Kids Cooking and Cookbook Blog Site

I have been involved in a very exciting publishing project. Amy Houts, one of our authors, has a new children’s book coming out this summer and I am really looking forward to seeing the finished product.

This new cookbook, “Cooking Around the Country With Kids: USA Regional Recipes and Fun Activities” makes cooking with kids come alive! It has an American heritage flavor that helps children experience our country’s vast cultural diversity through food.

Children learn about regional food differences by preparing authentic recipes from various parts of our country. Amy has woven together fun activities along with a little food history and geography of each region showing where our food comes from.

Now I want to share just a bit of my excitement over this new book by sending you a FRe e Recipe Sampler from Amy’s new book.

If you want to be on the cutting edge of discovering this treasure trove of regional recipes, sign up below for her FRe e Recipe Sampler. You will be glad you did because it has one complete chapter from the book. This is the first sneak peak at what she has written to get kids excited about cooking across America.

Click here on SnaptailBooks to get the Fre e Recipe Sampler activated.

This is the dessert I served for my women’s group yesterday. It was the day after my birthday – the reason for the flowers. I was happy to share flowers, and dessert, with company.

The recipe is very easy and young cooks will enjoy the crunching and rolling needed for making crumbs.

Oreo™ Ice Cream Dessert

24 Oreo™ cookies,crushed

1/2 stick butter, melted

1/2 gallon vanilla ice cream

1 (15-ounce) can Eagle Brand™ condensed milk

1 stick butter 1 (8-ounce) can Hershey™ chocolate syrup

1 (8-ounce) carton whipped topping

Place 24 cookies into a plastic bag. Use a rolling pin or wooden masher to crush the cookies into rather fine crumbs. Place them in a 9×13-inch pan.

Melt 1/2 stick butter and pour this over the crushed cookies. Stir a little to distribute the butter throughout. Place in freezer for about 30 minutes.

Soften ice cream and place over the crumbs, smoothing the top. Return to freezer for about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, make the sauce: Combine the condensed milk, 1 stick butter, and chocolate syrup in a saucepan. Bring to a low boil and then simmer for 5 minutes, stirring often to prevent it from burning at the bottom.

Pour sauce over hardened ice cream and pop back into freezer. Except the pan keeps getting heavier and heavier each time so handle with care. Freeze again for about 30 minutes.

Top with whipped topping and sprinkle a few of the crumbs from the bag over the top of the dessert. Cover with foil.

When you are ready to serve, take it out of the freezer for about 20 minutes before cutting and serving. You will have a very elegant dessert.

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When I was a teacher in the classroom I remember how excited my students were when it was “the day we cook”! I remember the boys especially were very anxious to get going. Yes, ultimately they got to eat what they prepared, which I know was a huge drawing card, but they really relished the hands-on experience.

We had five unit kitchens in our foods lab with about 4 students in each kitchen. In both the middle school or high school setting, this meant that each student needed to know what to do and have his or her task clearly in mind.

There were some mishaps along the way, such as forgetting to take the plastic wrap off the pan before baking the food, or not turning the oven on, or leaving out an important ingredient. But there were more successes along the way. These included beautifully decorated cakes, crisp, attractive-looking and delicious salads, wonderful baked breads, and many foods they were proud to display and enjoyed eating.

Not only did they gain knowledge of nutrition and how to prepare different foods, but they learned many other skills, such as how to get along with others and how to communicate effectively. Working together helped them develop and improve their leadership skills and artistic skills.

It saddens me to know that many family and consumer sciences classes are being dropped from the curriculum due to time constraints. I realize students need good solid foundations in English, science, and math. I also like to think students need to develop skills in learning how to manage a home and handle family responsibilities. Being knowledgeable about preparing nutritious and tasty meals for the family is an important life skill. It is also good background for success in a food industry career.

To your positive impact on the work of the home,

Lee Jackson

Amid family cook-outs, golf outings, and other activities, let us remember why we are celebrating this day – it is to remember and give honor to those courageous men and women who worked, and many died, to protect and preserve our freedom. They served and sacrificed in our Armed Forces to insure our country can be the freest in the world. They were willing to fight and die so that we could continue to live in this land of the free and the home of the brave.

