There is no doubt there is a real loss of cooking skills amongst our generation and as a result, our own children’s generation.

The busier life gets, the more we rely on processed packaged foods to get us by.

Which not only means we are missing out on nourishing our families properly, but also that we are slowly losing the art of cooking simple, delicious meals from scratch and passing this lifelong skill onto our children.

In 1984 we made 72 percent of our dinners from scratch, but by 2008 that number dropped to 57 percent …

What will happen with cooking in the future?

And all the while obesity is on the rise. And increasingly, we are seeing more illness and disease creeping in earlier and earlier with our children.

Getting kids in the kitchen goes a long way to improving children’s health and wellbeing both now and in the future.

I would love to see cooking classes become compulsory again in high schools, and I am thrilled my son has elected to do food tech at high school as he delights in food creation, presentation and eating! 

In fact, all that time in the kitchen with me has meant my kids have turned out to be a massive help when it comes to cooking, often helping out with all the meals of the day which substantially lightens my load. We have a good time in the kitchen together too.

The school holiday’s provide a great opportunity to embrace your kids in the kitchen so why not give it a go with this round up of the best healthy recipes to make with your kids these school holidays. 

By teaching your kids to cook you’ll also be …

• boosting their maths and science skills
• fostering their social skills
• teaching them about healthy food and good eating habits
• building responsibility and independence
• creating great memories and conversation
• improving their reading and comprehension
• taking inadvertent steps to unfuss their fussy eating
• and learning a skill that will benefit them for life by keeping them well and happy, and will also one day pass this skill on to their own children

Here’s to our budding chefs changing the future of health and well being.

Let’s get their health back on track.

Bren x

My husband and I definitely want them to have every opportunity to experience new things, and to enjoy the things they love to do, especially with their friends. But, we live in such a busy world and sometimes we feel like they are slipping away just a bit too much, just a bit too soon. That somehow in all the craziness of life the most important thing has been overlooked. FAMILY TIME.

The reality is that in our busy, stressed-out lives, our primal parenting instincts have been dampened, and we need to re-awaken them. According to physician, author and childhood development expert, Dr Gabriel Mate,

“For the first time in human history children are more influenced by their peers than by adults in their lives. And developmentally that’s a disaster.”

I don’t need to tell anyone how to attach to their kids, it’s our natural instinct.

But somehow, in so many ways, we are less and less available to our kids and we have lost sight of how important attachment actually is, leading them to looking elsewhere for attachment, usually their peer groups. Our kids need someone to connect with, ideally their family, and continue to need to stay attached right up until they turn into adults and especially through the tumultuous teenage years.

For my family, as much as we can, we connect by eating meals together, but hubby works long hours and often can’t join us. Then there’s homework, after school and weekend sports, hanging with friends and social activities and suddenly we have lost sight of when we were last all together, just us. But TIME is the one thing we need to build deep family connections, for bonding, attachment and sharing experiences we all love.

So when I announced last weekend that we would be having a FAMILY DAY, the teenager grumbled and gave me the bottom lip ‘cause he was invited to meet his mates for a round of golf (again). Part of me felt bad for holding him back (even though he’d just played the previous day), and whilst I almost waivered #mothersguilt, I stayed strong, knowing deep in my heart what was best.

Perhaps one of the most challenging part of having adolescents is finding opportunities to spend time with them and finding things to do that everyone will enjoy. We ended up going on a lovely, long walk through the Malabar Headlands, visiting the grandparents, and once home we all hopped into the kitchen for a two hour cooking session!

Did the kids bicker? As if I need to answer that!

Was the day perfect? Off course not!

Did we all still love the day? Absolutely!

And we all felt the beautiful deepening of our family bond.

Bren x

There are so many different, creative ways you can pack a punch of nutrition into all your kids and family favourite meals, and at the same time curb their constant nagging for more food.

Take the humble porridge for example… you can watch me talk about how to pimp up your porridge here or just read on instead…

Why it’s already good?

