Joanne Roach (00:13)
Hello and welcome to the Food for Kids podcast. I'm Joanne from the Foodies. So today's episode is the August instalment of the regular monthly segment where I share a few simple and weeknight friendly meal ideas and snacks that use those seasonal fruits and veggies that I've been talking about that's in season right now in the UK. The idea is to save the mental load of you having to work out what to make in order to use some of those seasonal things that you want to try with your kids and to give you some ideas for family-friendly meals and snacks that you can just have a go at.
So, it's August, which means there's so many foods to choose from. The vast majority of summer foods are easily available now and by the end of this month we'll even be getting the very first autumn fruits coming through, so we've got lots to work with. So, as usual, I've picked out three main meals, one dessert and one snack that use a mix of August ingredients. They're all easy to adapt and don't need much prep or fuss.
I'll talk you through each one here briefly and then I'll pop some links to some good examples of them in the show notes in case you want to try one of them next week and put the ingredients on your shopping list this weekend. So here we go.
The first idea is to make a ragu using red lentils and then some of those summer vegetables, so things like red peppers or aubergines or courgettes in very small pieces so they break down into a nice soft sauce. And this is a really good way to introduce lentils to children without it being too obvious. So there are loads of really good vegetarian lentil ragu recipes around. I will link to one from Hill Start Nutrition that uses red peppers. And these are really good to either use as a pasta sauce or you can put them in between layers of a lasagna or you can put them as the base for something like a shepherd's pie. So it's a really good base recipe to use some of those Mediterranean ingredients alongside some lentils.
My second dinner idea, which can also actually be made into small pieces for a snack or use as a lunch, is courgette fritters. You can also add sweet corn into this. There are lots of recipes around that use a mixture of both.
So the recipe I'm going to link to is actually from my own website and that's quite a good one to use because all the instructions are actually set out for children to make. So if you do want to get your kids in the kitchen this month and do some cooking together, this would be a really good recipe. But basically it's some grated courgettes with a lot of the water squeezed out, mixed together with some kind of binder like an egg, sometimes with flour if you want to, although you can do a flourless versions. And then a lot of people will add things like sweet corn or cheese,
The one on the website that I'll link to uses just courgettes rather than adding corn and it uses cheese or you could use nutritional yeast and some flour and some eggs to make a kind of a pancake. And as I said before, can make them all different sizes. So you can make larger ones that you can use effectively as a burger or as a fritter on a plate to dip into some sauce. But you can also make mini ones that you can either eat as a snack with a dip or you can pop into a pita bread. So that's dinner number two.
And the third main meal idea is to make some egg fried rice. This is just a really great base recipe to have up your sleeve and you can put any kind of vegetables in it, which obviously at the moment we've got so many summer vegetables that you could add to egg fried rice, but you can change it throughout the year. This time of year things like peas, tiny little cubes of carrot, tiny little pieces of red pepper, they will go really nicely in it. I linked one from Little Monkey Nutrition that is really well formulated for fussy eaters, but essentially it's that really good fried rice recipe that you can have on the side of something. You can add something else on top or you can just eat it as it is.
My dessert idea for August is almost like a pudding version of the taco bar that we talked about in so far as it allows your child to have some control over adding the things to their plate that they want. So you can either use meringue nests, which I will link to a recipe in the show notes for you to make your own if you want to, or you can just buy the ones from the supermarket. or if you don't eat eggs or you don't want to have something quite so sweet, you could also go for little pastry cases, you know, like jam tart sized cases, then have a bunch of different summer fruits on the table. You could obviously have berries, things like peaches and nectarines on the table that can add to their own nests or cases and then something to bind it together, So something like whipped cream, ice cream or yogurt.
And that way people can take their little case or their little nest, and adding their own mixture of fruit and creaminess in exactly the way that they want to. And when they've finished their little case, obviously they can have more fruit and everybody can make a bit of a mess and have a lot of fun putting them together.
If you do decide to make your own meringue, that's a lot of fun to do together. Children can learn a lot by whipping up the egg whites. And also the nice thing about that is you can make them a little bit flatter and wider so you can fit more fruit in than the ones that you buy in the shops. But any of them will work fine. And as I said, little pastry cases would also work well Or another idea is to use ice cream cones and you can pile the toppings into there. So that's a fun, choose your own adventure pudding for the summer.
And then finally for a snack, I'm going to suggest something that isn't necessarily a summer snack, but because we've got sweet corn in season at the moment, it feels like a summer snack, which is popcorn. Popcorn is obviously made from corn kernels, that's why it's popcorn. But the varieties that we grow for drying out and then using as popping corn are different to the varieties that we use for eating as sweet corn because those are bred to be extra sweet and juicy whereas the popping corn ones are obviously bred for their good popping qualities. But I always think it's quite nice for children to look at some tinned sweet corn or a corn on the cob and then to look at popcorn and realise that we're talking about the same vegetable just in a different format.
So popcorn is a great, fairly high protein snack. It can be quite filling. It's an awful lot of fun to make. You can make it in the microwave in one of those bags, or you can make it in a pot or can even get fun little popcorn makers that only cost a few quid these days. I think it's really nice for children to choose their own toppings. I will link in the show notes to a collection of different recipes for popcorn. But think it's really nice for children to try out sweet toppings, salty toppings, savoury toppings and sometimes you can try a variety of them and all pick at each other's. So that's just a really nice fun sharing snack and really great if you're having family movie time.
Don't forget you can also add things into the popcorn. So in the pick and mix tuck shop that I ran, We used to mix the popcorn together with sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds and then raisins or other dried fruit. And that makes a kind of a nice halfway house between a trail mix and straight popcorn.
So that's my roundup of five easy in-season food ideas for August. As I said, I'll put all the links to the recipes in the show notes so you can find them easily. And like every month, if you do decide to give one of these a go, I'd love it if you DM me on Facebook or Instagram to let me know. I'll bring you a new batch of ideas in September using September Foods. I'll be back on Monday with an interview episode, so I hope to see you then. And in the meantime, happy eating.
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