Ezra chopping lettuce for taco salad. Canaan slicing roasted peppers for fish taco night.
I was so excited last week when Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution started showing on TV. I am a huge JO Fan and have followed his career, including his food revolution in England.
His food revolution, if you have no idea what I am writing about, is his crusade to improve school lunches and the way kids and families eat overall. Very insightful and educational. Canaan and Ezra have been watching it with us and are equally as intrigued by the show, and Jamie.
I feel we eat really well as a family. We make about 80-90% of our food from scratch and what we buy already made is chosen with much care and attention. With that said, my kids are not above asking for McDonald's on occasion or a Wendy's hamburger. And there are those times that we will "splurge" (although eating awful food isn't really a splurge) and get fast food.
I enjoy cooking many unique and out-of-the-ordinary meals. I like to expose the kids to as many flavors as I can and join them in the process of making the meal. But I am also realizing that making a meatball sub or chicken fingers at home is important too. Showing the boys that "fast food" made at home is healthier but more importantly tastes even better! Both boys love our rendition of fettuccine Alfredo~ made with homemade pasta that the boys help roll out and a lighter cream sauce they can help whisk. Both love buffalo chicken fingers made with homemade breadcrumbs and tossed in a healthy buffalo sauce.
Getting the boys in the kitchen cooking with Mike and I has been the most vital element to their enjoyment of food. When Canaan was a little over a year old I would put him on the kitchen island and give him a bowl, measuring spoons and a whisk along with all sorts of dry ingredients. He would sit there while I made dinner making his own creative dishes. By the age of 3 he was making his own scrambled eggs and helping with most meals.
And as most of you know, at the age of 7 he now owns a marshmallow company and is constantly coming up with new creative ideas for meals and treats.
If you watch the clip from the link above, you'll see Jamie discussing how many kids nowadays don't even know how to use a fork and knife. So many foods are finger foods that children don't need utensils to eat. Very shocking and sad indeed.
The show has given me a renewed purpose to continue feeding our boys well and stay as far away from the processed stuff as we can.
Thanks to people like Jamie who take on these kinds of crusades!