Well, it’s happened: My eight year old son asked me if he could have his own cooking blog. I guess I should have been flattered, but my first thought was, “Oh nooooo!”
To buy some time, I told him he’d have to come up with three original recipes and posts first. I should have listened to my husband who said he would have made the requirement at least ten posts!
A budding writer (he’s working on a chapter book — part of a trilogy– as well), three posts was a breeze for him. And he’s always coming up with his own creations when he helps me cook anyway. Here’s a favorite from the past:
Jamie’s green bean sushi he named “Bean Bean Sushi”
A couple months ago, he and I were standing in line at a store near a display of trail mix meant to encourage an “impulse buy”. Not surprisingly, he wanted me to buy a package. To put him off, I told him it was too expensive–that it would be cheaper to make it and it would probably be better because we could put whatever we wanted into it.
Of course when we got home he wanted to make some. So we did.
This is what he put into his mix: peanuts, roasted salted almonds, cashews, dried cranberries, chopped dried persimmon (from my mom’s trees in California and dried in her dehydrator), dried apricot, dried coconut, and some chocolate chips. He made a label for the mix:
The good thing about this activity is that he made a healthy snack for himself for the rest of the week. Also, it tasted really great. Kids are more likely to eat whatever they make, so it’s a good opportunity to make nutritious food that will get eaten. Trail mix is the easiest thing in the world to throw together and so much cheaper when you buy the pantry staples in bulk. Try it!
Back to Jamie’s blog idea— it’s called Food Cultures and is under my name (so all comments come to me), but it’s all him. He will write and type his own posts, and the only editing I will do is correct some spelling. He even came up with his own header.
I digitized his sketch and we colored it together in Photoshop.
His first recipe is Reese’s Yogurt. You can view it here.
We’ll see how long his food obsession lasts….
Easy Trail Mix
Throw into a mixing bowl:
Various nuts, such as almonds, cashews, hazelnuts, pecans, walnuts, peanuts, etc.
Various dried fruit, such as dried raisins, cranberries, apricots, pineapple, coconut, mango (chop bigger pieces of dried fruit into raisin sized pieces), etc.
You can add extras like chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, white chocolate chips, even mini marshmallows, depending on how “junky” or “healthy” you want to skew it. Have fun!