This past weekend was a major family event – we gathered together to celebrate the birth of my two new nephews. All three of my siblings and three of my cousins (who are like siblings) were in town with their respective families. As usual, every gathering revolves around a meal. This time it was at my Auntie Janet’s house – who, like most of my family members, is a wonderful cook.

After we stampeded the buffet table and piled our plates high with my aunt’s homemade delicacies, I noticed that my 5 year old nephew - who makes most picky eaters look like serious gourmands - gobbled up his borecas (Sephardic potato and cheese pastries - they are in left corner of photo). Even this little guy who could live on just French fries and pizza, already shared the family love of home cooking: at age 5, his palate was already being “trained” to eat the real deal.

Observing my nephew made me think about how we often hear about the importance of introducing new foods to children - but rarely do we talk about refining their palates. Because the truth is, the more refined our palates are, the less likely we will indulge in an unworthy food.

When we regularly consume really scrumptious, superb meals, we are much less likely to reach for a carefully engineered “item,” otherwise, known as processed foods. It can be hard to figure out how to teach kids to be healthful with the rise of childhood obesity – but simply exposing them to quality meals (which happens to be fun for everyone) will minimize their preference for processed foods and set up good eating habits for life.

Turn them into food snobs (without spending a fortune):

1) Many children are naturally picky, which is normal, and will eventually  outgrow it. But if the child continues to be treated as a picky eater and never offered anything new, then their meal repertoire will never expand. I was out to dinner with my 6 year old niece - who is actually a very adventurous eater - but when I offered her soy sauce for her rice, my brother started to say she didn’t like it.  She stopped him and said she tried it at school and liked it. Keep offering new foods - they will often surprise you.

2) When you eat in a restaurant, disregard the kids menu (which is often not as healthful) and instead have them pick something from the main menu. If you don’t see many dishes that are kid-friendly, check out which vegetables and proteins are on the menu – and create your own meal. Many chefs want happy customers and are more than willing to prepare simple dishes like steamed broccoli and cauliflower or plain grilled chicken. Discuss the menu options with the kids and ask them to be creative in coming up with a meal. I’ve spoken to many people whose kids are sophisticated eaters - and a lot of that is because they keep the food conversation going.

3) Find eateries that have naturally healthful cuisines like Asian or Mediterranean restaurants. The Seattle restaurant, Boom Noodle, has wonderful bento boxes for kids that include a protein entrée, edamame, fruit and rice – all “real” food and I watched kids all over the restaurant chow down on them.

4) While cooking at home (or eating out), if your kids still opt for the usual wheat-and-dairy fare, try offering a few side dishes that will provide some extra nutrients like black beans, raw or cooked vegetables, fruit, brown rice, cubed tofu, corn, olives, sliced avocados, or any other healthful ingredients. Offer the most nutritious foods first, while they are hungry, and after they’ve had a few bites, then bring out the rest of the meal.

5) Try to use high-quality ingredients as much as possible and help them learn how to pay attention to how food tastes and smells – to enjoy and savor each bite. Ask them to describe what it tastes like - they are very imaginative. Set up a taste test between a tomato shipped in from far away and a tomato from someone’s garden. And of course, my usual advice: get them cooking!

If we put delicious, “real” food in front of children, they will eat it. And likewise, if we keep putting processed foods in front of them, they will eat that too – so let’s get them hooked on real food that’s full of nutrients as young as possible!

Read this article to find out how it’s never to early to expose children to strong flavors!

Stay tuned for the next post where I will share my family recipe (and photos) on how to prepare borecas.

My brothers, cousins, and the kids eating together.

Undoubtedly, gardening is the comeback hobby of 2009. This year, the National Gardening Association reported that 43 million households planted a backyard garden or has a share in a community garden - up from 36 million in 2008.

But what about cooking? In Michael Pollan’s most recent article in The New York Times Magazine, “Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch,” he asserts that cooking has become a spectator sport:

“Today the average American spends a mere 27 minutes a day on food preparation…that’s less than half the time that we spent cooking…when Julia [Child] arrived on our television screens [in 1963]. It’s also less than half the time it takes to watch a single episode of “Top Chef”…. many Americans are spending considerably more time watching images of cooking on television than they are cooking themselves — an increasingly archaic activity they will tell you they no longer have the time for.”

I’m thrilled that Mr. Pollan has drawn attention to this issue, especially the fact that the more we cook, the healthier we are and the less we weigh - which is pretty much the entire focus of my career. However, I disagree with him that people are cooking less because they “no longer have the time.”  I do think that’s an issue for some folks but it’s been my experience as a cooking instructor that people often don’t cook because they don’t know how to - can you imagine how much time it would take you to do a task that you are completely clueless about?