Oats are rich in the B-complex vitamins which help convert our food into fuel, keeping our bodies energised throughout the day and help us have great hair and skin. Anti-oxidant vitamin E, protects our cells, organs and tissues from free radicals, warding off illness and disease. Oats contain soluble fibre which helps to keep us feeling satisfied as well as help our digestive system along. Soluble fibre also provides a food source for beneficial bacteria in the gut.

How you can make it better.

– Soak oats overnight in a warm water and yoghurt, kefir or buttermilk to neutralise phytic acid. Phytic acid is found in the outer layer of grains and blocks the absorption of essential mineral which can lead to deficiencies. Rinse off the oats in the next morning before cooking if you don’t like a sour tang to your porridge.  If you are dairy-free you can use apple cider vinegar or lemon juice instead. Adding in a small amount of whole wheat spelt flour or rye flour will also help to reduce the high levels of phytic acid as they contain phytase, a natural enzyme which works to break down the phytic acid and release the beneficial nutrients.

– Grind up some linseeds (flaxseeds) and mix through the porridge to provide a good ratio of Omega 3’s which are great for our brain health and behaviour These are relatively tasteless. You could use chia seeds as well.

– Once cooked, mix in some butter or cream, whose fat-soluble activators provide the catalyst for mineral absorption and they make it super tasty!

– Ensure you add a natural sweetener like pure maple syrup, raw honey or a sprinkle of rapadura sugar rather than highly refined, processed sweetener.

– Top with blueberries which are full of anti-oxidants and research suggests that in addition to protecting against heart disease and diabetes and improving brain function, they may also help reduce visceral “toxic” belly fat—a type of fat that has been linked to obesity and metabolic syndrome.

– Add cinnamon to stabilise blood sugar and for extra natural sweetness.

And voila, there you have it, a delicious, satisfying bowl of goodness which makes the perfect way to start the day.

Print

Pimped up Porridge

Prep Time 5 minutes

Cook Time 5 minutes

Total Time 10 minutes

Servings 2

Author Brenda Janschek

Ingredients

• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1 tablespoon whole wheat spelt or rye flour
• 1 cup warm water
• 2 teaspoons whey yoghurt, buttermilk, lemon juice or apple cider vinegar
• 1 cup water
• 1 small pinch sea salt
• 1 tablespoon of linseeds flaxseeds
• 1 heaped teaspoon butter ghee or cream
• 1 teaspoon your sweetener of choice - pure maple syrup raw honey, rapadura or coconut sugar, brown rice syrup (optional)
• Slices of banana
• Blueberries or mixed berries
• Cinnamon

Instructions

• Place oats and spelt flour in a small saucepan.
• Mix together the warm water and acid medium in a separate bowl
• Pour over oats and mix through.
• Cover and leave to sit overnight at room temperature or up to 24 hours
• Rinse oats in the morning to remove the sour tang of whey, yoghurt.
• Add oats back into saucepan with 1 cup of filtered water and pinch of salt.
• Simmer porridge until cooked, around 5 minutes.
• While porridge is cooking grind up linseeds.
• Once cooked mix through linseeds and swirl of butter, ghee or cream.
• Serve topped with sweetener ( optional - I find the fruit adds enough sweetness), banana, berries, nuts and seeds and a good shake of cinnamon

Notes

Recipe adapted from Nourishing Traditions

If you’re looking for more recipe inspiration take a look at my ebook, Easy Wholefood Lunchboxes.

It’s packed with 40 delicious nut-free, refined sugar free sweet and savoury recipes which have all been kid-tested and approved and take the guess work out of what delicious, healthy food to pack your kids for lunch!

Other breakfast recipes you might like Date and Walnut Bircher Muesli and Spiced Quinoa Porridge.

Bren x

They’ve never really needed encouragement to fill their cheeks to the brim, but the last few years their bodies have been demanding an insatiable amount of food. HealthyChildren.org explains that a surge in appetite around the age of 10 in girls and 12 in boys foreshadows the growth spurt of puberty. That pretty much explains what’s going on over in my house.

It’s mind boggling how much they need to eat and just how quickly they are growing, and how busy they can be, but I keep reminding myself about the enormous amount of change their bodies are going through and just how important good nutrition is to support their growth and development.

