We’ve recently started a tradition in our family of a once a month silly dinner night. It got started because the kids were so tired of being told to mind their table manners, so we declared one night a month to be  freer (not completely free) than usual from the usual table manners rules.

It has now migrated into a silly dinner night.

It’s lots of fun and doesn’t have to cost anything more than a regular dinner. We choose a theme for each one. Last night was breakfast for dinner. Next month it will be dessert first.

It’s not easy to get some kids to eat right.

Come to think of it, it’s not easy to get some parents to eat right. We’re the ones who start it a lot of the time, aren’t we?

When you’re at home with the kids all day there’s a lot of pressure to feed them right. You just don’t have the excuse of having been at work outside the house all day for why you’re too tired to cook. Plus you’re there to see what they eat for every meal.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t always make it easy to teach good eating habits. Some kids are pretty resistant to the idea right from the start.

Start Them Off Right

Once you’re past the baby food stage, resist the urge to get a lot of prepackaged foods. It’s more work for you, but if you can cook most foods from scratch or something close to scratch you will have much better control over what your kids eat.

You’ll also be teaching them to appreciate more flavors, as most prepared and prepackaged foods are relatively bland, designed to appeal to the widest possible range of palates. They may also contain artificial colors and various types of sugar, such as high fructose corn syrup, that you are best off trying to minimize in your children’s diets.

Get the Kids Involved in Food Preparation

Most young children love helping in the kitchen. It’s something they can do with you, or at least watch what you do. Make sure you let them help as appropriate.

Kids can tear lettuce for salads, throw chopped vegetables into the bowl, help you measure ingredients and watch you do the actual cooking from a few feet away.

If you have the time, space and inclination, a garden is also a great way to get children interesting in healthy foods. Kids are more likely to enjoy vegetables that they have helped to grow, not to mention the great taste of produce fresh from your own garden.

Make Healthy Fun

Not all healthy food is boring. A common favorite is the fruit smoothie. You throw a variety of fruits, some juice and ice, maybe some honey for sweetener, into a blender and start mixing. Tastes great, very healthy.

You can make it more healthy by adding some vegetables into the mix. Carrot goes well in many cases, as do some leafy greens such as spinach. Just make sure there’s enough fruit to appeal to the kids.

I like to use frozen fruit in my smoothies, as it cuts out the need for ice.

The great thing about smoothies is that you can experiment with them. Berries of all sorts go very well as a general rule, and can easily be bought frozen for much cheaper than they are fresh much of the year. Bananas work very well. And if you want some dairy in there, yogurt adds a wonderful flavor.

What If They Just Don’t Like Healthy Foods?

Not all kids make their parents’ lives so easy, naturally. Some will express distaste for every healthy food you try to offer them.

Some say to disguise the vegetables. Books such as Deceptively Delicious and other titles provide recipes so that you can work vegetables into a wide variety of foods.

That’s not my own favorite method. You aren’t teaching your kids to appreciate vegetables and other healthy foods for their own sakes when you do that. However, if you need to work them in and nothing else is working, it’s a reasonable enough measure to take until you can get something better going.

I came across a very interesting article by Marguerite Manteau-Rao about what families spend their money on at the grocery store. The data came from Nielsen Research, and if you’ve ever looked inside other people’s shopping carts (and quite likely your own), you probably won’t be surprised.

photo by ninjapoodles

People buy a lot of really unhealthy food.

It’s mostly about convenience, I think. Cooking is much easier for most people when they don’t do it from scratch. Not to mention that when you buy canned and processed foods it takes longer for them to spoil, so you just don’t have to think so hard about what’s about to go bad.

There’s also the usual bit about it being cheaper to buy processed foods, which is true to the extent that most people don’t know how to buy healthy foods cheaply, or how to prepare them.

One of the comments on the article directed me to a great resource, through this PDF. They note that the USDA’s Low Cost Food Plan is about $20 per week cheaper than what the average family of 4 spends on food. The plan itself is a bit tedious to read (hey, it’s a government publication, what do you expect?) but it does give examples of what they mean for each food group.

