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Cooking with Kids: A Holistic Approach to Learning
Our kitchens serve as the hub of daily life, the places where we gather and experiment, where we taste new dishes and share our stories. When you think of essential skills to teach children in the kitchen, the ability to read a recipe and execute it well may come to mind, but there are a wealth of opportunities to support growth as you cook together. Guide children toward healthy eating habits and away from self-criticism, bring vibrancy to science concepts, and certainly instill an appreciation of cooking with these tips. Share Food Stories There is a reason you are making a particular recipe with your child. Maybe you grew up…
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Late Night Cravings
Conventional wisdom says that if you’d like to avoid extra pounds, keep tempting food out of sight, and certainly don’t bake brownies after 10 p.m. as I did this Tuesday. If your cravings come and go quickly, you probably weren’t all that hungry in the first place. As someone whose counter might be home to just-cooled maple granola or a dessert recipe I plan to share on Thirsty Radish, that just would not be possible, nor would I want it to be. January is a time when we often make health resolutions or bring ourselves back to the basics. You’ll note that I shared a salsa verde recipe last week…
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Hands
“…they kneaded and twisted and unknowingly squeezed youth back up through their veins…” – From “Making Taralli” – a poem of mine originally pushed in Ginosko Literary Journal The women in my family have beautiful hands. Of all their pleasing qualities, this is the one that fascinated me as a child. Well-formed and graceful, not to be confused with delicate, they are the type of hands that served, cooked, and too often were wrung together over loss. As they worked with dough or arranged chicken in a stock pot, their plump skin defined my notions of age in such a way that I found it difficult even to remember the…
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Pink Margarita Salt
This post is not about how to dye margarita salt, though I would advise using a few drops of beet juice were you to try. It is about a tin of pink margarita salt gifted by my dad a few birthdays before he passed. Becoming the father of a baby girl introduced him to a world of wild curls, strawberry picking, and pink. While it is not my favorite color, one could argue the opposite, particularly staring at a dresser full of stuffed animals, which my father would do nightly. “What’s this one’s name?” “Pinkie.” “And what about this one?” “Pinkie.” The people I love are every age at once.…
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Kitchen Moves
Cooking is a vein that runs through my family. When my great-grandfather arrived from Italy, he opened a butcher shop and became known for having the best sausage in the neighborhood. While the store has long since closed, its legacy carries on through stories and the ongoing quest to recreate its recipes. We talk about the short-sightedness of not writing such things down, but it tests the memory of those who actually tasted them. They will know if we ever achieve the right combination of pork fat and spices. Beyond those who worked for the butcher shop, many became dedicated to baking and perfecting recipes within the home. Rarely did…
cooking classes + wholesome recipes + mindful living