I recently some crafty ways I ensure shared on my instagram feed here.

According to RaisingChildren.net.au, your teenager will need extra calcium and iron during adolescence:

“…..enough calcium will help your child to reach peak bone density and build strong bones for life … expanding blood volumes and growing muscle mass means your child needs more iron in adolescence. Girls also have extra iron needs because of their periods.”

Feeding my insatiable kids can be a challenge at times, especially while trying to run my business on top of the endless home duties. On top of that, there is the added burden of dealing with the negative food influences surrounding my kids at school, sport and in their friendship circles, which become more intense as they become more autonomous and want to ‘fit in’. I see so many kids live primarily on processed sugars and starches primarily, which is a recipe for disaster for their hormonal health, not to mention their attitude and moods.

I recently shared some crafty ways and food ideas to ensure you get as much nutrition as possible into your kids here on my instagram feed. 

Carbohydrates are also important for growing children, especially if they are very active. Naturopath, Naomi Judge explains…

“It does depend on activity, if they fill up on carbohydrates and watch TV all day then they are most likely going to put weight on and get blood sugar problems. So lots of carbs are important plus extra sweet or white potato, rice, nuts and seeds as an extra carb source is a good idea. Dinner time is ideal for them to fill up and make sure they get all the right nutrients, that way when they sleep, bones, muscle, etc can grow and repair.”

I think the best we can do as parents is to provide as much tasty, nutrient-dense food as we can for our children when they’re at home, focusing on a good balance of mainly protein and fats (should be consumed at every meal as they are the building blocks of healthy hormones), plus some healthy carbohydrates as their body’s major energy sources.

Cheese, Ham and Spinach Hot Pots from Real Food for Hungry Teens.

Hence why it became my mission to create a list of delicious recipes designed to fill those ‘hollow legs’ without having to resort to a loaf of white bread at each sitting. Most importantly, they needed to be quick and easy to make for even our teens!

My blog is full of healthy, well balanced, family friendly recipes, so take a look around, as are my ebooks, Easy Wholefood Lunchboxes, and  Real Food for Hungry Teens, which provides highly nutritious recipes specifically targeted at active, growing teenagers, and which aims to keep them coming back for more. My free recipe ebook, Think Outside the Cereal Box, has some great, nutritious breakfast ideas too.

Using everyday foods rather than hard-to-get items, all recipes are truly a reflection of how we love to eat when at home.

Bren x

Connection has been something he as craved, but has found difficult to find outside of his family. Sometimes connection is even hard to find within your own family, but as parenting author and educator Maggie Dent says, “the great memories of our childhoods play an important role in our outlook on life….building memories that last occurs simply when we repeat significantly positive experiences“.

Through the ritual of cooking, a major point of connection for Orlando and I (I do not, and will not, play golf!) is the kitchen. For us, it’s a place where we can talk about life’s problems and stresses and fritter them away into the ether, to replace them with a sense of peace, joy and fun.

In the kitchen it’s just me, my son … and food!

Pic: Banana-Choc Cinnamon Icecream from Real Food For Hungry Teens

Everything just feels all right when we are in there together. It’s our own little club where we can relate and speak on the same level, try new approaches and create different taste sensations. I have the extra sense of smell, but he definitely has the highly evolved taste buds!

Sure, we’ll disagree on recipes from time to time (and can’t he put his foot down?!), but for the most part, our time spent together here is a very grounded and deep.

Food and nutrition has been an important part of my life since before he was born. I suppose it’s only natural that some of this will rub off on him, and he has certainly grown up to embrace my love of good food.
Pic: Hearty Black Bean and Sweet Corn Quesadilla

He trusts me enough to tell me when he’s indulged and made some poor choices (which happens more often as he gets more freedom and autonomy), even though he knows I won’t be that happy about it. I guess he feels he can confide in me because he knows the reason I won’t be happy is simply because I love him. I think he trusts me because he doesn’t feel judged, or that he’s let me down.