The USDA also has a rather interesting recipe finder. The recipes come from nutrition and health professionals and organizations, but can be rated and reviewed by users. It also lists approximate cost of making the recipe and cost per serving. Obviously these will vary by area and the sales you can find, but it’s nice to know if the recipe is likely to be cheap or expensive to make.

For my family, we gave up buying things like sodas on a regular basis years ago. We get them maybe a couple times a year if company is coming over, but not for regular use. We buy lots of fresh produce (it’s scary that this shows 4% of households not buying fresh produce!), and not too many treats.

Buying more healthy foods has a lot of benefits. There’s just something about having my kids beg me to get them an apple or some sugar snap peas, rather than asking for candy. They enjoy candy, certainly, and the Halloween supply will be here for a long time, but I’d rather encourage the healthy habits.

It’s still challenging at times dealing with everything the kids see on TV and want to try. A simple “no” works a lot of the time. Teaching children that no really does mean no is not an easy task, but if you’re consistent you can do it. Or you can give in, but only on things you suspect the kids won’t like too well anyhow. I’ve done that one successfully.

It’s probably easier with my kids just because we started them out this way. If you’re trying to change your family’s habits, I don’t doubt that it will be much more difficult. Children build their tastes so early, and some of it is just inborn, as near as I can tell. Otherwise I wouldn’t have one peanut butter fanatic, and one who cannot stand the taste of peanut butter.

If you’re trying to change your family’s eating habits for the better, don’t make the switch too quickly. Take things a step at the time and steadily introduce healthier foods. We’re all human and we don’t need to be perfect today or any other day.

This is something my kids love to do. Mostly we just use the bread machine, as kneading bread dough is a lot of work, but the final shaping is done by hand because I don’t like the shape of loaf that my machine makes.

To me this is somewhat better than free, once you have a bread machine. You’ll save money on bread and know exactly what you put into it. Bread has gone up in price in the past year or so. Homemade bread can be very cheap to make.

It can even be something of a science experiment. Yeast can be interesting to watch grow over a few hours. You can make your own starter for sourdough… although that takes a number of days. It’s easy to get the kids involved in checking on and feeding the starter. I wouldn’t suggest having it replace the family pet, of course.

Don’t forget the delightful smell of bread baking. It’s a great way to make the house smell wonderful too.

We’re still on a really tight budget here. There’s just so much to recover from after my husband was out of work for so long. I don’t exactly trust to the stability of his new job either, as it’s in the travel industry. Not exactly prime for this kind of economy.

One thing I do right now is to buy whole chicken, rather than just boneless or bone-in parts. The initial cooking can take a bit of extra effort, but the savings makes it well worthwhile. Sale prices on the whole chickens are less than sale prices on the various parts.

Thank goodness whole doesn’t include head or feet, though! Not quite ready to deal with that much.

One chicken means several meals. The first one is your basic roasted chicken. My favorite is a slow roasted variety that takes about 5 hours in the oven. Not something to do on a really hot day, even though the temperature is low. The chicken is rubbed all over with seasonings, stuffed with garlic and/or onions, and cooked at 250 degrees F. Comes out very tender.

The leftovers are currently sufficient for dinner a second night, although I don’t expect that trend to last much longer, as the kids are getting bigger. But they can also be used for lunches. Leftover chicken goes great in salads, for example.

Next comes the homemade chicken soup. I don’t necessarily make this right away; the leftovers go just fine in the freezer so I can save them for when the weather is right for chicken soup.

These meals come out to be very inexpensive. They also taste really great. The amount of chicken soup I make in each batch lasts for several meals, and my daughter has often enjoyed it in a Thermos at school. Sometimes I even freeze excess.

A little time cooking can be a great activity for parents to do with kids. You just keep the kids’ parts age appropriate, and of course make it fun. Although some kids do enjoy helping make dinner on a regular basis.

Cookies are the classic choice. If you don’t have a favorite recipe, one of the beautiful things about the Internet is how many ways you can look for one you’d like to try. The number of variations on the classic chocolate chip cookie alone is pretty amazing.

You can make some treats a bit healthier. My kids love my whole wheat waffles, for example. These freeze well, so you can make them any time of day. Reheat in the microwave and you have a good breakfast. My kids, at least, don’t notice the whole wheat at all.

