjoyed throwing the "snowballs" and "snowflakes" into a pot filled with hot soup, also adding some white corn kernels. At the end of the process they were all surprised to see how the snowballs had "melted" into the soup.

The book read to inspire the kids to cook was the adorable Perfect Soup, by Lisa Moser, found in the local library by Carla, a mom and a teacher who volunteers with me in the Cooking Club at school. It's very easy reading for kindergartners and first-graders and has lots to offer to the kids. Something like the gift of sharing. Perfect to begin the new year with a good story and lots of inspiration for a new start (and more vegetables on our plate!).

Snowballs and Soup

By chance we've found that russet potatoes are good to roll the balls. Bake them in the oven or even microwave with the skin, so that the chefs can have extra work. I am still testing firmer potatoes to cut with cookie cutters. 

4 cups vegetable or chicken stock (if not homemade go for higher-quality ones from cartons, low-sodium and preferably organic)
2 cups water
1 cup tomato paste or your favorite tomato sauce
Kosher salt to taste
1 cup white corn kernels
3 baked russet potatoes, mashed with hands and shaped into "snowballs"
2 cups roasted cauliflower florets (with garlic powder and salt)
Parsley or cilantro leaves (to dress it up)
Japanese "snowflake" shape rice crackers (optional)

Heat vegetable broth and water and simmer while preparing the other ingredients. Mix in tomato paste, salt, corn, potato snowballs, and cauliflower. Continue to simmer for about 10 minutes.

Serve in a bowl and top it with cilantro and add rice crackers to add some crunch. 

Playdate Special: Be Bim Bop

Have you ever thought  about rice? It's present in almost every cuisine of the world, and is the main ingredient for many delicious meals. That's why it was chosen to represent the sense of unity of most cultures at my kid's school cooking club's classes. So the first dish to be prepared at the Cooking Club this year was a colorful dish from Korea, Bi Bim Bop.

I first fell in love with this idea when I saw a kid's book in my local library, called Bee-Bim Bop!, by Linda Sue Park, illustrated by Ho Baek Lee, few years ago. Later I had the chance of trying some of the original plate in a Korean bowl place in Palo Alto.

The book is amazing — so cute and so full of rhymes that it turns the task of preparing the dish into almost a musical experience. After four rounds of making the dish with kids at school, I finally got to invite our playgroup to make it, this time using beef instead of tofu.

The key element to get the school kids and our playgroup involved was reading the book before cooking, and getting them used to the idea of "chop chop chop," as in the book,  with a  safe (plastic) knife. Then, the process used with the school kids: While kids at one table were prepping the vegetables, kids at another table were cutting tofu and preparing the marinade. The third table's kids were working with the eggs for the egg pancakes.

The final result was amazing and put together the work of every kid: after watching us cook the veggies and tofu on the griddle, they all had a colorful bowl full of rice to be mixed. For many kids it was the first time to try some different vegetables, tofu, and soy sauce. And some of them were just following what the book suggested — mix mix mix — and eat!

Be Bim Bop

Any rice will do a great job here. If choosing beef, put the fresh steak in the freezer for about 15 minutes to help with the slicing. This recipe is adapted from Linda Sue Park's and also has some inspiration from recipes around the Web. If you are really daring to try something else, you can add a recipe of kimchi (as in this good recipe here).  

Cooked rice
1 English cucumber, peeled
2 carrots, sliced
1/2 pound aduki bean sprouts or alfalfa
4 medium shitake mushroom (optional)
4 medium white mushrooms (optional)
2 free-range eggs, lightly beaten
4 cups fresh organic baby spinach, chopped
Extra-firm organic tofu, diced (or 8 oz. sirloin steak, finely sliced)

Marinade for tofu or beef:
6 tablespoons reduced-sodium soy sauce
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons oil
Sesame seeds (optional)
4 drops sesame oil (optional)
2 stalks spring onions (scallions)

Preheat electric griddle to 370F. (You also can use a large skillet, over medium-high heat.) Chop the vegetables and set aside, each in a different bowl. Mix ingredients for the marinade in another bowl. Add the tofu or beef to the marinade.

Beat the eggs lightly and prepare mini-egg pancakes in the griddle. When done, set them aside on a plate to cool down. Add carrots and tofu (or beef) to the griddle and keep an eye on them, turning periodically.

Cut egg pancakes into half-inch strips and set aside on a plate. Now add mushrooms, bean sprouts, and spinach to the griddle, keeping them separated. At the last minute add cucumber. When the carrots are cooked but still al dente, start removing vegetables, transferring each type to its own bowl. Removed the beef or tofu from the griddle.

