We are winding up our fourth year of food appreciation classes yet I think this was our first time ever cooking with lamb. After spending the entire year on the continent of Africa (who knew?), we recently landed in Morocco on our virtual culinary world tour, and in North Africa lamb is a favorite meat, often [...]
Entries Tagged as 'food appreciation'
Kids Make Moroccon Lamb Stew
May 28th, 2010 · No Comments · Ethnic, Recipes, kids
Tags: food appreciation·lamb·Morocco·stew
Kids Make Spring Couscous Salad
May 21st, 2010 · No Comments · kids
One of the challenges of working with large groups of children in the kitchen is keeping their attention. Once you lose it, it can be difficult getting it back. If we can keep the kids working with their hands, they stay focused. This couscous salad is one of those dishes that requires lots of handiwork [...]
Tags: food appreciation·North African·salad·spring·vegetables
Kids Make Ethiopian Potato Stew
May 16th, 2010 · No Comments · Ethnic, kids
Here’s another easy Ethiopian dish that the kids in my food appreciation classes really loved: potato stew, or Dinich Wat.
This stew is loaded with great vegetables: cabbage, carrots, onion. It was a great thrill to see the kids eating this so willingly, even asking for second and third helpings. There’s something about Ethiopian food kids really [...]
Kids Make Ethiopian Yellow Pea Stew
May 7th, 2010 · No Comments · Ethnic, kids
I wouldn’t have guessed that kids could go crazy for split peas. But they did for this dish of Ethiopian yellow split pea stew, called Kik Alicha, that we made in our food appreciation classes this week as we continue our world culinary tour in Africa.
This preparation is so ridiculously simple, it begs the question [...]
Tags: Ethiopian·food appreciation·peas·stew
Kids Makes Ethiopian Spicy Vegetables (Yataklete Kilkil)
April 23rd, 2010 · No Comments · Ethnic, Recipes, kids
Teaching kids about food and cooking I’ve come to learn that an appreciation for vegetables is largely a function of age. The younger ones–Kindergartners–walked away from this dish of freshly cooked vegetables tossed with aromatic butter. All they wanted was the bread. The older children–nine- and 10-year-olds–weren’t so crazy for the spongy Ethiopian injera bread, [...]
Kids Make Doro Wat
April 16th, 2010 · No Comments · Ethnic, Recipes, kids
We’ve been looking forward to the day when we could taste our own spicy Ethiopian food with injera bread and the day has finally arrived. This dish, Doro Wat, features chicken and hard-boiled egg in a traditional berbere sauce. Here in the District of Columbia, we have a large Ethiopian population and I knew some [...]
Kids Make Beet Salad
March 12th, 2010 · 2 Comments · kids
Did we really have to go all the way to South Africa to make beet salad?
My food appreciation classes continue on their virtual world food tour and this extremely simple beet salad turned up in the African cookbook we are using as a reference. There’s nothing especially African about it, but it is seasonal and [...]
Tags: beets·food appreciation·salad
Kids Make South African Buttermilk Rusks
February 19th, 2010 · No Comments · kids
A popular snack, buttermilk rusks–karringmelk beskuit in Afrikaans–are South Africa’s answer to Italian biscotti. The dough comes together very much like a traditional biscuit dough. But after the initial cooking, the biscuits are sliced into pieces, and then dried in a warm oven for several hours, or even overnight to crisp them.
Try them with tea [...]
Tags: biscuits·buttermilk·food appreciation·kids·South Africa
Kids Make Curried Chicken
February 5th, 2010 · No Comments · Ethnic, Recipes, kids
The food appreciation classes I teach at a private elementary school here in the District of Columbia this week landed in Southern Africa on our virtual world food tour. Because of the many Indian immigrants in this part of the continent, there is a definite tilt toward curry dishes in the cuisine. This one, called [...]
Kids Pass Knife Certification, Make Soup
January 30th, 2010 · 3 Comments · Tales, kids
Well, it’s finally happened. The kids in the food appreciation classes I teach at a private elementary school here in the District of Columbia have graduated (the older ones, at least) from plastic knives to real knives.
The only reason this hadn’t happened sooner was my failure to deliver on promises I’d been making for, oh, the [...]
Tags: chicken·food appreciation·kitchen techniques·soup·stocks·vegetables


We are engaging the concerns of a hungry planet--slowly--right here in our kitchen garden in the District of Columbia, about a mile from the White House.

