Ideas, recipes and things to inspire when food is on the agenda
With Celebrations boxes, mince pies and over-indulgences put away for another year, Food Journal #3 is a little healthier.
Monster Mash!
Teach Your Monster: Adventurous Eating encourages children aged three to six to try new fruit and vegetables in a fun, tactile and engaging way using the five senses; touch, smell, taste, sight and hearing. Children create their own monster in the game, and guided by Bub and friends; they embark on a journey to explore different foods using their senses. The game features more than 40 fruit and vegetables from various cultures, including many everyday staples such as apples, potatoes, and peas. Launches 9 January £2.99
teachyourmonster.org
Go Wild!
Lune + Wild delivers handmade organic baby food saving you time as you get back to routine this January. Choose from collections for babies and toddlers which include weaning pots, finger foods and meal pots. From £3.80.
Eating for Wellness
31% of 2-16 year olds are overweight or obese and teenagers are deficient in many key nutrients presenting in health issues including depression, anxiety, poor cognition, behavioural disorders, and other related health issues. Nutritionist Tina Load-Caulk has packed Eat Well and Feel Great, The Teenager’s Guide to Nutrition and Health with tips, advice and recipes to help improve the way kids feel and to teach them how to develop a healthy relationship with food. Haven’t got a teen yet? The tips and advice works for all of us! £13.49
Sho time
Back to school and nursery and some chilly winter months to come you might want to have a ready supply of hot food for lunch boxes. These food containers from Sho can be used to keep food hot in the winter or cold in the summer for soups, salads, pasta, and even ice cream! Stainless steel spork is included. £19.99.
Tasting Menus for Kids
Chantelle Nicholson, the multi-award winning chef and founder of sustainable restaurant, Apricity, has launched ‘Culinary Kids’; a tasting menu for youngsters. The accessible five course menu will help children expand their taste buds, learn more about where food comes from and explore seasonality. During the February half term Apricity will also offer learning and cooking sessions for kids in partnership with charity School Food Matters. All ticket proceeds from the learning sessions will go to the charity which provides food education programmes to schools and aimed at improving children’s access to healthy, sustainable food during their time at school.
Need a healthy snack for post school hunger?
Qualified nutritionist, Audrey Schaerrer’s book, The Ultimate Seasonal Lunchbox, contains more than 50 recipes to help when you’ve run out of ideas. Created for lunchboxes, the recipes suit for between clubs teas, or after school snacks, each one designed to be healthy, fun and a complete balanced meal. The following recipe is taken from the Autumn collection, we can’t wait for Winter, Spring and Summer!
Courgette Cakes with Minty Cucumber Dip
Ingredients:
350g grated courgettes
1 potato, boiled and roughly mashed
100g feta cheese
a handful of finely chopped spring onion
a bunch of mint and dill, finely chopped
1 tablespoon black sesame seeds
100g panko breadcrumbs
2 eggs, beaten
sunflower oil
150g good-quality tzatziki
Method:
Place the grated courgettes into a sieve and sprinkle with a very generous pinch of salt and leave them to drain for about an hour. Place the courgettes in a tea towel and squeeze all the liquid out.
Meanwhile, place the cooled potato mash in a mixing bowl with the remaining ingredients, apart from the oil, adding the grated courgettes at the end. Stir the ingredients until evenly combined.
Using your hands, shape the mixture into small cakes and set aside in the refrigerator for 30minutes.
To coat the cakes, roll first in the egg mixture and then in the breadcrumbs, frying them in batches in the sunflower oil for two to three minutes until goldenbrown.
For the tzatziki dip, simply stir some finely chopped mint in good-quality ready-made tzatziki and sprinkle with olive oil.