The art of cooking has been lost. “Scratch cooking,” (i.e. cooking a meal entirely from scratch) according to Mr. Pollan, is a rarity these days. He mentions many reasons for this - the least obvious one being that food corporations spend billions of dollars convincing us not to cook so that we spend more money on their products. And for a couple of decades, it seemed like a good idea to let other people prepare our meals - even if it meant families stopped teaching each other how to cook.

“Scratch” cooking used to be passed on from generation to generation - and for good reason. Even the best written recipes can be hard to figure out if you’re a novice cook and never made them before - learning how to cook is hard to do unless someone actually shows you how to do it. To make matters worse, home economics classes are now almost nonexistent in schools.

If no one is showing you how to cook at home or at school, there are limited options as to where else you can learn the basics, like knife skills or when to use a saucepan versus a skillet. As Mr. Pollan points out, most of the cooking shows on television don’t offer step-by-step instructions like Julia Childs’ real-time shows.  Bookstores are stuffed with cookbooks but it can be overwhelming for a newbie cook to figure out which one to buy. You can plow through the internet and find every recipe under the sun but what if you don’t know what the word “mince” means? The simplest of recipe instructions can frustrate someone with zero kitchen experience.

It’s only recently that we, as a country, started to realize that we should be more involved in our food preparation (and growing it too). I don’t mean to absolve people from personal responsibility - that is not my intention here. Rather, I think it’s important to recognize that there is still a growing awareness emerging about reconnecting with food and getting back in the kitchen. And this movement, similar to the gardening movement (I hope) can’t happen without more culinary education opportunities.

We need modern home ec classes back in the schools and parent/child classes available in the evenings or on the weekends. We need to take it upon ourselves to ask family members and friends to teach us how to prepare simple dishes. I’m curious to watch Jamie Oliver’s new show this fall where he will teach Americans how to cook! I think that viewers will be surprised at how enthusiastic Olivers’ students will be to learn.

I truly believe that if people had the necessary kitchen skills and access to healthful, inexpensive food, they would be cooking more - and cooking well. As Mr. Pollen said so beautifully in his article (and I also mentioned in my “Can Cooking Make You Happier?” post), there is something about cooking that we need:

“Maybe the reason we like to watch cooking on TV is that there are things about cooking we miss….Why? Perhaps because cooking — unlike sewing or darning socks — is an activity that strikes a deep emotional chord in us, one that might even go to the heart of our identity as human beings.”

Some of us just may need a little help finding our way back to the kitchen….

Tips on how to learn how to cook without spending a lot of money:

• Cooking stores that offer free cooking demonstrations to help sell appliances

• Large “community kitchens” where you prepare two weeks worth of meals while socializing and receiving guidance from chefs

• Private cooking classes in your home with a chef instructor – do it with friends and the cost comes down per person

• Your own at-home cooking “class” – invite a mix of friends who are beginners and experienced cooks

• Join Rouxbe, a wonderful online cooking school with professional videos at http://rouxbe.com/cooking-school

Declare your Food Independence this 4th of July by preparing a meal made with only local ingredients - join others in this grassroots campaign.

Independence day is fast arriving (where has this year gone?) and although, most of us are just thinking about how to spend the holiday, it’s also kind of nice to remember what the day is actually about: that us Americans are a scrappy bunch who think for ourselves and are willing to do whatever it takes to make big changes in our lives - even if it means revamping the way we buy and grow food. We may not be getting a lot of kudos around the world right now but I can’t help but focus on what we are good at: we are pioneers, we’re inventors, and we don’t give up.

And now we have a big food mess on our hands. Our aptitude for technology took us down the wrong road - when we should have just stuck to eating what Mother Nature intended.  I won’t bother listing off the many problems we are facing - fortunately, some pretty smart people have already done that in some great books and in Food, Inc. (which I highly recommend seeing - it’s funny how people find it easier to learn that our planet is melting than discover what we’ve been eating all these years).

I prefer to be the bearer of good news and fortunately, I have some. I’ve been part of a fringe food movement for over 15 years and in just one short year, that Food Movement has gone so mainstream that it’s landed directly on the White House lawn. Every day, I receive emails through my nutrition listserves discussing extraordinary people working hard to improve our food system on behalf of you and your children. There is more opportunity to make changes to our food system now than ever before and you don’t have to be a nutritionist, a farmer, or a writer in order to pitch in and help keep the ball rolling.

