Cooking for Kids

Once kids learn to say “no, they often direct their negativity towards food. Anything that has a funny look, smell or feel may be rejected.

Then the parents spend hour between meal times figuring out what their picky kids can eat.

And it doesn’t necessarily go away when they grow up. My teens make sudden, random statements like “you know I don’t eat lentils,” (Really? Since when) and “Now I’m vegan” (sorry, kid, we’re vegetarians and I’m still using cheese and eggs).

But I still appreciate cookbooks designed for families, especially ones like Parents Magazine Quick & Easy Kid-Friendly Meals, which has some pretty healthy and tasty dishes.

Take the banana quinoa waffles. One of my kids loves pancakes and waffles, but has been on an anti-banana kick lately, probably from a microscopic brown spot that she spied on a seemingly ideal banana.

These, waffles, made with whole whet flour and quinoa, are even better if your banana is covered with brown spots. The banana is mashed in, so if you hide offending skin, you can easily sneak a little banana back into your kid’s diet.

Other recipes include an easy black bean soup (made with canned beans) that has undetectable sweet potato (and if you swap out the chicken broth for vegetable, the soup is vegetarian).

I’m looking forward to watermelon season and the cold watermelon soup. You serve it with raisins to look like watermelon seeds – inspired!

Corn & edamame salad and cauliflower “popcorn” roasted with olive oil and topped with Parmesan cheese will please fussy kids and adults.

What to eat

When my kids were little, we fell into the pasta trap. Macaroni and cheese, spaghetti with tomato sauce and any pasta shape covered with pesto were our default meals. It was easy, it was quick, it was cheap and, not least of all, it shut them up. No whining about dinner, just a carb overload. Then I started to realize that my vegetarian children were never actually eating vegetables.

The first thing I did – and believe me, it was really hard – was to stop making pasta. We went cold turkey (tofurkey?) and I had to scramble to find meals that fit my quick, easy, shut them up criteria. Listening to your kids whine about what you are forcing them to eat is not an enjoyable way to spend the evening.

A staple in our home is tortillas. Technically, we use flour tortillas to make burritos, but my kids loved the alliterative sound of tortilla Tuesdays, so tortillas it is. I spread a flour (whole wheat, if I can find) with canned refried vegetarian beans. We top this with brown rice, salsa, a little frozen corn, and grated cheddar cheese. My husband and I add kale, but the kids have never taken to this. Then, just microwave for a minute, and serve with guacamole. It is a complete protein, hits the major food groups; even without the kale, it has the avocado.

You can also bake these in the oven or sauté in a non-stick pan with almost no oil; the tortilla gets crispy, almost like a taco shell. You can also add sautéed mushrooms, chopped spinach, Swiss chard. Sometimes we ditch the brown rice and use sliced, roasted sweet potato as the starch. This goes nicely with goat cheese. It may not be Mexican food, but it makes the kids – and adults – happy.

The vegetarian family hits the road

Becoming a vegetarian is a choice I made at age 15. It enraged my mother, which only strengthened my resolve to stick with it.

And I have. I used to cook meat for my husband, but stopped when I was pregnant and threw up in the butcher shop. He stopped eating meat then, too. And we have raised our three daughters as vegetarians.

We do eat fish, which I justify since according to Jewish dietary laws, fish is pareve – neither milk nor meat. If it’s good enough for the rabbi, it’s good enough for me. One of my kids did briefly flirt with eating chicken, her teenage rebellion; now, she won't even eat fish.

Travel can be a challenge, but then, so can dinner at a friend's house. You just have to adapt.