Friday, January 22, 2010

Healthy Snacks, Kids And The Joy Of Proportionate Response

I pride myself on providing healthy foods for the kids. I don't mean my kids only eat perfect foods, or anything. I'm not the food nazi that many of my fellow Seattlites are. And trust me in Seattle you see some real nutcases with food. My kids have an occasional doughnut from Mighty-O, or a cookie or Jaime made cupcake. Food is fun, we shouldn't flip out. And though my kids are vegan, if Viri borrows a cheese cracker and eats it on the playground I'm not going to have a fit. Life is too short.

All told, however, my kids eat well. It's not that hard. Check out the picture of Pretty Sue having lunch. Our lunch today was walnuts and carrots and hummus. They loved it. (Viri: "Look at Arkaedi going to town on her food! She's eating and eating!") I did very little. I put out some fresh organic carrots and walnuts, and popped a lid off a container of hummus from the store. It was easy. And kids love it. I don't understand why some people don't feed their children this kind of thing; unless the food nazis have inspired a reaction against it. Or parents really buy into commercials. Are either of those things true? I don't know. Try these simple meals. Kids will thank you.

I stuck black beans in the crock pot for dinner. I have the rice cooker primed. Brown rice and beans for dinner, and they'll enjoy it. It didn't take me any energy or time. I may, if I feel fancy, saute a few tofurky brats in olive oil with garlic and toss them in the pot. That'll be mostly for me.

I really hope that we can start a parent cooking class as part of Jaime's practice. It'd be really great to provide the resource, especially as a parent who isn't that much of a cook. I'd like to show them that you don't need to be a wonderful cook, just use some real veggies and whole grains and it'll end up healthy, pretty much whatever you do.

And no need to be a pretentious food nazi either. Kids who eat well won't have a heart attack if they eat a few chocolate chips either. And Mighty-O doughnuts are good for the soul.

3 comments:

sarah said...

pasta is junk food. so is air!

...my captcha for this post was pyros. now i must burn something. i'm going to go burn our junk food!

Ryan Beggar said...

if pasta is junk food are donuts crack? a knife to the gut?
that's the problem with ridiculous overstatements. you hit the ceiling too fast

Unknown said...

This reminds me of a conversation Yoshiki and I had recently. He was horrified to learn that many parents buy only canned baby food for their kids. He was practically having fits when I told him about some parents I know that think it's ok that their very young children eat from McD's or some other fast food place 'just' once a week. These people delay vaccinations or don't vaccinate at all, regulate what their kids watch, but then turn around and feed them crap food. It's so easy to eat well, if you want too. I need to go and make some hummus now. MMMM.