I do my best not to create fear around food, and the key (to me) is to not be judgmental. Who needs it, right?! It’s about teaching the right lessons and our kitchen experiences allow opportunities for explaining why good, real food is so beneficial. I find that accentuating the positives naturally draws us to positive habits. In doing so, I’m comfortable that I have given him the right set of tools to make the right choices, and can trust him to do so, even if he goes through the inevitable period of rebellion.

My son is big, bustling, sporty, developing and HUNGRY and needs as much nourishment as he can get. It’s critical for his development, but even more important is making sure it’s the right kind of nourishment – the kind that his body requires for sustainable, long term development.

So, this is why we decided to write a recipe book together. And it’s one of the most important things I’ve created in my work because my son and I created it together.

I know I will cherish the memory of this experience forever, as well as all our special moments in the kitchen. I have a feeling he will too.

When I tell him that one day his future wife will thank me for teaching him how to cook, and how lucky his own kids will be having a Dad who knows how to nourish them, he shoots me his proudest grin.

REAL FOOD FOR HUNGRY TEENS is the eBook we created together. We hope you love all the recipes and maybe even create beautiful long-lasting kitchen memories together.

About the eBook: Created by certified health coach, Brenda Janschek, and her hungry and creative son Orlando, this eBook contains a rich variety of over 20 nourishing, real food recipes designed to satisfy the tastebuds and growth requirements of developing teenagers.

Teenage years place a great burden on the body as it transforms into adulthood. These tasty recipes are designed to help our growing kids through this period of physical, emotional and intellectual upheaval with food that actually supports their accelerating growth, without simply resorting to a loaf of bread at each sitting.

You can purchase it here.

I do my best to keep 80-90% of the food healthy, or what they know to be everyday food. We don’t keep any ‘sometimes’ food at home, which is reserved for parties, grandparents, friends houses and other events. The food I provide my kids aims to provide them with energy and nutrition so that they can feel happy and healthy each day and in the future.

So I have provided a list of regular foods my kids will eat in the hope this well help you…

Breakfast

• Spelt and buckwheat pancakes (or they are loving my latest banana pancake recipe, which I will try to blog soon)
• Smoothies – they love the Banana Nut-butter Protein Shake by Quirky Cooking from my free breakfast e-book 
• Anti-oxidant smoothie
• Eggs and soldiers – 2 eggs and soldiers made out of Sonoma Spelt sourdough bread with grass fed butter and cut up veges on the side
• Scrambled eggs made with Barambah cheese and milk with baby spinach and a side of  raw vegetables and avocado sourdough toast
  Egg Muffins
• Fried egg and bacon with cut up raw vegetables
• Bircher Muesli or Mamacino’s Feel Good Buckwheat Bircher Muesli from my free breakfast e-book 
• Golden Ricotta Wraps – from my free breakfast ebook
• Natural yoghurt mixed with lots of cinnamon, vanilla powder, frozen berries or seasonal fruit and a mix of chopped nuts and seeds
• Coco- nutty Granola by Sarah Wilson
• Grass fed sausages with homemade baked beans and a side of raw chopped vegetables
• French toast using sourdough bread
• Brenda’s Brekky Ball with a green smoothie
• Notella on spelt sourdough

Morning Tea/Snacks/After school snacks

• Chopped fruit with nuts and yoghurt
• Healthy treats like Chewy Choc-Banana Biscuits, Brownie Cake,  or Date and Cinnamon Muffin
• Home popped organic popcorn (non-GMO corn) with lots of grass fed butter and sea salt (or cinnamon)
• Leftover homemade pizza
• Plate with nuts/seeds, a Medjool date and natural yoghurt
• Kale Chips
• Frozen blueberries or rasberries with cashews
• Mango sorbet
• Home made ice block
• Super Smoothie
• Dips like hummus, pesto and guacomole with vegetable sticks and a small amount of Eat Rite brown rice crackers
• Mix n match muffins
• Cheese on top of cucumber slices
• Lots of water
• Coconut water from fresh baby coconut
• Muesli slice

