Joanne (00:00)
On today's Food for Kids, I give you five family-friendly meal ideas that you can make during July to use up seasonal fruits and veggies, and also some suggestions on how to adapt them for any less confident eaters.
Joanne (00:26)
Hello and welcome to the Food for Kids podcast. I'm Joanne from the Foodies. This is the July instalment of our regular monthly segment where I share some family-friendly meal ideas that can use up some of that fruit and veg that's in season right now here in the UK.
If you're new to these episodes, the idea isn't to give you anything fancy or complicated. They're just some weekday friendly, fairly simple suggestions for family-friendly meals to pull together and make the most of what's growing.
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. I'll talk you through each one 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 main meal suggestion is an easy bake, kind of a veggie slice. It's one of those all in one bowl to mix and then only one container to cook kind of recipes, 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 then baked into basically a big veggie cake, which you can serve hot with potatoes and salad or cold in the lunchbox or in little squares for snacks. So the recipe I'll link to in the show notes uses grated courgettes, chopped peppers and grated carrot. But honestly, you can use any combination of soft vegetables that you prefer. The recipe I'm linking to also adds ham or bacon, but you can keep it vegetarian if you want to, or add in something like smoked tofu.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 and do one or more tasks for you. So that's the first one, our veggie slice.
The second main meal idea is 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 pips. So even if they like tomato flavours, for example, in a ketchup or a 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 it's a great recipe to get them hands-on with food and then they can always choose not to eat it at the end but they'll have still built up their confidence. 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 then have their sauce available for their pasta, but allow them to decide if they want to try the fresh sauce too, or have a little bit of it on the side, or just be happy with themselves for having fed everybody else, even if they just eat their own sauce. This will still build their confidence and having the jar available while you're cooking means that they can relax while they're making the recipe because they know they won't have to eat it if they don't want to. So this will enable them to build up their familiarity while feeling really relaxed. So that's your pasta with fresh 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 shredded chicken or pulled pork, something like that. If your child really only likes chicken as nuggets, you could cook a few nuggets and chop them into slices so that they're 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 to add on top some child-friendly toppings would be things like shredded iceberg lettuce, cucumber slices, grated cheese or mayo. And then some veggie toppings for everybody else, like corn, stir fry vegetables like courgettes, onions, tomatoes and peppers. You can obviously have guacamole and sour cream on the table too. You can have some hot 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'll still build their 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 combinations of ingredients on the table. I'll put a link in the show notes to a basic fajita and tostada recipe that has some nice stir-fried vegetables in it, but honestly you can basically pick any combination that you like.
For something sweet in July, I've gone for a summer fruit cake, which you can make either as a tray bake or as a round cake. It's a fairly basic cake recipe so there's no having to buy weird ingredients that you'll only need for this recipe and you could swap the berries in it, depending on whatever is cheapest nearby or what you've got lurking that needs using up, so 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. And it would be really lovely warm with yogurt or ice cream on the side of it, or just cold as a cake in a packed lunch or as a snack.
And speaking of snacks, my fifth recipe is always a snack. So we've got a quick seasonal one, which is using the first of this 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 everybody likes, but this is a really good way to make use of its very bright colour and mix it with a creamy texture that's more child-friendly. You will need a blender or processor or even a stick blender just in a jug would do. Basically just use cooked beetroot, you can obviously get some fresh beetroot and cook it, but 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 yogurt if you prefer and a little flavouring like lemon juice or honey or garlic powder, all of those would work well depending on what you like, just choose one that works for your family. This dip 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 your flavours of your choice basically works. Obviously you can add it alongside other dips that you know your child likes and pick the things to dip in that you know they really enjoy.
So that's our 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 if you've got your own seasonal favourites that you'd like to tell me about, please drop me a message or DM me on socials. I'll bring you a new batch of meal ideas in August using seasonal foods for then too. And I hope to see you on the next episode. But in the meantime, happy eating.
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