Joanne Roach (00:13)
Hello and welcome to the Food for Kids podcast. I'm Joanne from the Foodies. Today's episode is the October installment of our monthly segment where I share three family meals, a dessert and a snack using the fruit and vegetables that are in season right now in the UK. The point of this quick list is to take away a little bit of the mental load of deciding what to make for dinner while giving you some easy family-friendly ways to incorporate more seasonal produce.
October definitely feels like autumn, it's getting colder, the leaves are turning and dropping on the trees and the plants that grow our food are following suit. Summer produce plants are slowing down or even stopping from producing altogether and the first frost will come sometime this month and finish quite a few of them off. But we still have lots of tree fruit around, you'll probably be seeing windfalls for free if you keep your eyes open for them and there's all of that harvested produce from summer plants to be used up.
So I've picked out some things to make with the foods that are abundant right now but will be over soon so you can make something family friendly while they're still in season. So let's get started.
My first main meal idea is something you can make on Halloween for a quick dinner if you're joining in with trick or treating or a Halloween party but want something quick and spooky when you get back, which is quick scary pizzas. It's not rocket science and you may have made them before, but it's a great one for kids to get involved with making before they go out and then quick to get on the table when you get home. Of you can make your own dough if you want, but we used to make ours with either pita or naan bread, with a squeeze of tomato puree and a squeeze of ketchup on top swirled around with a spoon to make the base. Or you can use the cheap side plate sized supermarket margarita pizzas as a base. The reason we used ready made bases is that they keep their shape well if you cut them into a spooky shape, whereas uncooked dough can spread and puff up and ready-made bases cook dead quickly which is nice if you come back in from an activity. So you can either use scissors to cut them into a spooky shape like a ghost or a pumpkin or just use the round base and put a spooky topping on top.
My kids had two favourites, one was large oval pita breads with the bottom just cut into a sort of a floaty skirt shape to make a ghost, with a cheesy pale topping and just two eyes which you can make from olive slices, jalapeno slices or circles cut out of pepperoni or just slices of cherry tomatoes which we did use one year when even putting the olives on for looks and then picking them off again was a bridge too far. I will link to an image in the show notes of a spooky ghost pizza. They use dough in that recipe but you can easily do it with pita bread or naan bread.
My kids’ other favourite was to use one of the round supermarket pizzas and then just like shave a little bit with some scissors at the top to make it into a pumpkin shape and then use scissors again to cut pieces of pepperoni for the eyes, nose and mouth shape. This can look really effective and you can use less cheese because you're going for a more orangey tone than with the pale cheesy ghost. I will link to an example of this too.
But these pizzas are a really nice quick meal to get on the plate within 15 to 20 minutes of coming into the house. We would normally have just lobbed a handful of oven chips each in alongside the pizzas and then added some cucumber and tomato pieces on the side to be speedy.
My second main meal idea is not Halloween themed, it is a one pot butternut mac and cheese. You can use any autumn squash for this, and you don't have to pre-roast the squash or pre-cook the pasta. You just put everything into one big pan and cook it together using squash, pasta, milk and stock and cook together, then you stir in cream cheese or yoghurt and hard cheese at the end. You can totally use plant milk, veggie stock and vegan cheese if you want to. I would personally add nutritional yeast if I'm veganising it. If you cut the squash into small pieces it will mash away into the sauce as you stir it at the end so you don't have big pieces to deal with. I'll link to a suggested recipe in the show notes but I really like the fact that it's a one pot recipe.
My last main meal idea is to use some broccoli but instead of the usual kid-friendly approach of adding cheese sauce, this suggestion is to pair with beef or a veggie alternative and ramen noodles or rice depending on your family's taste. This is a really classic Asian combo with really savoury umami-ish flavours. It's pretty quick, you can make it with either quick fry steak or for a cheaper option use beef mince. If you're veggie then either marinate some soy cubes or some shredded tofu or use a TVP mince. You can make a quick sauce using soy sauce, ginger, cornflour and wine vinegar if you happen to have those in your pantry or honestly just get a ready made teriyaki or oyster sauce sachet from the shops.
I usually steamed the broccoli separately in the microwave while I made the sauce and cook the ramen or rice because then I could add the broccoli onto the side of one portion for the child who didn't like things mixed together and then stir the rest of the broccoli into the pan for everyone else. It's a very quick take away feeling kind of meal.
So that's the three main courses.
For dessert this month. Since pumpkin is our food of the month in The Foodies and most of you will be carving a pumpkin for Halloween but your kids might not be keen to eat the scrapings of flesh from it, I'm going to suggest a version of the recipe that we use in the Little Foodies Club boxes this month which is pumpkin muffins. A lot of the recipes online use canned pumpkin because they're American but here in the UK canned pumpkin isn't easy or cheap to get hold of but we have lots of fresh pumpkin scraps going to waste. So I found a recipe from a UK veg box site that uses fresh pumpkin like our Little Foodies recipe and I will link to that in the show notes. It's a nice follow up activity from when you've done your pumpkin carving. Just separate the seeds and stringy bits from the flesh and then pop the flesh in the fridge and you have a couple of days to make the muffins or you can freeze it and make it much later. But it's a nice recipe for children to help with even if they just stir a few times or help to measure things out, they can mash up the pumpkin and that will build their familiarity. I will also link to the blog post on my website with instructions for children to help them to know what to do with the pumpkin seeds which are also fun to roast and eat.
This month's snack idea I'm going to throw in one more Halloween idea which is apple monster teeth. You might be able to picture these but basically you use some cut apple as a mouth and fill it with something gooey like peanut butter or jam and then put in some fake teeth made either with mini marshmallows or slivered almonds or little bits of cheese. They end up looking like a set of false teeth. I'll link to two in the show notes, one with jam and almonds and one with nut butter and marshmallows.
As a bonus I'm also going to link to a really fun bigger apple snack which I found which uses string cheese to look like worms coming out of an apple. You need some googly eyes for those but I just thought they were really fun so I'll link to that one too.
So enjoy your spooky, fruity fun.
That's my roundup of five practical seasonal ideas for October. I'll put the 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.
I'll bring you the next set of seasonal recipes in November but I hope to see you on Thursday for an interview episode and in the meantime, happy eating!
0 comments