I’m not sure who coined the phrase, “Vote with Your Fork” - but it looks like it was Marion Nestle. Regardless of who invented it, it’s brilliant. It can be hard for the average citizen to feel like they can make a difference in the face of huge, powerful food companies - but the truth is, they are more dependent on us than we are on them. Although it may not sound easy, we do technically have the power to grow our own food. Urban farmer, Will Allen, of Growing Power (featured in this Sunday’s NYT magazine) is showing lots of people how to do exactly that - no matter where they live. And for those who can’t start a farm in your backyard or on your rooftop, you can still be a lobbyist and advocate every time you go to the grocery store.

Why do you think major stores started carrying more “natural” brands? Because you asked for them. Every time you buy groceries and the bar code slides over the scanner, you are telling a marketing company what you prefer to purchase - you are able to: Vote with Your Fork - and also Lobby for your Local Farmer or Advocate for Clean Food:

1) Ask your produce manager if they carry fruits and vegetables from local farmers. The more you ask for it, the more likely they will start carrying it.

2) Talk to whoever is in charge of meat ordering about whether your store carries local, grass-fed beef from reputable ranchers (beware that many labels, including “grass-fed” doesn’t always reflect the highest quality meat).

3) Make friends with your fishmonger and learn from them which fish are fresh and wild-caught, which ones are farm-raised (very few fish farms are reputable although they do exist) and print off a  list of “Best Choices” of fish to bring to the store with you. Mark Bittman wrote about how complicated this topic has become if you want to learn more about it.

4) Become more savvy at recognizing when companies are using vague or unapproved label claims to sell their products - many terms like “natural” may mean nothing (or in the recent case of Horizon, may mean “no longer organic”). I will work on writing a longer post about this topic in the near future.

5) Be aware that the “hippie” brands (like Toms of Maine and Odwalla) you thought were owned by small, independent companies often have been bought by the same 12 or so huge food companies. Your best bet is to buy truly local products as much as possible - keep asking questions about where your food comes from - the more we keep asking for this information, the more likely we’ll get it.

6) Remember that making small changes is still helpful. If we all worked on making even the smallest changes (buying free-range, organic eggs or local fruit), we will keep moving in the right direction. Don’t think your changes don’t matter - because they really do.

“A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”   -Margaret Mead

Happy 4th of July!

I’m far from being the first person to write about Amanda Hesser’s New York Times op-Ed article that gave Michelle Obama a hard time for not promoting cooking. Lettuce Eat Kale wrote a thoughtful post about it and ended the entry asking a valid question: how important is it that the First Couple cook meals for their children? Gastropoda and Eat Me Daily were a little more direct and dished it right back to Hesser, pointing out that there are plenty of people cooking on TV already and that it’s a bit of a throwback to suggest that the First Lady spend time in the kitchen.

I admit, as a cooking teacher, my first instinct upon reading Hesser’s piece was that I was glad that someone brought up the importance of cooking, which is a natural partner of gardening but often gets lost in the discussion. However, after a lively online conversation with two colleagues, Lauren Slayton, (nutritionist and owner of Foodtrainers) and Sarah Abrams (chef and cooking teacher), we all decided that Hesser’s message could have been more tactful and offered more realistic, positive suggestions for Michelle Obama and others who don’t like to cook.

Everyone’s reactions were very understandable - it’s easy to feel protective of Michelle Obama and the incredible work she has done by promoting organic, local, and seasonal food by starting a garden AND having local elementary kids work on it. It’s easy for someone like Amanda Hesser, or even myself, who love cooking so much that we made a career out of it to point fingers, but what if cooking does NOT make you happy? How important is it for parents to provide home cooked meals for their children if they can still find a way to feed them well?

With childhood obesity on the rise – is it really the job of our First Lady to provide a retro role model? Perhaps the USDA and the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act that’s up for re-signing this year could shoulder some of the responsibility. Maybe there could be more funding for schools to have gardens and kids to learn how to cook at school - instead of continuously slashing education budgets and keeping vending machines and junk foods in schools. I would hope that some other people and agencies within our government besides Michelle Obama could take this on.

When all is said and done, I think we are very lucky to have her on “our side.” She has legitimized the work of many of my colleagues by simply planting a pesticide-free garden. For someone who doesn’t like to cook, she has done a phenomenal job of promoting healthy living by her regular workouts and making a point of feeding her children nutritious foods. If parents are able to find a way to provide healthy meals for their children, with or without a White House staff, that should be enough.

So, for those parents who like being in the kitchen the same way I like to clean bathtubs, here are some tips on how to keep your families healthy without turning on the stove:

Sign Your Kids Up for Cooking Classes. If it’s economically feasible for your family, find cooking classes that focus on dishes with healthy ingredients (not just muffins and cookies) which can be a great way to expose kids to the world of cooking and nutritious foods without actually doing it with them. (I couldn’t help putting this suggestion first!)

Create Your Own Cooking Class, for Free. Find a family member or another parent who likes to cook and have cooking play dates.