School Lunch

• Often these are Mountain bread wraps (spelt, rye or rice) with the following fillings (butter and baby spinach are always on the base):
• Goats cheese and olive
• Ham and cheese
• Eggs and bacon
• Leftover chicken and brie
• Egg muffins or leftover quiche
• Home made sausage rolls
• Cheese and spinach Mountain Bread toasties
• Leftovers like homemade pizza, spanokopita (when mum cooks)
• Lately my son is loving taking a “picky plate” which he prepares himself with ham, swiss cheese, olives (Loving Earth), cut up veges and some buttered buckwheat cruskits
• Za’atar (a big favourite!)
• Savoury muffins
• Vegetable sticks, sliced mushroom, cherry tomatoes

Dinner

• • Always includes lots of vegetables
  • Slow cooker meals are their favourite, particularly lamb shoulder
  • Roast chicken with roasted sweet potato, potato, garlic and onion and steamed broccoli with lots of butter
  • Cauliflower and potato soup
  • Pumpkin soup
  • Lamb shank soup
  • Spelt pasta with home made pesto, sustainable tuna and Loving Earth olives
  • Roast chicken with potato, sweet potato, onion, garlic and salad
  • Frittatas
  • Scrambled eggs and bacon with sourdough toast and chopped up vegetables
  • Pan fried fish with peas and salad
  • Stuffed baked potato
  • Chicken burrito (let them build it themselves)

As you can see they eat mainly a whole foods diet aiming for a good mix of protein, fat and carbs (mainly vegetables and some fruit) at each meal, without relying heavily on just one food group (eg. wheat or dairy).

I would love to hear what your kids favourite meals are in the comments below.

Bren x

As a parent, which would you prefer? Kids in or out of the kitchen?

These days, I’m one of those parents who loves hearing, “Can I help with the cooking, Mum?”.  But it wasn’t always this way, and I still have to silence that part of me that groans that having them involved will delay me from my 1000 other parental tasks. And let’s not even talk about the mess!
But, mostly these days I’m as excited as they are when they fry an egg, flip a buckwheat pancake, mix some kale with coconut oil with their hands, slice some cheese or tomato (ok, this one still stresses me out a bit), and read and measure out ingredients. Even better, they don’t even realise they are increasing their knowledge of nutrition, as well as increasing their academic and life skills! It may come as no surprise that healthy treat baking is when they are the happiest assistants, the only downfall being that my husband and I have lost our bowl-licking rights.

Having our kids in the kitchen is beneficial in many ways:

• LEARN: Learning how to cook is an important life skill not only that but cooking provides a great opportunity to teach our kids about nutrition – what’s healthy, why and why that’s good. In addition it teaches safety habits (sharp objects, fire, gas etc)
• READ: Reading recipes and flicking through recipe books encourages them to read and follow instruction (later, they will learn ‘improvisation’ and ‘multi tasking’)
• MATHS: The recipes also use maths concepts (measurement, fractions and proportions), which helps to improve their numerical skills by giving them context
• BONDING: It provides important bonding time which, in turn, helps to build their confidence. It also presents opportunities to praise your child as they complete a task, contributing to their self-esteem
• EXPLORE: They are introduced to new foods, which they are more likely to try given they are preparing them
• MOTOR SKILLS: Fine motor skills are honed in the kitchen, as are their five senses: see, hear, smell, touch, taste (thanks XTC! Showing my age.)
• CREATIVITY: Kids have an opportunity to express their creativity – eg. using cookie cutters to make different pizza or sandwich shapes, collaborating on a new healthy cake recipe and decorating it, deciding on the design and ingredients for a fruit kebab, choosing ingredients they like to include in their smoothie and so on……

My kids are just as happy being dutiful assistants at dinner as they are ordering me to bring out the flour and water so they can goo and sludge their way to a dough that will invariably become known as “the best bread ever”. This is a joyous, bonding activity, whilst also being subliminally educational. It’s hard to think of a better way to teach our children life’s lessons.
So why not choose a recipe with your kids and let the kids into the kitchen this week? I’m sure you’ll be surprised at how rewarding it can be!

Bren x