source: eyeliam

For this month’s Eat Well, Spend Less theme, we’re talking about kids in the kitchen…

Although I’m learning to enjoy my time in the kitchen, I still find it a bit stressful. I have to really focus and concentrate so that I don’t make stupid mistakes, and things that might seem obvious to someone with plenty of cooking experience often trip me up.

When you add four little girls to that mix who want to help, it often results in frustration for all of us.

And yet I want to have them in the kitchen with me — to help give them the skills and experience early, to bond over the meals we’re preparing and so that they can have a new appreciation for the food that we eat.

So, how do I balance these two things?

Surprisingly, it was my two-year-old daughter, who is affectionately known as “The Tyrant”, who taught me the answer.

Feeling left out when her big sisters go outside to play in the afternoons, she’s often stuck inside with me.  To make this time special for her and not focus on what she’s missing out on, I started inviting her to help me with a variety of chores…sorting and folding laundry, cleaning up toys and, yes, cooking dinner.

And I realized that having just one 2-year-old in the kitchen to focus on — something that’s never happened in our house before because our two year old’s have always had a baby sister until this one! — is so much easier than even having two of the older girls in there.

One at a Time

While there are moms who are much better at managing multiple kids in the kitchen, I realized that, for me, sticking to just one helper at a time is the answer. Rather than trying to carry on multiple conversations and delegate jobs fairly to multiple children, one of my girls can help me each step of the way all by herself. It’s much more peaceful and becomes a treasured time for just the two of us.

As far as making sure everybody has a turn, I’m not big on following set schedules or rotations because life isn’t always fair and things don’t always work out in perfect order. Instead, I’ll invite one of the girls to help me in the kitchen, keeping in mind what other one-on-one time we’ve had recently, who may need extra mommy time that day and a million other factors. It’s not a perfect system (more like an anti-system…), but it works for us!

Teach Independent Skills

Another thing that’s really helped is a focus on teaching my girls skills that they can then do independently as we’re cooking together. Cracking a raw egg (or slicing a hard-boiled egg), cutting tomatoes, peeling carrots and measuring ingredients are actually really helpful when we’re making a meal, so it’s worth investing some time in teaching these skills so that my older girls can help prepare egg salad or a dinner salad, add and mix ingredients in a bowl and more.

Let Them Do Easy Tasks

Even my four year old can serve snacks to her sisters, and these kind of easy tasks are a great no-stress way to get kids involved in the kitchen and give them confidence for future tasks.

Easy tasks in our house include things like:

• serving cookies, crackers and whole pieces of fruit
• setting the table
• getting ingredients out (and putting them away)
• spreading peanut butter on bread or crackers

Invite Them to Keep You Company Even When They Can’t Help

Sometimes when I’m trying a new dish, I just can’t have the girls assisting because it’s too overwhelming forme. But that doesn’t mean they’re banned from the kitchen entirely. Instead, one of them will crawl up at the breakfast bar with something to color, and we chat while I’m cooking. They still get to spend time with mom, see the work that goes into preparing food and learn about various processes, ingredient choices, etc.

We’re all learning to enjoy and treasure our time in the kitchen together!

For more tips on involving your kids in the kitchen, check out the other Eat Well, Spend Less bloggers:

• Aimee from Simple Bites
• Amy from Kingdom First Mom
• Carrie from Denver Bargains
• Jessica from Life as Mom
• Katie from Good Life Eats
• Katie from Kitchen Stewardship
• Shaina from Food for My Family
• Tammy from Tammy’s Recipes

Do your kids help in the kitchen? How do you make that time stress-free for your family?

	Mandi Ehman is the founder and publisher behind Life…Your Way and the co-author of All in Good Time, as well as a wife and the homeschooling mom to four beautiful girls. She lives with her family on a little slice of heaven in wild, wonderful West Virginia and loves coffee, chocolate, easy meals, beautiful things and minimalist spaces.