Today we remember them. Perhaps, too, today we can fly our flag, visit a cemetary, and say a prayer for those who fought. In addition, as President Obama said, “we can honor veterans by sending a letter or care package to troops overseas, volunteering at health clinics or taking supplies to a homeless veterans center.” He said it could also mean something as simple as saying “thank you” to a veteran walking by on the street.

We can pledge to honor and talk about the heroic efforts of those who built this country we enjoy and cherish today. These are small efforts for what they did for us.

Let not their sacrifices go unnoticed.

Lee Jackson

Greetings to all!

Hi! I’m Lee Jackson jumping in here after Chef Crombie left. I hope I don’t disappoint! He has some big shoes that I want to fill but it won’t be easy.

I just wanted to tell you a little of my background. I was a family and consumer sciences (home economics) teacher in the middle school and high school for over 20 years. I taught subjects such as foods and nutrition, clothing and design, child development, housing and environment – all subjects that still interest me and ones I continue to find fulfilling.

Way back before I started teaching, I enjoyed recipe clipping, trying new dishes, and in general, trying to find myself in the kitchen. This is stuff, I see now, I’m still trying to do and still like to do.

Somewhere along the way, growing apples, eating apples, finding recipes for apples, and anything “apple” really appealed to me. So much so that I wrote my first cookbook, “From the Apple Orchard – Recipes for Apple Lovers“, which is one of our most popular books.

One good thing leads to another, and I asked orchards and apple cider houses to send me their best recipes and a little information about their apple business. This resulted in another cookbook: “Apples, Apples Everywhere – Favorite Recipes From America’s Orchards”.

There was a textbook sprinkled in amongst teaching and some of this. It is “Careers in Focus: Family and Consumer Sciences. High schools, Junior colleges, and, I understand, some colleges use this in their curriculums. I took a year’s leave of absence to do this, but by the end of the year I had a good start on an outline. It was a long work in progress, but now, I’m very proud of it.

This blogging is rather new to me, but all media is changing so I figured I needed to keep up with the times.

I have some exciting news about another new children’s cookbook that is coming off the press very soon. But I will leave that for another time. Enough about me, I want to hear from you and about you and about other stuff that we all like to think about – food!

I hope you will come back…

Best to you,

Lee Jackson    

(my young friend and I)          

Everything comes to an end. For many these last days in May are filled with graduation plans and parties and thinking about what the summer, and indeed, the future, will hold for them. These are very festive times as well as bitter sweet times when the joy of the present can turn into feelings of “What now?”

For those of you in this situation of having your years of study come to an end, I wish you well. May all your hopes and dreams for your future be fulfilled. Though “study”, in some form or another, continues throughout life

My term here on this blog is also coming to an end. I have tried to squeeze in this writing, which I love to do, in between my work with food, which I also love to do. But I am finding that the summer is becoming too crowded with work and too busy. Therefore I must close down one part of what I love, to concentrate on the other.

However, I am delegating my writing blog to my friend and fellow food enthusiast, Lee Jackson. I have known Lee for many years, having worked with her on Amy Houts’  first cookbook, “Cooking Around the Calendar With Kids: Holiday and Regional Food and Fun”.

She is working with Amy on another book and I am sure she will want to tell you all about its progress, from Amy’s initial interest in working with children, to this, her second book in the series.

I know she will take you on an engaging, informative, and fun-filled food journey.

I thank you for reading my posts these past 2 years and for all your input and comments. It’s been fun reading about your experiences, both food and other, and hopefully I may have contributed some to your love of all things food-related.

I may make some guest appearances so, until we meet again, “so long”, and I wish you good health and good food.

Best wishes,
Chef Crombie

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In a recent post I talked about using cloth napkins versus paper napkins when we are trying to “go green” in our kitchens. By eliminating disposables we make one small mark in this vast sea of waste and consumption.

Did you know that people did not always use napkins at the table?

At one time, in very early history, people wiped their hands on pieces of bread. Later, they used handkerchiefs, or small pieces of material, to wipe their foreheads when it was hot and to blot their lips at the table. For a period of time, people just wiped their hands on anything that was available – their pants, the back of their hands, or whatever.

Later, during medieval banquets, tables were covered with many elaborate vessels for holding food. A servant would carry a towel for the lord and honored guests to use in wiping their hands.

