Posted by Jennifer Lee on July 15, 2012 1 Comment
A summer heat wave inspired us to chill out and make a frosty treat:
watermelon popsicles with a twist (of lime).
Opening the door to the back
garden, a rush of sun burnt air came barreling into the house announcing the
arrival of a summer heat wave. There’s no better way to cool rising
temperatures than with a homemade frosty treat. Thanks to The Naptime Chef, it
was watermelon popsicles to the rescue!
Where’s Watermelon?
Despite our best gardening efforts, the melons in our kitchen garden didn’t
make it. Staying true to our Eat Dirt challenge, we sourced our summer giant
from the local farmers’ market. According to Jeff Leach, author of Dirtying up Our Diets, dirt from the
farmers’ market is the next best thing to dirt from our garden. Armed with a
farm fresh juicy watermelon and an easy recipe, we headed to the kitchen to cool
off.
Watermelon Popsicles with a Twist (of Lime)
Prep time: 10
minutes
Cook time: 10
minutes
Makes about 9
ice pops
Adapted from The Naptime Chef
Ingredients:
4 cups seedless watermelon
Juice from 3 fresh limes
Directions:
1) Using a melon baller, scoop about 4 cups of
watermelon. You could cut the watermelon with a knife, but my kids think the
melon baller is much more fun!
2) Load the watermelon into a food processor and
blend until smooth.
3) Run the watermelon puree through a sieve or food mill to remove the
seeds.
4) Squeeze in the juice from three fresh limes. Stir.
5) We made our pops with a Zoku ice pop maker. For best results when
using a Zoku, chill the watermelon lime juice for about 10 minutes before
loading into the popsicle maker.
6) Enjoy!
Crunch a Color Kids Vote: Cool!
What we liked: This recipe is colorful, easy and tasty! With garden fresh summer
fruit, we didn’t need a drop of sugar to sweeten this treat. Such a welcome
change from the sugary treats you’ll find in the frozen dessert aisle at the
grocery store – and a fraction of the cost!
What is your favorite fruit to use in summer
popsicles?
Craving more new recipes to try? Catch up on last
week’s recipe: Nut free basil pesto.
About the author: Jennifer Tyler Lee is a mom
of two children and the creator of Crunch a Color™ -- the
award-winning game that makes healthy eating fun. Like most parents, she
struggled to get her kids to eat healthy, balanced meals, so she decided to
make it into a healthy eating game. Follow @crunchacolor on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest to tune
into Crunch a Color's healthy eating adventure and Jennifer’s tips and
kid-friendly, easy recipes. Crunch a Color is a proud supporter of non-profit
kids' nutrition programs including Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution and
FoodCorps. Available at www.crunchacolor.com and in stores nationwide at Pottery Barn Kids.
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Posted by Jennifer Lee on July 09, 2012 3 Comments
This week we dirty up our diets with nut free basil
pesto made straight from our garden. Dig in!
Our new food adventures this
week continue to focus on dirtying up our diets. Overflowing in our tiny
kitchen garden is fresh basil. A distinct and refreshing partner in soups and
pasta dishes, basil is one of our favorite garden herbs. With a hearty crop on
our hands, we decided it was time to try basil pesto!
Basil Pesto (Without the Nuts)
Most basil pesto recipes call for pine nuts, or walnuts, but Susan from Our
Family Eats had a creative twist on this simple recipe: sunflower seeds. Our
school is nut free, so I am always looking for delicious and easy recipes that
can be equally featured on our dinner and lunchbox menus. Nut free basil pesto
was the ticket!
Nut Free Basil Pesto
Prep time: 5
minutes
Cook time: 0
minutes
Makes about 1
cup of pesto, enough for 2 to 3 meals
Ingredients:
1 cup garden fresh basil, packed
1/3 cup sunflower seeds
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup olive oil
1 clove of garlic
Salt and pepper to taste
Directions:
1) Harvest your fresh basil! Wash thoroughly with
water. Give your hands a good wash too, with soap and water.
2) Load your ingredients into a food processor.
