New Year Food Resolutions For Kids.

A very Happy New Year to all you lovely readers and your little ones. 

Each year I set out some food resolutions for myself. I will be sharing how I fared last year and my resolutions for 2015 with you pretty soon. But before I do that I wanted to share some food resolutions that my little chefling made this year (With her mum's help ofcourse). 

We are very excited about this and would love all you parents and children to join the two of us.

This year I will help Sara:

• To learn one simple recipe each month: We will master one recipe a month. It could be a simple omelette or putting together her favourite sandwich. A muffin or a salad. At the end of the year she will know 12 recipes. 12 recipes! At the end of twelve years when she goes to college she will know 144 recipes and will not have to eat boring and unhealthy dorm food! Okay clearly I am going a little giddy with all this excitement but the point is that helping our children learn to cook is a very precious gift we as parents NEED to give them. It is a gift for life.

If you'd like to join us: Choose age appropriate recipes for your children,  food that they already enjoy and are familiar with. Depending on their age/interest/ mood they may or may not be able to/ want to cook the entire recipe and that is perfectly alright. Most importantly always be there with them in the kitchen. 

• To volunteer for one dinnertime chore each night: Each time when we sit around the dinner table, enjoy a home cooked meal and talk about our day there is a very impatient kitchen sink in background full of dirty dishes, there is a refrigerator that is begging us for a clean up every few weeks, there are dishes to be put away after a meal and there are placemats and plates that need to be carried to the table before we begin eating. Our children may or may not realize this depending on how much they enter the kitchen. Sara often helps me with little tasks like taking the cutlery to the table or always putting back her plate in the sink. This year, I'd like her to partner us with a chore she chooses to do for the entire family. It could setting up the table or filling up water, basically something that she can do on her own. Helping  mum and dad with these chores make children realize the hardwork that goes behind each meal. It isn't just about cooking. The little ones also feel proud when asked to do "adult" tasks and when we begin to "depend" on them and they share responsibility.

If you'd like to join us: Talk to your child about what she/he would like to do so that they enjoy doing it and not look at it as a "chore".  Let them do different things for the first few days. It will help them figure out what they like doing. But make sure post that they stick to it. This will help them realize that mum and dad depend on them for "this  task" and also teach them about commitment.

• To choose and try one new food from a country of her choice each month: Our kids are so lucky to be growing up in a world where food from other countries is easily accessible to them in whichever part of the globe they are in. A lot of them also have friends from different nationalities and that presents them with a great opportunity to taste what their friends eat at their homes. Some of them are also reading and learning about different countries in their geography or history lessons. Picking up a country of her choice each month, knowing a little more about the food that grows there, the recipes that are made in the kitchens there and trying out the cuisine is what learning and growing is all about. Exposing Sara to new foods through this fun exercise that we will play with the globe kept on her bookshelf will help expand her palate.

If you'd like to join us: Help your child choose a country each month. Read about the vegetables and fruits that are grown there, the national dish/es of the country, the recipes that it has shared with the rest of the world. There is a wealth of information/ recipes available online else just give me shout out and I will be there with Sara to assist you. 

• To start one new food tradition that involves all of us: My parents gifted me some lovely traditions that revolved around the dinner table. Some I still observe for they have become a part of my life and take me back to a very happy place in my head and heart called childhood. After Sara came along we began to have some new ones that we didn't consciously make but became a part of our lives somehow like Friday mornings are for ALWAYS for pancakes. I'd like to start a new food tradition with her this year. It could be anything really, may be homemade pizza night each Thursday that we all make together and eat watching a children's movie. Something to look forward to each weekend and something to look back at once she is a little grown up. 

If you'd like to join us: Do you have any weekend or weeknight traditions revolving around food that you'd like to continue this year and share with us? Any new ideas that you have been already thinking about? 

Sara and I would love you to become part of this. Choose one resolution or two or all four. If we are in this together I can assure you the year will be exciting and we will push each other to do this through the year. 

So how do we do this:

• Share your pictures on the Orange Kitchens facebook page, on instagram or twitter
• Remember to use the hashtag #okfoodresolutionskids when sharing so that we can all get inspired and learn from each other. 
• Share these resolutions with other parents who you think would like to be part of this mini food revolution (feel free to share the image above).

Lets make this happen and raise healthy children who eat well and cook from scratch.

Eat real and stay healthy. 

Images: If you like any of the pictures on the blog and would like to use those please write to me. I put in hours of work behind each post and would love to share it with you but it would hurt me if  use those without my permission.Just ask!  Please feel free to share the image in this post.

Looking back at 2014.

2015 is three days away. Before we make new year resolutions let us look back at 2014. Wish you a 2015 full of magic, memories and madness.