Serve all ingredients over a bowl of rice, to be mixed by the person being served. 

Children's Book Week: Red Riding Hood's Strawberry Streusel Cakes

Searching for good fairy tales for my boys, I've felt a bit like Goldilocks: They're usually too dark, or too sanitized. What a thrill, then, to find Lucy Cousins' giddy Yummy: Eight Favorite Fairy Tales! It showcases her bold, bright artwork, familiar to fans of her Maisy books -- and it delights in fairy-tale mayhem. Her telling of Little Red Riding Hood not only includes the hunter whacking open the wolf to free grandma, but it has a gleeful illustration of exactly that, with a "CHOP!" as the wolf's head sails clear to the next page.

It isn't everyone's cup of tea, but it's a favorite for our family. (Full disclosure: I received my copy to review for Common Sense Media, a terrific resource for families.)

Reading Yummy got me thinking: What, exactly, is in that basket Little Red Riding Hood is taking to her ill grandmother?

Cousins doesn't say, but I remember at least one version in which the basket carries bread, cake and wine. I also remember one in which Red, after encountering the wolf, gets distracted by wild strawberries, letting the wolf get a head start toward granny's.

These petite streusel cakes are inspired by her adventures. Hoping she won't dawdle in the forest, I baked the strawberries right into the cake, adding a splash of balsamic vinegar to deepen the flavor and hint at the darkness lurking in the woods. Serve with wine, if you wish -- we stuck to sparkling juice.

Little Red Riding Hood’s Strawberry Streusel Cakes

You can adapt this recipe for muffins or a larger cake, if you're careful to adjust the baking time.

Strawberry filling
1 1/2 cups strawberries, washed, hulled, and sliced
1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoons arrowroot or cornstarch
squeeze of lemon juice

Cake
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup plain, unsweetened yogurt

Streusel topping
1 cup flour
1/2 cup oats
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
pinch salt
6 tablespoons butter, melted

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly oil four mini loaf pans.

Combine strawberry filling ingredients in a small saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring frequently. Reduce heat to low and cook, continuing to stir, for a few minutes until thickened. Mash strawberries with a fork to desired consistency and set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar together until fluffy. Adds eggs and blend well, then add vanilla. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and stir well to combine. Add a third of the flour mixture to the mixing bowl, combine, then mix in half the yogurt. Then mix in another third of the flour, the other half of the yogurt, and finally the rest of the flour mixture, stirring in each addition well.

In a separate bowl, combine flour, oats, brown sugar, cinnamon and salt with a fork. Stir in melted butter until mixture is chunky and crumbly.

Divide cake batter among four loaf pans. Spoon strawberry filling on top. With a butter knife, gently swirl the filling into the top of the batter to marble it a bit. Spread the crumbly streusel topping over each loaf. Garnish the tops, if you wish, with a strawberry slice or two.

Bake for 20 to 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of a cake comes out clean.

We're Celebrating Children's Book Week!

Few things bring parents and children together like snuggling up with a good book. We turn to books for comfort, illumination, and inspiration. Today kicks off Children's Book Week, and we're thrilled to celebrate with recipes inspired by some of our favorite children's books.

Visit the Children's Book Week website to check out the 2011 Children's Choice book winners, download a bookmark by Jeff Kinney, or look for local events in your area.

We'll have new storybook recipes all week, but today we're revisiting three favorites you can savor with your little one, cuddling in a favorite reading chair.

Stone Soup
Jon J. Muth's beautiful telling of Stone Soup, set in China, inspired this kid-friendly recipe. Bouillon cubes serve as the stones, and fresh bok choy, mushrooms, carrots and more make for a flavorful soup kids will love to make.

Blueberry Muffin Soup
Irving and Muktuk, the mischievous stars of Jill and Daniel Pinkwaters' Bad Bears series, are indeed bad bears and not to be trusted. But they can't resist the lure of blueberry muffin soup. We had to try it too -- and it's pretty darn tasty.

Crocodile Fool's Banana Bonbons
The little crocodile in Sylvianne Donnio's I'd Really Like to Eat a Child doesn't want the bananas his parents give him -- he has his eye on a larger treat! But these tasty little chocolate treats might be enough to satisfy even the most ambitious baby croc.

Have a favorite food-related book for kids? We'd love to hear about it! In the meantime --happy reading!