3) Blend it up! Add salt and pepper to taste. We
added a little extra olive oil to give our pesto a smoother texture.
4) Enjoy!
Tip: If you want to freeze your basil pesto, leave
out the cheese. It doesn't freeze well. Portion the cheese-free pesto into an
ice cube tray, cover and freeze. Once frozen, remove from the tray and store in
a freezer bag. When you’re ready to use your sauce, defrost and add the grated
Parmesan.
Crunch a Color Kids Vote: Let’s dig in!
What we liked: This recipe is so fresh and easy! It’s also super flexible. We featured
our basil pesto on homemade pasta. It would also be tasty served over chicken,
or on a fresh, crusty French baguette. The possibilities are endless!
* What is your favorite way to prepare pesto?
Craving more new recipes to try? Catch up on last
week’s recipe: Butter Lettuce with a Side of Dirt.
About the author: Jennifer Tyler Lee is a
mom of two children and the creator of Crunch a Color™ -- the
award-winning game that makes healthy eating fun. Like most parents, she
struggled to get her kids to eat healthy, balanced meals, so she decided to
make it into a healthy eating game and she’s giving back to support non-profit kids' nutrition programs including Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution and
FoodCorps. Watch her picky eaters tell the story of how they turned into healthy eaters playing the
game. Follow @crunchacolor on Facebook Twitter and Pinterest to tune into
Crunch a Color's healthy eating adventure and Jennifer’s tips and kid-friendly,
easy recipes.
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Posted by Jennifer Lee on July 04, 2012 3 Comments
Dirt
(along with butter lettuce) is our new food of the week. It may be what we need
to stay healthy.
A recent article in The
New York Times on the merits of dirtying up our diets ignited a lively
discussion at our dinner table. Could dirt help us ward off the germs that lead
to the inevitable sniffles in the first weeks of school? Or reduce the itchy,
watery eyes that plague our outdoor summer adventures? If what these
researchers are arguing is true -- that a little dirt in our diets can improve
our health by strengthening our immune systems and reducing allergies – then
getting down and dirty might be a fun and inexpensive way to stay healthy.
Digging
Deeper
Before we decided to dig in, we needed to know, “What kind
of dirt is good dirt?” Is dirt from our garden just as healthy as the dirt
found lining the shelves of the grocery store? Certainly I had to provide some
guidelines to my new food adventurers out of fear that they might throw all of their
hygiene cares to the wind. Jeff Leach, science and archaeology writer and
founder of the Human Food Project, offered
this practical guidance:
“No matter worrying about the soil in your
local grocery store, as there is almost none (aside from the occasional potato
and mushroom). Dirt from your local sources (yard, farmers’ market, etc) would
be best. Importantly, the simple act of playing outside will expose our kiddos
to a vast microbial community - so, from Angry Birds to Dirty Birds.”
With those simple rules as our guiding principles,
we headed out to the garden to add a little dirt to our diet.
Butter
Lettuce Wraps with Sunbutter
Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 0 minutes
Makes about 12 wraps
Ingredients:
1 head,
garden grown butter lettuce
¼ cup, sunflower butter
Directions:
1) Harvest
your butter lettuce. Have fun getting your hands dirty!
2) Wash
the lettuce thoroughly with water. Give your hands a good wash, too, with soap
and water (don’t kill all the good bugs with super zapper hand sanitizer).
We found a
teensy chameleon critter, the same vibrant green as the butter lettuce,
which we gingerly placed back in our garden.
3) Keeping
the leaves intact, spread about a teaspoon of sunflower butter into each piece
of lettuce.
4) Wrap
and enjoy!
5) Then
plant a new crop.
Crunch a
Color Kids Vote: Diggin’ it!
What we
liked: Anything grown from our tiny kitchen garden seems to taste
better. The kids thrilled at enjoying the lettuce they planted as seeds
and grew into a nourishing meal. Harvesting the lettuce inspired us to plant
another crop of new vegetables to try, and gave us the wonderful opportunity to
spend more time outside, soaking up the beautiful sunshine and soil that makes
us healthy. The experience even inspired our first family food challenge – more
to come on that soon!