Forks came into use in the eightenth century by all classes of society. Napkins varied in size from covering the entire front of a person to smaller sizes. Eventually napkins about the size of our present style became part of the table appointment.

Now, when we sit down at the table, the first thing we generally do is open the napkin halfway and place it on our lap. If you have to leave the table during the meal, the napkin is placed on the chair. We never put the used napkin on the table during the meal. And we never use the napkin for anything except to wipe mouth and hands. At the end of the meal, the napkin is loosely placed on the table to the left of the plate.

That’s our little napkin story for today. I hope you have a good day!

Chef Crombie

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What tastes best to you at this time of year: hot soup or cold salad? hot cocoa or cold lemonade? hot chili or ice cream?

Our tastes change with the seasons. The weather makes a big impact on what we think tastes good. When the weather turns warm or hot, we are more apt to reach for cold drinks and cold foods. Likewise, when it gets cooler in the fall, our thoughts turn to soups and hot meals.

Children and adults are often more thirsty than hungrey in the summertime. It is at times like these that vegetables served with a dip and cheese cubes, some chilled fruit in season, and a cold drink taste extra good.

Here is a refreshing cold drink for these warmer days. Plus, it uses strawberries which are now in season.

Strawberry Slush

1 1/2 cups fresh strawberries
1 cup milk
2 teaspoons sugar (optional)

Children can rinse and hull strawberries. Cut large ones in half and place in a container. Cover and freeze until firm.

Place all ingredients in blender. Blend for about 10 seconds. Pour into a glass and drink.

Makes 2-4 servings

This recipe is taken from Amy Houts’ cookbook, Cooking Around the Calendar with Kids: Hoiday and Seasonal Food and Fun. You can buy your own copy of this cookbook at Amazon. Check it out!

Some of you may be saying, “I’m just a kid. What can I do?” Big or small, doing everything to save the earth and the air we breathe is everybody’s business and responsibility.

When you come home from the grocery store, do you end up with lots of plastic bags and extra packaging? Where will those plastic bags end up? You’re right. They are going back to the garbage heap where they will take hundreds of years, if not more, to break down. Or, they may fly around outside, being scattered by the wind. Birds can try to peck at them or might even get caught in them. Plus they make our world look dumpy and trashy.

So, what can you do about it?

You can take the plastic bags that have accumalated and take them to a neighboring recyling center. Hopefully, they will be made into some useful products. Then, next time shopping time comes, to remember to take the grocery tote bag (or bags) with you. Think how many plastic bags this will eliminate!

Individual snack packs are certainly handy. But it doesn’t take much time to make your own snack packs. Pour a quantity of food, whether it is crackers, chips, cookies, or whatever, into reusuable containers for the lunchbox or car.

In addition, buying food in quantity saves money. However, buying in larger quantity is only good if you know you’ll use it.

Throw out the plastic water bottles. If you want to take water with you, use a thermos bottle or other non-plastic container.

If you wash dishes by hand, run hot water into a clean sink to rinse them. This way you won’t be running the water all the time. If you use the dish washer to wash dishes, wait to run it until it is full of dirty dishes. This saves on water and electricity.

When you think about it, it really isn’t so hard to make small steps that impact the world. Every little bit you do toward this cause helps to keep our environment cleaner and healthier.

Children as well as adults should be concerned about saving the environment. There are many ways to do this.

How can young chefs and bakers make an inpact on the environment? No matter how young or old you are, you can make a difference Let’s start out with a few simple ways to save energy in the kitchen. Little changes can make a big difference.

Today let’s think about going “green” when you set the table. First of all, is that a paper place-mat you are using? Treat yourself to at least one set of colorful place mats instead.

Have you just added a paper napkin? Use cloth napkins instead. Perhaps you even have ones to match the place-mats. You can reuse them for most of the week and throw them in the wash on laundry day.

Are you using paper plates and cups for your meal so you wouldn’t have to wash dishes? It would be easier on the environment if you changed those to china or glass plates (real dishes) and cups.

For wiping off the table and cleaning counters, use old T-shirts or towels as rags. “If you must use paper products, choose recycled paper products made from at least 30 percent post-consumer waste fiber,” recommends Cambria Gordon, co-author of “The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming“.

Even these seemingly small changes can make a big impact.