Food With Kids » Good Food

Eat Right Here – food choices and sustainability.

Kay Gibbons — Fri, 20 Mar 2015 05:55:44 +0000

While I am in tune with sustainability issues it has often seemed a bit remote from ‘everyday’ for me – probably a bad admission. Dr. Jennifer Wilkins, Cornell University, USA is especially interested in food choices for sustainability; she has advised on policy and written widely on this topic, including a regular column in the US press entitled ‘The Food Citizen’. Dr. Wilkins inspires inspires with her ability to take sustainability from the macro- to a personal level. She raises the thought of ‘luxus’ consumption and its personal consequences: obesity and life-style diseases, impact on the food resources available to others and on the environmental impact on emissions, water and power usage. Part of her story is the growing interest in the US for Community Supported Agriculture and she quotes a 500% increase in Farmers’ Markets in the US from 1994 to 2012 (Farmer’s Markets in Australia are not all accredited but I suspect the increase has been greater in Australia). Among her mass of information the most engaging aspect for me is the challenge to develop a ‘personal food policy’. This means including decisions about individual choices of what to eat, what and where to purchase, and consideration of waste.

A ‘personal food policy’ could include:

the balance between plant-based and the resource-intensive animal-based foods
‘food miles’ (food-kilometres never sounds right to me)
provenance of foods and seasonality – looking at Farmers’ Markets and local options
targeting food wastage (below the horrifying 40% average for retail food purchases).

More changes on the way for me.

Good starting points for local buying:

http://www.organicfooddirectory.com.au/general-issues/community-food-systems/community-supported-agriculture.html

http://www.whitehat.com.au Guide to markets in most states.

http://www.sze.hu/fk/kornyezet/Cikkek14/Luxus-consumption-Wasting-food-resources-through-overeating_2006_Agriculture-and-Human-Values.pdf

Easy meals for toddlers – all done in 15 minutes

Kay Gibbons — Fri, 20 Mar 2015 05:16:59 +0000

Often you need a meal for gourmet mini when you will not be cooking for everyone else and the left-over stock is empty. Rather than resorting to the ‘fish finger’ there are a few options which are

quick, easy and good for the conscience. Without scratching for further ideas I came up with five basics – use whatever vegetables and extras you have at the time. All done in under 15 minutes.

Five quick meals for toddlers:

Scrambled egg with baby spinach. Roughly shred washed spinach and stir through toward the end of cooking. If you are cooking the egg in the microwave do this when you stir part-waythrough. Serve with Turkish bread. If you any left-over roasted vegetables you’ll have a frittata.
Mini-pizza. Use pita bread or a halved English muffin. If you’re using a muffin toast it lightly on one side. Smear with prepared tomato pasta sauce, add sliced tomato, grated cheese and afew snips of bacon if you like. Grill, or bake in a hot oven. A few leaves of fresh basil are good if it is at arm’s length.
Pasta with vegetables. While the pasta cooks (or the left-over reheats) lightly cook some broccoli florets, sliced zucchini, shredded brussel sprout. Stir through the pasta with a spoonful ofprepared tomato-based sauce or passata. Good if sprinkled with cheese and baked. You could add half a very small can of tuna.
Fried rice – using a tub of purchased pre-cooked rice. Make a skinny omelet in the pan first. Then stir fry a spring onion, some chopped cooked chicken or some bacon, and then the ricewith some frozen peas. When hot toss through a little soy sauce (low salt if you’re fussed about salt). Top with shredded omelet.
Jacket potato – a toddler-size potato cooks in a few minutes in the micro-wave (make sure you cut a cross in the top first to avoid a big clean-up). Open up the cross and top withbaked beans, or other drained and rinsed beans and some passata.

Poppy’s home meal service

Kay Gibbons — Fri, 20 Mar 2015 05:08:52 +0000

One of my last tasks before leaving for the UK for several weeks was to stock up on meals for 15-month old Poppy, the ‘gourmet mini’. Her Mami is back at work and having home-cooked meals ready helps when life is extra busy. The cooking was chaotic pleasure; five dishes happening at once, chopping, stirring, and watching.

There was a repeat of the popular chicken ‘nuggets’ from Emily Dupuche’s Food babies love, then mini- frittata, roasted pumpkin with a scatter of home-grown thyme, lamb kofta in tomato sauce, Nigella’s lamb keema (from Feast), and a mix of grated carrot and zucchini. Packed in daily amounts, some for the next few days and some for the freezer, there was enough to cover the full two weeks, with some family meals and left-overs. All that will be needed is some additional vegetables, maybe some pasta or rice. Very satisfying, great fun, and some for me for that night as well.

An exciting part of the venture was the realisation that my 35-year old Breville food processor needs replacing. Still going, but too small and very worn looking. Not one to throw items away while they are still doing the job I am looking forward now to the choice of the Cuisinart, the Magimix, the Kitchen-Aid.