Overcoming the Stress of Having Kids in the Kitchen {Eat Well, Spend Less} is a post from Life Your Way

© 2010-2012 Purple Martin Press, LLC | All rights reserved - This feed is provided for the convenience of Food Your Way subscribers. Any reproduction of the content within this feed is strictly prohibited. If you are reading this content elsewhere, please send an email to contact@yourway.net to let us know. Thanks.

source: MalisaPrice.com

Today I’m participating in the Ultimate Blog Swap. You’ll find me posting over at Christian Mommy Blogger about Baby Steps to Cooking from Scratch, and I’m excited to welcome Malisa from MalisaPrice.com to Life Your Way:

My hubster, Anthony, and I recently visited New York Citywhere we met Liza and her family. They opened their home to us and Liza served the most delicious brownies. She said they were really easy and generously gave me the recipe.

Liza’s original recipe called for a doctored-up brownie mix. I decided to use her fancy extras for a batch of brownies made from scratch. It took me four tries to perfect the brownies (hopefully our waistlines won’t suffer)!

They really are easy once you have a recipe to follow.

source: MalisaPrice.com

Liza’s Brownies

**adapted from Suzanne’s Best Brownies

Ingredients

• 10 tbsp. butter, unsalted (1 1/4 sticks)
• 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup plus 2 tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs and 1 egg yolk
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 (10-12 oz.) bag chocolate chips (I used semisweet, use whatever you’d like)
• 1 cup pecans, chopped

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8 x 8 baking pan with cooking spray. You’ll also need a 9 x 13 pan for a water bath.

Combine the butter, cocoa, sugar, and salt in a heat proof bowl or double-boiler pan. Melt over simmering hot water, stirring occasionally. Be careful not to let the water boil or the chocolate might burn. When the butter is melted and the chocolate is smooth, remove from heat. Set aside to cool for 5 minutes.

If you used a double-boiler, pour the mixture into a large mixing bowl.

Using a wooden spoon, add the vanilla extract to the chocolate mixture. Add the eggs, one at a time, stirring in between each addition.

Once the batter is shiny, add the flour and mix just until combined. Stir the entire mixture for about a minute with the wooden spoon. Add the chocolate chips and pecans. Pour the mixture into the 8 x 8 pan.

Place the 8 x 8 pan in the 9 x 13 pan. Add hot water to the larger pan, enough that it covers most of the smaller pan. Be very careful transferring the pans to and from the oven.

Bake for 50 minutes, until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Remove the brownie pan from the water bath and set on a wire rack to cool. The top of the brownies will be crisp and the inside will be moist. A perfect combination. Liza recommends freezing the brownies and serving with ice cream. We prefer to eat them right out of the pan.

Enjoy!

See all of the Ultimate Blog Swap participants here.

What’s your favorite way to doctor up brownies? Do you start from a box mix or from scratch?

	Malisa blogs about her experiences as a married woman and a follower of Christ in the 21st Century at MalisaPrice.com, where she hopes to encourage and entertain her readers. Her favorite things include cooking and baking, although I modify almost every recipe to make it more healthy and tasty, and she’s also a craft enthusiast.

Liza’s Delicious Brownies {Made from Scratch} is a post from Life Your Way

© 2010-2012 Purple Martin Press, LLC | All rights reserved - This feed is provided for the convenience of Food Your Way subscribers. Any reproduction of the content within this feed is strictly prohibited. If you are reading this content elsewhere, please send an email to contact@yourway.net to let us know. Thanks.

When I mentioned in passing a few weeks ago that I was thinking about doing a no-sugar challenge, I got a lot of comments from readers who, like me, know that giving up sugar is something they need to do for their health. I’ve been debating doing this — or, more accurately, procrastinating — since December, and so next month I’m finally going to bite the bullet and give up sugar for four weeks.

The Break the Sugar Habit Challenge launches on 6/2, and I’d love to have you join me. I’ll be sharing more information and tips the week before the challenge starts so that you’ll have plenty of time to prepare yourself, your family and your kitchen.