* What will
you plant in your garden this week?
* How do you
dirty up your diet?
Lettuce is
a super easy crop to grow. If you don’t have any growing in your garden right
now, plant a few seeds and you’ll have a feast before the end of summer.
Craving
more new recipes to try? Catch up on last week’s recipe: Healthy Zucchini
Muffins.
About the author: Jennifer Tyler Lee is a
mom of two children and the creator of Crunch a Color™ -- the
award-winning game that makes healthy eating fun. Like most parents, she
struggled to get her kids to eat healthy, balanced meals, so she decided to
make it into a healthy eating game and she’s giving back to support non-profit
children’s nutrition programs including Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution and
FoodCorps. Watch her picky eaters tell the story of how they turned into healthy eaters playing the
game. Follow @crunchacolor on Facebook Twitter and Pinterest to tune into
Crunch a Color's healthy eating adventure and Jennifer’s tips and kid-friendly,
easy recipes.
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Posted by Jennifer Lee on June 28, 2012 6 Comments
Healthy zucchini muffins were the pick of the week in
our new food adventure. A tasty treat for kids (and adults)!
I’m a sucker for a warm
basket of fresh baked muffins. Everything about them feels cozy. They are fun
to make and even more fun to enjoy cuddled up with my kiddos on a leisurely
Saturday morning. You can imagine my absolute delight when my new food
adventurers decided to make zucchini our new food of the week. A perfect
opportunity for healthy zucchini muffins!
Feature Recipe: Healthy Zucchini Muffins
Finding an easy recipe for healthy
zucchini muffins was a snap! I took a wonderful family recipe for
zucchini bread from The Naptime Chef, and tweaked it a little – adding whole-wheat
flour and grapeseed oil. My 5 year old loved these tasty little tidbits, but my
daughter didn't like the texture of the grated zucchini in my first batch.
So I whipped up another version with pureed zucchini. My strategy wasn’t to
“hide” the veggie, she cut and pureed the zucchini herself, but rather to
change the texture to get my daughter to give it a try. It worked!
Healthy Zucchini Muffins
Adapted from The Naptime Chef
Prep time: 10
minutes
Cook time:
about 20 minutes
Makes 24
muffins
Ingredients:
2 cups whole-wheat flour
1 ½ tsp baking
soda
¾ tsp baking
powder
1 tsp kosher
salt
3 ½ tsp
cinnamon
3 eggs
½ cup grapeseed
oil
½ cup
applesauce
1 ½ cups sugar
2 medium
zucchinis, pureed
2 tsp vanilla
extract
Directions:
1) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a muffin tin
with baking cups. I have fallen in love with silicon baking cups
– they make
perfect muffins (every time!) and are a breeze to use. When using the silicon
cups, spray lightly with oil.
2) Sift together your dry ingredients – flour, baking
soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon.
3) Chop then puree the zucchini.
4) In a mixer, stir together your wet ingredients –
eggs, oil, applesauce, zucchini puree, vanilla, and sugar.
5) In small batches, pour the dry ingredients into
the wet ingredients. Stir gently.
6) Pour batter into muffin tins. Fill each cup about ¾ of the
way.
7) Bake about 20 minutes, or until the tops spring
back when touched lightly.
Crunch a Color Kids Vote: Mmmarvelous muffins!
What we liked: I was thrilled that the pureed version of this recipe turned out to be
a winner for my picky eater. The muffins were a wholesome treat, and will make
a great lunchbox snack.
* Do you have a favorite recipe for healthy zucchini
muffins?
* What other ways do you like to prepare zucchini?
* Have you ever tried zucchini flowers?
Next up: Next
week marks the halfway point in our 52 New Foods adventure. Be sure to tune in
to see what fun new food ideas we have in store.
Craving more new recipes to try? Catch up on last
week’s recipe: Friendship Garden Soup.