Take Your Kids to the Farmer’s Market. Explore the market together and allow each child to buy a new fruit or vegetable and if they can read, have them find a recipe online that doesn’t entail much preparation like fruit salad. They can prepare the food while you supervise - this pays off as they get older and can cook full meals for you…

Explore New Cuisines while Eating Out. When eating in restaurants, forgo the kiddie menus and encourage your kids to try new dishes with unique and nutritious ingredients off of the main menu.

Keep it Raw. My mom always kept sliced fruit and vegetables on the lowest shelf in the fridge making it easy for us to nibble on melon, strawberries, carrots and celery after school. A lot of produce can be safely cut with a butter knife, so have the kids help out.

Hire a Chef. I know this isn’t possible for many families, especially these days, but perhaps there is a culinary student who will take a reduced fee or a college student in the area who could cook in exchange for housing or meals. I have a friend who offers a low rent to a grad student who, in return, helps prepare dinner and take care of her son. In times like this, there are lots of barter scenarios that are a win-win for everyone!

Until last summer, I ran a culinary program for over five years straight, often working until 10pm at night. Cooking for pleasure was a rarity – I’d prepare a dish for a dinner party I was attending or bake a cake for a friend’s birthday. That didn’t mean I ate poorly. In fact, I was spoiled. I was fed delicious meals by my chef instructors and students late at night or I’d go out to eat in great restaurants. Students would ask me if I cooked my dinner every night and I’d laugh out loud. Like many people in the culinary profession, I ate odd meals at odd hours.

It wasn’t until I moved back to Seattle last fall, though, that I realized what I was missing. While in New York, I was surrounded by some of the best food in the world. And yet, I didn’t feel truly fed until I moved back home and ate my family’s cooking – and my own cooking.

For the first time in many years, I’m now cooking for pleasure on a regular basis – even though, for the most part, I’m testing recipes for my cookbook. Yet, it feels like pleasure because I run the leftovers over to my grateful brother and sister-in-law or cook for friends or my parents. Right now, I have dough rising for a pizza recipe and I just finished sautéing the mushrooms. It’s gorgeous outside – a well deserved sunny, 70 degrees in Seattle – and yet I don’t mind being inside kneading dough, listening to the birds chirp. It’s while making the dough – something I did a thousand times back in New York - that I remember why I fell in love with cooking in the first place. It is one of the only activities that slows down my overactive mind - I’m able to actually be in the moment and I feel more relaxed than I do during a massage (during which, for whatever reason, I stress about things I should be doing).

I keep thinking about what my 5 year old student, Tabitha said during the Sesame Street segment. Kids are so smart - only a small child could say something so profound while talking to a puppet. After being asked what it’s like to eat her own cooking, she says, “It feels good because you’re tasting the food that you made, instead of tasting somebody else’s.” Out of the mouth of babes!

I think that lately, we view cooking as a lot more difficult than it really is – maybe because of the sophisticated dishes that are always on television. Over the last 10 years, everything in our lives has become more complicated, including the culinary scene.

Cooking doesn’t need to be an all-day affair – adding to your already stressful lives. In fact, it can actually help relieve your stress. Even grilling a piece of fish and some asparagus and making couscous – all of which would take about 20 minutes, can do wonders to separate you from the busy, chaotic feeling of the workday and the relaxation we all need in the evening. I really notice a difference in how I feel both mentally and physically when I eat my own cooking. I feel more energetic, more nurtured, more satisfied - or, even that elusive word we can never seem to truly pin down: happy. I can’t explain it. I don’t have any scientific evidence. I just know it’s true.

I was talking to my friend, Alex, about this concept because he prefers his own cooking to eating out. And he said that for  him,  it’s a sense of accomplishment when he cooks a full meal - and he said that maybe it’s satisfying the human need to sit around the fire and share a meal like we’ve done throughout history. I had to agree. We have such overflowing Inboxes both at home and at work on projects that are never ending - maybe creating a meal from start to finish makes us feel like we accomplished something with our day. So, on top of eating healthier and saving money,  we can also add “feeling accomplished” and “happy” to what we get out of cooking at home.

So, try making a full meal for yourself and/or your family . It doesn’t need to be complicated, it just needs to be yours. Make note of how you feel during the time you prepare it, when you are eating it and the hours and days afterward. Perhaps all of this fuss and confusion about what to eat isn’t just about calories and labeling – it’s about how to nourish ourselves. And I think a good place to start figuring that out is in the kitchen.

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Since I try to keep these posts under 6,000 words (note: sarcasm), you can find a new recipe on my website, Lentil Salad with Sherry Red Wine Vinaigrette. It’s delicious! Enjoy.