The weather is hot, and so the kids are always asking for something cold to snack on. And of course if I want them to go outside, I’d better be ready to cool them off during or after. Otherwise they won’t give me any peace to do anything else.

Not to mention how miserable they get. A drink of cold water is satisfying when you’re hot, but not nearly as fun as getting a treat.

On my budget, I don’t like to buy a lot of popsicles and such. They add up too fast. But making treats at home is really easy. All you need are some popsicle molds and ingredients for popsicles. Other treats are also easy to make.

Fruit Smoothie Popsicles

Fruit smoothies make great cold, healthy treats, but they also make great popsicles. After you’ve poured them some smoothies, pour any excess into popsicle molds. They’ll freeze up pretty quick, and are just as healthy as the original smoothie.

Smoothies are easy to make. I take some frozen fruit, apple juice, a banana, carrot or whatever else looks fresh and likely to taste good in the smoothie. You just need enough juice to keep the mixer going, which is a bit lower than the top of the frozen fruit once you’ve put it into the blender, in many cases. The more liquid you add, the more runny the smoothie. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, so don’t worry too much.

Add some honey while the blender is running. If you add it while the blender has stopped, it will solidify too quickly and may just stick to the sides of the blender, not mixing into the smoothie. A little sweetening really helps most smoothies, and I’d sooner add honey than sugar.

Fruit Juice Popsicles

You don’t have to get all fancy and make a smoothie to make homemade popsicles. You can just freeze some fruit juice in the molds. Trust me, the kids won’t mind that there aren’t chunks of real fruit in them.

Then again, fruit juice with small chunks of fresh fruit do work.

Frozen Yogurt or Pudding

Take either of these and put into popsicle molds. To save on packaging I suggest buying the larger containers of yogurt, but if you have the single serve style you can try just adding a popsicle stick to these. Just remember that’s rather a large popsicle.

Similarly, I suggest just making the pudding at home. You can use the instant mix or be really brave and mix it from scratch.

Snow Cones and Shaved Ice

These were a huge hit at my daughter’s birthday party earlier this year… bigger than the birthday cake itself.

A shave ice maker doesn’t cost all that much, nor do the flavors. We experimented with blending some frozen berries with brown sugar and water to use in place of the syrups you buy in the stores, but these are much, much harder to shave. The flavor is good, though. I’m some concerned about whether this might wear out our shave ice maker too quickly, though.

Ice Cream in a Bag

You can see the instructions for ice cream in a bag by following this link. It’s pretty simple but I will warn you that five minutes of shaking can be a very long time for children, even with ice cream as a reward.

Of course if you have an ice cream maker you can just use that. The kids find waiting for the machine to finish to be pretty exciting too, but their hands don’t get tired or cold… unless you have the old hand cranked style.

Frozen Grapes and Other Fruits

Some fruits freeze delightfully. Grapes, for example. Get a bunch, rinse them off and either remove from the stems or don’t. Once they’re frozen they’ll still come off pretty well, so you can decide how lazy you want to be with this one.

We also buy frozen berries, and the kids love them as snacks.

And you can’t forget frozen bananas! The classic way is to put them on a stick and dip them in chocolate first, but you can also slice them thinly before freezing. Just make sure the kids eat them before they melt and turn into goo.

All of these are a lot of fun for the kids, and most are pretty healthy too. Do you have any other cold summer treat ideas?

If you listen much to the news right now, you’ve probably heard some stories about various Costco and Sam’s Club locations rationing rice, flour or oil purchases. You may have also heard about how bad the food situation is in many countries that are poorer than the United States. It’s getting rough out there.  Some countries are limiting or refusing to export rice.

The big question is: How much should you worry?

If you are in the United States, as I am, you probably don’t have too much to worry about, at least so far. There’s not a shortage here. But people are very naturally concerned, just from looking at the worldwide picture.

My own inclination is to keep an eye on things. I’m not ready to stock up heavily… aw heck, I can’t do that very easily since my husband’s still looking for work. But even if we had a little more financial flexibility, I don’t believe I’d be panicking at this point.

