Chef Meals for Kids? Alain Ducasse

People who eat at fine restaurants around the world often want to introduce their children to fine dining early, but don't know how. Famed restauranteur Alain Ducasse has a new cookbook, Cooking for Kids: From Babies to Toddlers: Simple, Healthy and Natural Food, that can help pave the way.

The cookbook emphasizes seasonal ingredients and suggests using only organic produce. Children raised on these recipes, which include a turnip, potato and parsley puree, pumpkin and blue cheese soup and hake with grapefruit and garden peas, are unlikely to be satisfied with children's meals at fast food restaurants.

You can help your children develop a sophisticated palate, and make food that even adults can enjoy, though the squid, cucumber and lime muffins may have lost something in the translation.  Simple dishes like risotto with pumpkin, polenta with zucchini and millet with turnip, zucchini and mint will please any age.

The recipe that really struck me was a simple to make yet rich onion soup, using Melba toast or zwieback. The vegetarian soup was hearty and a huge crowd pleaser.

Fitness Challenge: Cross Country Skiing

There are hardy souls who run year round, and fair weather outdoor enthusiasts, like me, who only want to ride a bicycle when it's between 60 and 70 degrees. But cross country skiing is a whole different animal. For one thing, you warm up really quickly, particularly in southern Vermont in January. For another, you get that runner's high, a blissful, peaceful feeling when you schuss along a mountain stream or through a forest. We enjoyed just such a scenario at the Okemo Valley Nordic Center at Okemo Mountain Resort. The cross country skiing takes place at the Golf Club, with 22 km of tracked and skate-groomed terrain. My children, dedicated down hill skiers, scoff at cross country skiing, finding amusement in the intermediate and expert terrain. But the hills are real, and the level of fitness required no joke. And like biking, you end up skiing, constantly using your legs, for hours on end. No standing around on lift lines or just engaging your core while you slalom down the mountain.

Fitness Challenge: Day 90

Lance Armstrong may not be the best role model for children, but he has created a cool community in Austin at his bike store, Mellow Johnny's. You can buy bicycles and accessories here, fuel up at the Juan Pelota Café, and rent bikes if you are vacationing in Austin.

Although the temperature topped 100 on our recent family vacation to Austin, we spent a few hours biking the mostly shaded Barton Creek Greenbelt, a flat trail which had hard packed soil and rocky parts. We biked around Zilker park, with a public pool, Barton Springs. We didn't have bathing suits, so we stayed in the free creek area, where locals and their dogs frolicked in the water.

Mellow Johnny's provides free water bottle with rentals, and a water fountain in the store has a drinking fountain (there are also showers for commuters, a nice touch). But the trail also had frequent drinking fountains, and coolers filled with ice water.

Still, it was so hot that we returned our bikes and headed to the rooftop pool at the Omni.

Virginia Beach for Foodies and Families

Peanuts come to mind when I think of Virginia. I figured that Virginia Beach food would also center around peanuts, maybe with a fudge store or two thrown in.

But it turns out that Virginia Beach is so much more.

The area has become a foodie destination, so much so that Coastal Food Tours of Virginia offers a Virginia Beach Boardwalk Food Tour and a Farmers Market Food Tour.

When you look at Virginia Beach closely, this attention to food makes sense. The area is on the Atlantic ocean and the Chesapeake Bay, so fresh seafood is a given. Blue crab, rockfish, flounder and mackerel are some of the local seafood.

Virginia Beach for vegetarians
The year round Virginia Beach Farmers market sells seasonal, fresh vegetables and fruit as well as organic groceries, local dairy and ice cream and candy. When our kids were little, we gave them money to spend at farmers’ markets, and they usually chose unique, healthy foods they wanted to try: purple carrots or a whole grain bun studded with pumpkin seeds.

Virginia Beach for families
If you are traveling with young children, be sure to check out the Rural Education Center at the Farmers Market, which offers Rural Heritage Tours. Kids can milk a fake cow (that produces real milk), churn cream into butter and feed pigs.

Virginia Beach is also famous for its ham, not too appealing to my vegetarian family, but the pigs are adorable.

At Brookdale Farm, you can pick your own strawberries and shop from a small farm stand. Even if you are staying at a hotel with no cooking facilities, fresh corn from the farm should not be missed. You can actually eat it raw, bursting with juice and flavor.

Family activities in Virginia Beach
In between eating breakfast, lunch and dinner, and thinking about food, there is plenty to fill your day. The salt air at the free ocean beaches whets your appetite for the meals to come. If you overindulge, work off a meal by strolling the three mile boardwalk, or riding a bike.

Families with young children should head to the protected waters of the Chesapeake Bay Beaches. The gentle waves are perfect for kids and swimmers can also enjoy the water.

Hike almost 20 miles of trails at First Landing State Park, where English settlers arrived on April 26, 1607. The park also offers kayak rentals and guided kayak eco tours, bike paths, picnic areas and campgrounds.

