Joanne Roach (00:13)
Welcome to the Food for Kids podcast. I'm Joanne from the Foodies. This is the second of the regular monthly segments where I share a few straightforward family-friendly meal ideas that use up fruit and veg that's in season right now here in the UK. If you're new to these, the idea isn't to give you anything fancy or complicated, just some suggestions for meals that are quite easy to pull together and make the most of what's growing locally.
So it's July which means there's loads to choose from. The markets and shops are full of summer produce now. So I've picked out three main meals, one sweet and one snack that use a mix of July ingredients. So I'll talk you through each one here briefly and as always the links will be in the show notes if you want to go and get the recipe yourself.
So my first suggestion is an easy bake. It's a veggie slice. It's an all-in-one bowl to mix and one container to cook kind of a recipe, which is right up my street. So this veggie slice is basically finely chopped or shredded vegetables mixed with eggs, cheese and a little flour And baked into a big veggie cake, basically, which you can serve hot with potatoes and salad
or cold in a lunch box or little squares for snacks. So the recipe I will link to in the show notes uses grated courgettes, chopped peppers and grated carrot, but you can use any combination of soft vegetables that you prefer. That recipe also adds bacon or ham, but you can keep it vegetarian if you want to. It's basically halfway between a crustless quiche and a savoury scone, but it's a nice one to try and kids can be involved in pretty much any of the cooking elements If you want to grab them to come into the kitchen to do one or more tasks for you.So that's the first one which is a veggie slice.
The second recipe is one from my own website actually and it's a squishy tomato pasta where children squeeze the tomatoes to make the sauce. Lots of children find fresh tomatoes challenging to eat because of the contrast of texture between that squeaky skin and then the fleshy inside and then the pips. So even if they like tomato flavours in, for example, ketchup or pizza sauce, they can think that they don't like raw tomatoes.
This recipe is a really good way to get kids to explore the textures with their hands to build familiarity. And then it's paired with some children's favourites, which is pasta and cheese. So if your child's really picky with tomatoes, but will eat sauce from a jar, my recommendation would be to get a small jar of sauce for them anyway, get them to make this recipe for everybody else and have their sauce available for their pasta, but allow them to decide if they want to try the fresh sauce too, or a little bit on the side, or just be happy with themselves for having fed everybody else even if they then just eat their own sauce. This will still build confidence and having the jar available while you're cooking means that they can relax while they make the recipe because they know they won't have to eat it at the end if they don't want to but will still build up their familiarity with tomatoes.
My third and last main course suggestion is to make fajitas for the whole table with a mix of seasonal veggies as part of the toppings. So you're looking at having small white tortilla wraps or corn tacos on the table and then lots of toppings foods that you know your child likes and then some seasonal veg or things that are a bit more adventurous. So some suggestions for basics might be cooked seasoned minced beef or chilli or some shredded chicken or some pulled pork, something like that. If your child really only likes chicken as nuggets, you could cook a few nuggets and then chop them into slices so that they are small enough pieces to pop in the fajita. If you have vegetarians in the family, you could have some beans or a veggie mince mix or a walnut and mushroom mix. So that's your proteins taken care of everybody's got something to put in their fajita.
And then some child-friendly toppings would be like shredded iceberg lettuce, cucumber slices, grated cheese or mayo. And then some veggie toppings for everybody else are like corn, stir-fried vegetables like courgettes, onions, tomatoes, peppers. You can obviously have guacamole and sour cream on the table. You can have some spicy sauces for the people that want them alongside and everybody can make up their own combinations, But children who are having something a bit unadventurous can still see the nice combinations that other people are putting together and they will still build familiarity with the ingredients on the table even if what they stick to is essentially nuggets, cucumber and mayo in their fajitas So that's quite a nice thing to share together and everybody gets to pick something but you get to show off some different ingredients on the table. I'll put a link to the show notes to a basic fajita and tostada recipe that has some nice stir-fry vegetables in it but you can basically pick any combination that you like.
For something sweet I've gone for a summer fruit cake which you can make as either a tray bake or a round cake. It's a fairly basic cake recipe with no weird ingredients that you'd just need for this one recipe, and you can swap the berries in it depending on what's cheapest nearby or what you've got lurking that needs using up just use similar proportions and it'll work out fine. It's the kind of thing you can make in one bowl and doesn't need to be perfect. It would be really lovely warm with yoghurt or ice cream on the side of it or cold just as a cake in a pat lunch or as a snack.
And speaking of snacks, my fifth recipe is always a snack. So we've got a quick seasonal snack which is using the first of the year's beetroot and it's a dip for putting your crackers or veggie sticks in. Beetroot has a very distinct earthy taste that not everyone likes but this is a really good way to make use of its colour and mix with a creamy texture that is more child-friendly. You will need a blender or processor or like a stick blender just in a jug would do. Basically just use cooked beetroot, the vacuum packed ones are fine, and blend it with roughly the same proportion or weight of cream cheese or you could do half cream cheese and yoghurt if you like and a little flavouring like lemon juice or honey or garlic powder all of those would work well depending on what you like choose one that works for your family it is violently pink which is quite intriguing for lots of kids and it can be scooped up with whatever dippers you like or you could spread it on toast. I'll put a basic recipe for that in the show notes but roughly the one to one rule of beetroot to cream cheese plus add a flavour of your choice basically works.
So that's your little roundup of easy in-season food ideas for July. I'll link all the recipes in the show notes so you can find them easily and as always if you give one of these a go or you have your own seasonal favourites I'd love to hear about them. Drop me a message or DM me online.
I'll bring you a new batch of meal ideas in August.
Monday's episode is with Chris Lord who has been a secondary school food teacher for a couple of decades now and were talking about how food teaching has changed over the years. So I hope to see you then, and in the meantime, happy eating.
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