About the author: Jennifer Tyler Lee is a mom
of two children and the creator of Crunch a Color™ -- the
award-winning game that makes healthy eating fun. Like most parents, she
struggled to get her kids to eat healthy, balanced meals, so she decided to
make it into a healthy eating game and she’s
giving back to support non-profit children’s nutrition programs including Jamie
Oliver’s Food Revolution and FoodCorps. Watch her picky eaters tell the story of how they turned into healthy eaters playing the game.
Follow @crunchacolor on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest to tune into Crunch a Color's healthy eating adventure
and Jennifer’s tips and kid-friendly, easy recipes.
Read More
Posted by Jennifer Lee on June 17, 2012 0 Comments
Inspired by Michelle
Obama’s garden book, American Grown, a group of elementary school kids create a
community lunch that brings together garden fresh veggies, good friends, and a
healthy meal even picky eaters will love.
One of the most effective ways to get kids eating (and
enjoying) vegetables is to get them out in the garden: growing, picking, and
preparing their own food. That’s old news for many, including my picky eaters.
For months our food adventures have focused on
finding new foods to try from our garden or the local farmers’ market. It’s
been an effective strategy for getting my picky eaters to eat healthy and try
new foods, and a great source of Crunch a Color™ bonus points at our family
table.
A call to action from First Lady Michelle Obama brought a
new twist to our weekly food challenge, and sparked an idea for my 8 year old.
As part of her mission to get kids eating healthy, Michelle
Obama issued a healthy lunchtime challenge to kids
across the country. The goal: design a kid-inspired, healthy lunch recipe. Like
most kids, there’s nothing more fun for my daughter than spending an afternoon
with friends, so she decided to turn Michelle Obama’s challenge into just that.
The invitation to each child was simple: bring a favorite
fresh vegetable from your garden and join us for an afternoon of cooking
“Friendship Garden Soup.” In a garden get-together worthy of the classic tale,
Stone Soup, my daughter’s friends gathered for an afternoon of chopping,
dicing, sautéing, simmering and sipping a delicious soup together. For the
recipe she created, check out Friendship Garden Soup.
“My idea for
Friendship Garden Soup came from a book I read when I was little. The book is
called Stone Soup and tells the story of villagers who bring food to make a
soup with a stone in it. They learned to make something by sharing everything
they had. So I thought that it would be nice to invite my friends to share
vegetables from their own gardens. When you share it makes everything better” –
Catherine, age 8
The best part of this activity was how a community of
friends came together to create something special – and each person’s
contribution (no matter the size) was important. One brought oregano from her
garden, infusing a beautiful herbal flavor into the dish. Another found rainbow
carrots at her local farmers’ market, adding playful color and crunch. My
daughter added cauliflower, a new food favorite from our school garden. My son added a “magic leaf” – a small
bay leave that we ceremoniously add to all of our homemade soups to magically
turn our ingredients into a tasty dish. Each child contributed something different
to the soup to add to its unique flavor, in the same way that each friend
brings something unique and special to my daughter’s life.
Who knows whether my daughter’s recipe will win Michelle
Obama’s healthy lunchtime challenge. But in the end, the journey was worth
every minute. Bringing friends together for a laughter-filled afternoon,
enjoying fresh vegetables (familiar and new) grown from our gardens, and
celebrating the joy of cooking and eating together. That’s a winning recipe in
my family cookbook.
Are your kids more likely to try new foods when they come
from the garden?
Does a visit to a local farmers’ market result in the same
positive changes in eating habits?
If you only have space for a small planter, which vegetables
would you plant with your kids?
About the author: Jennifer Tyler Lee is a mom
of two children and the creator of Crunch a Color™ -- the
award-winning game that makes healthy eating fun. Like most parents, she
struggled to get her kids to eat healthy, balanced meals, so she decided to
make it into a healthy eating game and she’s
giving back to support non-profit children’s nutrition programs including Jamie
Oliver’s Food Revolution and FoodCorps. Watch her picky eaters tell the story of how they turned into healthy eaters playing the game.
Follow @crunchacolor on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest to tune into Crunch a Color's healthy eating
adventure and Jennifer’s tips and kid-friendly, easy recipes.
Read More
Adapted from The Naptime Chef