And if you want some Virginia peanuts, get the Virginia Beach caramel apple version at The Royal Chocolate, an apple dipped in caramel, then rolled in peanuts and chocolate.



I wrote this blog post while participating in the SocialMoms and Virginia Beach blogging program. For more information on how you can participate, click here.

Fitness Challenge: Day 33

The shiny, new Chintatown YMCA shares a building with a Whole Foods. This is a serious upgrade from how the Bowery used to look.

The fitness floor overlooks the pool, so parents whose children are taking swim lessons can spy on their kids while they exercise.

I face a serious but funny challenge - forgot my shorts, so I have to exercise in skinny jeans. Running on the treadmill if fine, if warm, but lunges and squats are out of the question.

There is a subset of NYC fitness buff that exercises in short shorts and construction boots. I think I might look like I share the obsession with how I look when I work out; my concern is how I look the rest of the time.

OK, the skinny jeans look good. But I feel weird. And sweaty.

Small city, big time family fun

Touring around other cities can sometimes feel achingly familiar. The downtown revitalization project. The spanking new children’s museum. The gorgeous, refurbished zoo. Providence has all that, but it has something extra, too, the incredible WaterFire.

A couple of nights a month )usually April - October, but this year, it may not start until June), dozens of bonfires are lit on the three rivers in downtown Providence. The brainchild of artist Barnaby Evans, the evening includes music, fire tenders passing the flames, and scented wood, engaging several senses at once. Kids and adults find this truly magical; the only downside is that it begins at sunset and lasts till after midnight, cutting into daytime touring the next morning. Some hotels even have waterfront views of the bonfires, which are refueled throughout the evening, but music lovers will want to be at one of the stages presenting live music.

If you are not in town for WaterFire, Providence has another unique way to enjoy its waterfront, on a Venetian gondola. On warm evenings, you can see downtown from a gondola, replete with gondolier and Italian music. Late at night, gondolas are for couples, but early trips are family friendly, and can accommodate a family or group of six.

Providence Children’s Museum has a children’s garden, focusing on native flora and big water play area, where kids can sail boats and build fountains. Coming to Rhode Island, a ‘time traveling’ exhibit through state history and immigration, let kids board a Cape Verdean ship and try out a cotton mill.

Roger Williams Park has a small Museum of Natural History, with a planetarium. The Park has a beautiful antique carousel, part of a ”carousel village” with a playground and pony rides. The Hasbro Boundless Playground allows kids with disabilities to play on the equipment, and offers a full sensory experience for all kids; the adjacent Children’s Sensory Garden lets kids explore flowers through textures, scents and colors.

The zoo, located within the park, has polar bears, a tropical rainforest, and a trail where visitors can follow Marco Polo’s route. On the trail, kids see a Venetian Plaza, Bedouin tent and ancient trading vessel, encountering along the way the exotic animals Marco Polo saw: Dromedary camels, snow leopard and moon bears. In the rainforest, there is a canopy skywalk, a rope and wooden bridge up high, with free-flying birds. The Australasia exhibit has animals indigenous to Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Indonesia and Australia: tree kangaroos, kookaburras and scrub pythons.

You have to eat at Al Forno any time you are in Providence. They made grilled pizza famous and this will please any child or vegetarian. The wood-fired grill is used for met as well, but there is a 'grilled and roasted veggie' entree, eggplant parm, pasta, fantastic salads and a chocolate bread pudding that might be illegal.

Family Farmers Market

In the nice weather, we make it a habit to visit farmers markets regularly. The food looks more appealing than in conventional supermarkets, the kids are naturally drawn to the fruits and vegetables, and they make a connection with the food they eat, where we buy it, and who grows it. In New York City, year round Greenmarkets bring kids close to the food source.

In the fall, we travel to our food, to go apple picking and to a pumpkin patch. It was a revelation to the kids to see that pumpkins actually grow on vines, not at produce stands.

But in winter, hunting for food becomes more of a challenge. The farmers market isn’t as appealing in the very cold weather; besides the cold, the choices are limited. So we turn to indoor cornucopias.

One of my kids’ favorite places is the giant Fairway Market at 125th St. If you think the ordinary city supermarket is frenetic, this one is on speed. It is not for the cautious, the claustrophobic, or the newly emerged walker.

Like its older downtown sibling, this Fairway begins in a sumptuous produce display, tempting even the most persnickety. Then there is the huge selection of bread. But outweighing all is the ‘cold room’ filled with fish, meat and dairy. It’s so cold that Fairway provides jackets. My daughters love to shiver their way through here, pausing at the lobsters and choosing a yogurt.

Chelsea Market, at 9th Avenue and 15th Street, is a collection of small shops under one roof. Here, kids can see bakers at work, and try wonderful selections from Amy’s Bread, Sarabeth’s Kitchen, Fat Witch Bakery. There are also places to get nuts, veggies and fruit.

We've eaten our way through Reading Terminal in Philadelphia, Logan Square Farmers Market in Chicago (both indoors and outdoors) and the Farmers Market LA.