In our home, we’ll be focusing on eliminating all refined sugars plus natural sweeteners. Our plan once the challenge is over is to stick to natural sweeteners, but because we want to break our bad habits and sweet tooth addictions, we’ll be eliminating sweets altogether for the duration of the challenge.

Your family may choose to eliminate refined sugar and use natural sweeteners instead. That’s okay! The purpose of this challenge is to set a goal and encourage one another along the way, but that doesn’t mean your goal needs to be the same as mine!

Break the Sugar Habit Challenge Schedule

Each Monday I’ll post an article about the current week’s theme:

5/28 – This first week we’ll be looking at why you would even want to go sugar-free and what the Break the Sugar Habit Challenge will look like for our family.

6/4 – If you’re already convinced that the challenge is a good idea but not sure how to actually make it work, this week is for you. We’ll be talking about how to successfully cut sugar from your diet and break a sugar addiction. I’ll share tons of meal and snack ideas.

6/11 – As the challenge progresses, we’ll focus on more sugar-free recipes. Because our family is eliminating all sweeteners for the month, I’ll be sharing recipes that don’t require any sweetener at all.

6/18 – I’m hoping that by two weeks into the challenge I’ll already be seeing and feeling some of the benefits of eliminating refined sugar that many other people have talked about. We’ll talk about the short- and long-term benefits of eliminating refined sugar.

6/25 – To end on a high note, we’ll talk about what life will look like post-challenge and tackle issues like dealing with sugar at social and family events and how to substitute natural sugar alternatives for refined sugar.

Each Wednesday I’ll follow up with a long list of links so that you can do more research, hear more inspiring stories from people who’ve already broken the sugar habit and find plenty of recipes to keep your family well fed throughout the month.

And each Friday we’ll do a Break the Sugar Habit Challenge check in, where I’ll share our family’s struggles and successes and you can do the same! I’ll open up a linky for anyone who wants to blog their experiences during the challenge, and you’ll be able to share your stories and experiences in the comments as well. I’d love to have you join us whether you have a blog or not!

To Participate in the Challenge

Between now and 6/4, you’ll need to:

Decide how your family will participate in the challenge. Will you be eliminating all sweeteners? Just refined sugar? Are you going to participate for the whole month or just a week or two?

Clean out your fridge and pantry. For the greatest level of success, I highly suggest packing up the sugar in your home so that you’re not tempted to cheat. You may want to finish up any snacks and then pack your ingredients away in a storage bin for the duration of the challenge. I am debating giving away my refined sugar altogether so that I can’t go back to using it once the challenge is over!

Decide on any exceptions. For example, I will still be adding a couple drops of liquid stevia to my daily apple cider vinegar water, although I’ve decided to cut the number from 5 to just 2 so that it’s not too sweet while I’m trying to recalibrate my taste buds. This cheat is worth it to me because I drink ACV for its health benefits, and stevia is a very healthy choice as far as natural sweeteners. My older girls are also attending VBS at my mom’s church during the third week of the challenge. I’ll share more thoughts on this later, but my plan is to limit their sugar consumption that week but not forbid it.

Make food lists. I recommend making lists with as many meal and snack ideas as you can come up with so that you don’t feel discouraged by the limits on your diet during the challenge. I’ll be sharing ideas as well, but the earlier you start on this list, the better position you’ll be in.

“Anything in life worth having is worth working for.” ~Andrew Carnegie

There’s a reason we’re calling this a challenge. No doubt it’s going to be tough — not just at home, but especially when eating with other people. I expect that I’m going to have to fight my cravings, especially at a certain time of the month, and remembering to read labels and watch for hidden sugar will be a whole ‘nother issue.

But I truly believe that finding freedom from my sugar addiction and learning to enjoy food without sugar to prime my tastebuds will be worth it.

Will you join me?

	Mandi Ehman is the founder and publisher behind Life…Your Way and the co-author of All in Good Time, as well as a wife and the homeschooling mom to four beautiful girls. She lives with her family on a little slice of heaven in wild, wonderful West Virginia and loves coffee, chocolate, easy meals, beautiful things and minimalist spaces.

