Joanne Roach (00:13)
Hello and welcome to the Food for Kids podcast. I'm Joanne from the Foodies. Today's episode is the September instalment of our monthly segment where I share a few easy family meals and snack ideas using the fruit and veg that are in season right now in the UK.
The idea, as always, is to take away just a little bit of that mental load of deciding what to make and give you a few straightforward, weeknight-friendly recipes that use some seasonal produce in September. September's a brilliant month because we're right on the edge of summer and autumn.
So there's lots of variety to work with and I gave you a full list of all the seasonal produce in the episode last week, but for now I've picked out three main meals, one dessert and one snack that are simple, adaptable, don't need too much fuss and are fairly family friendly. So let's get started!
The first dinner idea is a butternut squash and carrot soup. This one's great because it's naturally sweet and comforting and you can blend it to a total soft puree easily so it's a texture that tends to go down better with children who don't like lumpy soup. You can make it with just a few ingredients butternut squash, carrots, onion and a bit of stock. If you have the oven on for something else then you can try roasting the squash and carrots for a bit and that brings out their sweetness and makes the flavour a bit richer but honestly you can just make it by pan frying them with the onions for a few minutes and then adding the stock in and it turns out 90 % as good.
Not all children like soup, but when our children were learning to like soup, they used to have loads of bread to just dip the very ends into a tiny tiny small bowl of soup and they built up their confidence over time and now they love soup. But you can also serve it with cheese on toast on the side to make it more filling if they only like a little bit. And if you've got leftovers it freezes really well. I'll put a link to a version in the show notes, but there are lots of versions of this out there on the web.
My second main meal idea is a simple chicken and vegetable tray bake using September vegetables like potatoes, peppers and courgettes. I'll give some vegetarian suggestions in a minute too.
This is one of those chuck everything into a roasting tin recipes that the Americans online call sheet pan meals. It doesn't take very much effort, but it feels like a proper dinner. Chop up some veg and toss it in a little oil and seasoning. Add in some chicken. Generally go for thighs or drumsticks if you can because chicken breasts can tend to dry out in an oven bake like this and also they're a bit cheaper and roast it all together until everything's golden and cooked through. nice thing about this kind of tray bake is that the vegetables soak up the flavour from the chicken so even plainer vegetables can taste delicious without any complicated sauces.
If you're a veggie or vegan household you can either roast all the veggies together and then cook a veggie protein separately or if you want to do a whole sheet pan meal together then good choices to cook alongside the veggies are marinated tofu, thick veggie sausages or a tin of chickpeas or beans added in 20 minutes from the end can make them warm up and get a few gnarly edges.
I will link to both a chicken and a vegan version in the show notes so you can get some combination suggestions, oven timings and temperatures.
If you decide to make either of those first two recipes so you're going to have the oven on for roasting vegetables, while it's on, pop a few extra peppers, onions and then carrots or squash onto another tray while you're doing those and then you'll have some roasted vegetables ready and on another day you can blend them into a shop bought tomato pasta sauce to make it bit more interesting and pack in some more goodness. you want to make it creamy you can add in some cream or yoghurt or coconut milk or cashew cream if you're dairy free.
I will link to an example in the show notes of one which makes a creamy version with a few veg added into a shop sauce but the main thing is to save time on the roasting by doing it when the oven is already on even if you don't have the pasta in the same week as the roastie meal, you can still roast the vegetables and then cool them down and freeze them and then just defrost them on the day you eat the pasta. This gives you the convenience of a shop bought sauce but adds in some more seasonal veg and gives you a higher fibre pasta meal up your sleeve with just a few store cupboard ingredients.
For this month's dessert suggestion, in the month of many blackberries, I'm definitely going to suggest a fruit crumble. September is peak time for apples, plums and blackberries and there's still lots of raspberries around too so you can choose any combination you like. Chop up your fruit, add a little sugar if needed, sprinkle over your crumble topping, usually made from flour, butter, sugar and oats. I've got a recipe on the website for an apple crumble with full instructions for children to make it themselves and you can just add blackberries to that. Some children don't like the texture of cooked blackberries or the contrast between the soft apples and then the seedy berries, so for them you could make a plain apple one and add blackberries on the side of the plate with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Or the other hand some children find the texture of stewed apples too pithy so for them you could switch and give them a berry crumble instead.
For this month's snack idea I'm going to suggest roasted chickpeas with pumpkin spice type seasoning on it. It's a fun way to get some additional protein into a crunchy Moorish snack and you can add any topping you like, there's loads on the web, but if you want an autumn dessert feeling then a pumpkin spice mix is definitely something your child will be seeing in the bakeries and coffee shops for next few weeks. Roasted chickpeas work really well as a picky kind of snack or as a handful in lunch boxes that can't allow nuts or as an after school snack. I'll link to an example in the show notes that gives you that pumpkin spice mix.
So that's my roundup of 5 easy ideas for September. I'll pop links to example recipes in the show notes so you can find them easily. And as always, if you give one a try, I'd love to hear how you got on. Send me message on Facebook or Instagram and let me know. I'll be back next month with another set of seasonal ideas, but I hope to see you on Monday when we're talking about reducing packaging waste in kids' foods. But in the meantime, happy eating!
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