family dinner Archives - NurtureStore

Activities for toddlers :: cooking with toddlers

By Cathy James on April 28th, 2013%

Here is the final installment in our special series featuring activities for toddlers. We’ve already covered sensory play, maths games, art and craft, reading, writing and song, and outdoor play, science and active games and today our last edition is all about cooking. Can toddlers cook? You bet they can! It might get just a little messy, but it’s great fun and packed with opportunity for learning. Here are some simple recipes, all tried and tested with my own kids.

Activities for toddlers :: cooking Read more »

Kids in the kitchen: customised soup

By Cathy James on January 12th, 2012%

Inviting kids in to the kitchen is about lots of things: developing a relationship with food, seeing how meals are prepared and learning lots of important skills. This recipe for vegetable soup is delicious and healthy but it also gives children a chance to build their confidence in cooking because they are the ones who decide which ingredients to use. It encourages them to use their own taste buds and try out making a recipe of their very own.

Customised soup recipe

The great thing about this vegetable soup recipe is Read more »

Kids in the kitchen: chop, chop!

By Cathy James on October 4th, 2011%

Little Miss Five loves to be my helper in the kitchen and is Queen of Chopping. If you need a cucumber slicing, she’s your girl. Even though it adds extra time to the cooking I love encouraging the girls to help out in the kitchen, enjoying their company and watching them learning new skills as they go.

And to encourage some kitchen knife skills, what better than a Chop Salad – a meal which a five-year-old can proudly put together by herself.

How to make Chop Salad Read more »

Recipes for all the family

By Cathy James on July 16th, 2010%

For a quick tea after school, an easy meal at the weekend, or to mix-and-match a bit to suit kids with assorted fussiness, you can’t go far wrong with:

Quesadillas : Cheese Tortillas

Quick photo grabbed before the kids started eating!

You will need:

A pack of tortilla wraps (8 wraps makes enough for a family of 4, or for 6 kids)

A mound of grated cheese

A selection of flavours: we like finely chopped onion, peppers, sweetcorn, coriander

You need to:

Place a tortilla wrap in a frying pan (no oil needed).

Pop some cheese on top.

Let the kids choose which extras they want to customise their quesadilla and pop them on top of the cheese.

Add another tortilla wrap on top to make a sandwich.

Dry fry for a couple of minutes, then flip with a spatula and dry fry the other side for a couple of minutes.

Slice like a pizza & it’s ready to eat.

We like to serve them with soured cream and guacamole.

This is a nice recipe to use if you fancy trying some new ‘international’ food with your kids and links in very well with the book Come and Eat with Us (Discovery Flaps) which was created with Oxfam and shows families in different countries shopping for food, cooking and eating. It introduces the idea of there being many similarities and differences around the world and gives lots to talk about.