For one thing, we grow so much rice we export a lot of it. Even now.

However, I have told my husband I would like to garden more intensively this year, once we know for sure that we aren’t moving. Rice, flour and oil aren’t the only foods that are subject to increased prices. Fresh produce has gone up in a lot of places, and I rarely see things like tomatoes at prices I’m willing to pay anymore.

It’s also educational for the kids. Mine had a great time last summer going out and picking fresh tomatoes to snack on, and they’ve learned a lot about edible leaves… most especially that they always have to ask first to be sure they have the right plant.

A garden costs some money to get started, especially if you haven’t had one before, but in the long run it has great potential to help you cope with rising food prices.

Food prices have been hit hard by inflation of late, with the worst increases in about 20 years. Meat, milk, bread, eggs, produce all cost more than they used to. It’s getting harder and harder to feed a family healthy meals.

Fortunately, it’s not necessarily impossible, merely more challenging.

One of the simplest things you can do to help your food budget is to cut waste. Here in the United States tremendous amounts of food are wasted by most families. If you work harder on using up your leftovers you can save a significant amount of money.

For example, pack up dinner leftovers for lunch the next day. You can eat them yourself or send them with an ice pack with the kids to school if it’s something that tastes good enough cold. A thermos bottle can help with foods that should be eaten warm. Just make sure you heat the food hot enough that a good thermos will keep it over 140 degrees F.

Think also about what you’re eating. If you can cut back on the amount of meat you consume in a meal and/or have the occasional meatless meal you can save quite a bit. Beans, rice, lentils and such can be significantly cheaper than meats. Vegetarian meals can be quite tasty.

Similarly you can reconsider the cuts of meat you buy. Cheaper cuts can still taste quite good if prepared correctly. Crock pots are great at making even cheap meats tender.

With chicken, buying a whole one can have advantages. It’s enough for 1-2 meals, depending on the size of your family, and you can make soup from the leftovers for yet another cheap meal.

But much of your savings come down to how you shop for food. Start paying close attention to the flyers that come from grocery stores near to you. You won’t save if you’re driving too far, but if you’re lucky you will have at least a few stores to choose from. You may as well shop each for the items they have at good prices.

Keeping a price book can be a big help. You can do it alphabetically or by the order of the items in the store you shop most, but know what regular prices are and what standard sale prices are. This helps you to figure out if it’s an unusually good deal that you should stock up on if you can, or if you need to figure out an alternative that week.

Coupons can also be a help if, and I emphasize IF, they are items you would be buying anyhow. If you weren’t going to buy it, you can end up spending more money and ending up with things you aren’t going to use up.

Plan your meals around the coupons and deals that you find each week. By planning ahead you can buy only what you need and reduce your food waste still further. It also helps to limit your spontaneous purchases if you can tell yourself you aren’t going to use it.

For those who have the space and a sufficiently green thumb, gardening is another option. A good garden is exercise combined with a food source. It’s also great for teaching children about where their food really comes from. And of course homegrown produce simply tastes better.

All parents have some sort of food battle with kids. It’s just how these things work.

Not last night’s dinner,
but it sure looks good!

For example, last night I told my daughter we were having fish for dinner. She’s eaten it well in the past, so no worries, right?

Except she has suddenly decided she doesn’t like fish. Before it’s done cooking and even before she’s seen it.

I really should have said ‘chicken’. Odds are good she would have eaten it then.

So I played around with her a little. I had a topping on the fish, and she readily admitted that she loved the topping. It was a mix of bread crumbs, chopped cashews, honey and mustard. Really wonderful, and she admitted that she loved the topping.

So I told her about the nuts. Hey, the main part of the dinner was spoiled anyhow.

Immediately she announced that well… there was something in there she didn’t like and that was the nuts.

Cashews are the only nuts she likes when she admits to liking nuts. I know she was trying to play with my mind as much as I did with her when I mentioned the nuts. Besides, she kept nibbling it, if a bit slower.

Feeding kids is a funny thing. A favorite food one day is loathed another. And somehow it seems like just about all of them will eat any meat labeled ‘chicken’.

No matter what it really is.