Announcing the Break the Sugar Habit Challenge! is a post from Life Your Way

© 2010-2012 Purple Martin Press, LLC | All rights reserved - This feed is provided for the convenience of Food Your Way subscribers. Any reproduction of the content within this feed is strictly prohibited. If you are reading this content elsewhere, please send an email to contact@yourway.net to let us know. Thanks.

The following post is from Shaina of Food for My Family and Olmanson Photography:

source: Shaina Olmanson | Food for My Family

I happen to know that Mandi is going to talk about cooking with her kids in a week, and while I have shared my personal feelings and a few strategies for doing just that, I thought I’d take this opportunity to tell you a little bit about what comes before the cooking in our home.

We’ve gone over how important I think it is to involve the kids from beginning to end, which means plenty of time spent perusing supermarket aisles and farmers market stands kids right there with me. However, in our home, we view the gardening part as equally important.

But I don’t have space!

I’ve had this problem before, too. We lived in an apartment, and then we moved to a rental property where we didn’t have control over the yard. Still, a few small pots filled with herbs taught the basics of gardening: Seed to plant to food. That is the lesson I’m going for. Where exactly does our food come from?

Why is growing a plant important?

This idea becomes even more important as you live in small spaces where the kids aren’t exposed to it on an annual sort of basis, if ever. I think how lucky my kids are, living near the state university’s farm campus, how a museum down the street serves to show them just how life was like 100 years ago. They are privileged, for sure.

source: Shaina Olmanson | Food for My Family

Without exposure to the ways in which food is grown and harvested, it is easy for kids to take for granted the work that goes into producing food. Even the act of growing a small pot of rosemary can help to teach them how a plant is a living thing that must be cared for grown before we can pick it and eat something. This small lesson can serve to teach gratitude for the food that sits in front of us, and the act of growing something yourself can help curb those fears of new food.

Will growing our food mean our kids eat everything?!

I regret to tell you the answer is no. However, this process of teaching your children about the food you eat can help to broaden their horizons and make them more receptive of new foods that you might want to introduce them to.

I remember when my eldest was four. She was right at the age where asserting your hatred of certain foods becomes pretty common. Children want to have a voice, and so for Kiera that meant that all flecks of anything on food were “spicy” and not to be eaten. Black pepper? Spicy. Minced parsley? Spicy.

source: Shaina Olmanson | Food for My Family

It was her exposure to garden herbs that won the spice war, teaching her different fragrances for the different herbs, giving her the responsibility of watering them, having her help stir them into dishes. It was educating her that not all flecks of spice in food equaled spicy on the tongue.

How do I get started?

This process doesn’t have to be difficult. Whatever area you have will work. A small Ikea pot with a bit of potting soil and one solitary herb plant can be a great start to getting your kids growing. If you already have a garden, encourage the kids to pick a single vegetable that they’re responsible for. My kids’ favorites to grow are: tomatoes, carrots, peppers, cucumbers, funny-shaped squash (crooked neck and patty pan). Bring them to the nursery or market to pick out their plant, let them get their hands dirty digging the hole, and teach them how to check to see how wet the dirt should be so they know when to water it.

It is a simple lesson that will pay off in far more ways than one.

Did you garden with your parents growing up? What do you remember about the experience?

	Shaina Olmanson is the home cook and photographer behind Food for My Family and Olmanson Photography, a daily contributor to Babble.com’s Family Kitchen Blog and the editor of the food channel for Lifetime Moms. Shaina can usually be found in one of three places: cooking, at the computer or behind the camera.

Gardening with Your Kids is a post from Life Your Way

© 2010-2012 Purple Martin Press, LLC | All rights reserved - This feed is provided for the convenience of Food Your Way subscribers. Any reproduction of the content within this feed is strictly prohibited. If you are reading this content elsewhere, please send an email to contact@yourway.net to let us know. Thanks.