Images: If you like any of the pictures on the blog and would like to use those please write to me. I put in hours of work behind each post and would love to share it with you but it would hurt me if  use those without my permission.Just ask! 

A fresh plate: 2014

A very Happy New Year to all you lovely readers. I absolutely love new beginnings for they give us a chance to look back on how the last year fared, an opportunity to start afresh, several new possibilities to grow, to learn and to experiment.  

Fresh plates and clean slates I love them both. For I can fill up my empty plate with things I have never tried and write new goals on my slate.

These are my resolutions for the year with respect to food.

1. Bread making: I really would like to make 52 loaves this year. I did try several last year and I have to admit most have been just so-so. I have several books that have some very doable recipes and this Christmas I got another book that just might make my dream of baking and breaking my own bread more achievable. Do you have any online resources you’d like to share? I don’t think I will be making my own starter I will still depend on the good old dry yeast but I will be using my hands for sure. We’ll leave the starters for another year.
2. Make pasta from scratch: So I own a pasta maker and it has NEVER been used (Hangs head in shame). This year I’d like to take it out of its box and show it my kitchen. That I learnt how to make ravioli from Chef Marco Sacco should help.
3. Explore more of Indian cuisine: At home we love to eat a bit of Indian, a bit of Thai, a bit of Italian, a bit of this and a bit of that…you get the idea…right? And when I say Indian I mean Indian not just Butter Chicken and Dosa. kori gashi one day, khichra the next, Mum’s rajma chawal one day and my mil’s cholar dal another. But who am I kidding? Indian Cuisine is vast and even If I spend a lifetime exploring it I don’t think I would still be able to do justice to it. I have already made a little beginning in that direction though which I intend to share with you once I am allowed to (insert wink) and I am spending considerable time reading more and more about it; getting to know the history and the geography of the wonderful country I come from through food.
4. Blog more about what I am cooking with my littlechefling: Orange Kitchens is my space where I like to talk about what is on our table and in our kitchen. It is also a space where I like to share what Sara and I have been cooking and we do spend a lot of time in the kitchen but for some reason I fail to share a lot of it here. We make, we eat and we move on. This year I intend to mend that; just what the New Year doctor ordered. Reflect and repair. So you will see a lot of kid friendly recipes that they can help with and ofcourse that I hope they will relish.
5. Concentrating on Kids and their relationship with food: I’d like to devote a large part of my year working in that direction. I took babysteps last year by writing relevant food stories and conducting food demos where I talked about it but this year I intend to focus more on the subject of connecting the children with real food (the obesity and diabetes figures here at Dubai are really alarming) and also how it is very important and ofcourse fun it is to get into the kitchen. I have a little roadmap but it needs more work and I will be sharing that with you pretty soon.
6. Use more cookbooks rather than using the same ones over and over again: I own several cookbooks. I own more than 100 cookbooks. But you know what like a lot of you out there (please tell me you belong to this group) I end up using the same ones each time for they and I have made this little bond over the years. They are familiar and I trust them. They help me when life takes over and I have to get a meal on the table each night. But this year I am going to get to know my other “friends” a little better.
7. Try a new cheese each month: We are a cheese loving family. Right from my little chefling who knows her Cheddar from Gouda or DH who hearts the stinky old cheese, the more pungent, the better for him. But once again we stick to the familiar ones. This year I’d like to meet more cheese. One new cheese each month. Stand alone bites.
8. Reduce my dependence on packaged/processed food: I have already been working on this one for several years now and this year I intend to continue. Less and less dependence on the processed and packaged food. I admit some of it actually makes my life easy but today we have some wonderful healthy options that are both easily available and not so hard on the pocket and of course like I said earlier make one’s life convenient. Plus I have been following her for a while now and I have to admit I am hugely influenced by her writing.
9. Meal planning: Family, friends and work and several other things that one wants to somehow fit in those 24 hours; I love them all. But there is one thing that I completely detest; staring at my refrigerator and trying to decide what I am going to be serving that night. And I have observed that If I plan my meals in advance (we ofcourse eat better, reduce wastage, eat variety…the usual you know) it makes a me a happier and calmer person. The fact that I have most of my meals planned for the week always-always takes the pain (Read: Thinking) out of cooking away. Let’s admit it making three meals a day, each day is not always fun.
10. Eat breakfast everyday: While we are on the subject of making me feel like a better person (if not actually make me one :)) the last one is my personal goal. I have observed that I religiously start my day with a walk and my morning cup of coffee and then begin work and before I know it I have already missed breakfast (I work largely from home and working from home does that to some people like me). This year I am making a promise to no one else but me to have that breakfast that I make sure my entire family eats and that I usually miss.

So those were my foodie resolutions for the year and we will see how I fare at the end of the year. What are yours? I’d love to hear from you.

Eat well and stay healthy.

Image: here

Happy New Year

Image : here