Season 1, Episode 0: KIDDOS IN THE KITCHEN: AN IMPORTANT (ALBEIT MESSY) ADVENTURE

Transcript

Stephanie: (00:14)
Welcome to Kiddos in the Kitchen, a new podcast for busy parents, grandparents. And others who are looking for inspiration and education to help kids become more self-sufficient in the kitchen and develop a healthier relationship with food. I'm your host, Stephanie Conner, and this is my son.

Conner: (00:33)
I'm Conner and I'm five, and I love cooking.

Stephanie: (00:38)
As we record this, he's a few weeks away from kindergarten. His favorite foods are grilled chicken, white rice, black beans, and, of course, pizza, but he has a special order.

Conner: (00:51)
I want a pepperoni pizza, but with no cheese because of a dairy allergy.

Stephanie: (00:58)
And he is the reason I started my blog, Kiddos Cook, a few years ago, and the blog has led me to this podcast. I'll share more of my own story in a moment, but first I want to tell you what you can expect from this podcast.

Stephanie: (01:12)
First of all, I am not a professional chef or a dietician, but I'll be talking to some of those. I'm a mom with a love of research and storytelling and a career as a writer, and I'm a mom who believes in the power of time spent in the kitchen. And I know a lot of parents who want to help their kids eat healthy foods and get better acquainted with the kitchen and develop a healthier relationship with food, but a lot of us feel stuck. We're stuck because no one ever taught us how to cook. We're stuck because kids are picky, and it just plain sucks to cook for mini humans who won't eat anyway. We're stuck because we are busy and short on time. We're stuck because our kids have attention deficit or learning challenges or have busy lives of their own. At one time, I felt stuck because my son was allergic to a lot of things, everything it seemed.

Conner: (02:10)
Eggs, soy, dairy, nuts, peanuts.

Stephanie: (02:15)
There are a lot of reasons we might feel stuck. There are a lot of reasons to order pizza or go through a drive-through, but I know there are many more reasons to cook together at home, and for most of us, a little extra inspiration and some simple tips and tricks are all it will take to push us in the direction we already want to go in. And that is what this podcast is all about. Every month you'll get a 30-minute show where I'm asking experts to help us, help us teach our kids how to cook ...

Conner: (02:49)
I cut tomatoes and carrots.

Stephanie: (02:53)
... help us stay patient and calm while our kids explore and sometimes destroy the kitchen, help us find time for this thing, this activity, this bonding time that we know matters, help us get over our own fears of what we don't know.

Stephanie: (03:10)
In the first season, you'll hear from pediatric nutritionist and mother of three, Malina Malkani, plus mama-turned-cooking teacher Toria Frederick and her rock-star-chef son Julian, and many more. Every episode is about educating and inspiring you and, frankly, helping you realize you're not alone. We're all busy. We're all struggling to do all the right things for our kids, but together we can help each other learn and grow and do the same for our kiddos, too. Cooking can be a beautiful, if a little messy, adventure.

Stephanie: (03:48)
Along the way, I'll invite you to share your questions, stories, and triumphs. The reason I branched out from the blog to this podcast was so that I could find new ways to tell stories that were not my own and to share advice from others. So if you have something you want to know more about or you've had a magical day in the kitchen with your kiddo, I want to hear from you. Know someone who has expertise? Tell them about the show. And tune in for each episode. Subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts. Visit kiddosinthekitchen.com for episodes and for a link to subscribe to all of our content. Send me an email or a voice memo from there, too, and you can follow us on social @kiddoscook.

Stephanie: (04:31)
Okay. Now before I go, a little bit more about my own personal perspective.

Stephanie: (04:39)
Food is both a simple and complex thing. It's sustenance and energy for sure, but it's also culture and family. Sometimes it's a stress response. We find calm or happiness at the other end of a fork. Indeed, as humans, we have a lot of emotion wrapped up in food. When I think of food, I think of pepperoni rolls, a hometown favorite of the small West Virginia town I was born in. I think of the centerpiece turkeys I've worked so hard to perfect for Thanksgiving. I think of the finger food spreads my mom always prepared on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve when I was growing up. I think of the night my best friend and I, at about age 23, made a multi-course meal for our friends out of a single cookbook. Mostly I think of joy.

Stephanie: (05:28)
I don't remember my mom cooking a lot when I was a kid, probably because she was working and raising a family. I get that now. I remember we ate at home a lot, but I mostly remember taco night and spaghetti night. I don't recall a lot of freshly prepared meals. I also don't remember her really enjoying cooking. Baking, on the other hand, she loved, and I definitely inherited that, but I didn't pick up a love of cooking until I was an adult.

Stephanie: (05:55)
It started when my best friend and I would take turns cooking on Thursday nights. Back then, it coincided with Friends being on television. Later, that became our Grey's Anatomy night. Our Thursday nights were a fascinating evolution, really. It started as boiling water for some store-bought ravioli, heating up a jarred pasta sauce and making a salad, but at some point, we started cooking, like actually cooking. We read cookbooks and saved recipes. There were cheese plates and dips and appetizers and sides. My love of cooking was ignited.

Stephanie: (06:27)
Now fast-forward 15 years. My son could start eating food, and I was so excited to introduce him to all the foods. I started with homemade baby purees, which he hated. To be fair, I totally get it, but it was still crushing. I introduced veggies first, just like a good mom should. He was thoroughly unimpressed. Then came food allergies to further complicate our mealtimes. Now, sure, there are some days when I don't feel like cooking, but in general I like to cook, and I couldn't wait to share that interest with my son. To me, time in the kitchen is where I get to have fun and be creative. It's a beautiful release, or at least it used to be.

Stephanie: (07:15)
With my son and his seemingly endless list of allergies layered on top of typical toddler pickiness, dinnertime started to become a dreaded chore, another trip to the grocery store to pick out healthy foods he wouldn't eat.

Conner: (07:28)
Yucky.

Stephanie: (07:30)
Getting excited about a recipe that seemed like a sure winner, only to have him refuse to try it or quite literally throw it across the room.

Conner: (07:39)
Yuck!

Stephanie: (07:40)
Trying to find foods that were delicious that also fit his allergy profile. No eggs, no dairy, no soy, no peanuts, no tree nuts, and all of those allergies, and soy was the kicker, also meant very few options for eating out. I was exhausted and grumpy. This thing I used to love was not enjoyable anymore. In fact, many nights I found myself in tears over it. Ugh, I wondered, did we really have to have dinner?

Stephanie: (08:10)
But in January 2016, I made a resolution. I promised to get better, to plan better, to be more creative, to allow myself to have more fun, to try, and that's the operative word here, try, to care less when dinner was a failure, and I resolved to bring my son into the kitchen with me more. I also refused to make multiple meals for our small family of three. I was confident we could be healthy as a family, restore my love of cooking and maybe instill some of that in my son at the same time.

Stephanie: (08:43)
Because ultimately, I want my son to have a positive relationship with food. I want him to associate food with sustenance and health and positive memories of family gatherings and smells of bacon on Sunday mornings. I want him to know where a tomato comes from and that Cheez-Its are not really food and that homemade sorbet just tastes better. And I want him to have skills that sustain him for a lifetime, an understanding of how to prepare simple meals so he doesn't have to live on frozen pizza and fast food in college or beyond.

Stephanie: (09:15)
But it's a journey, and I know I'm not alone. Being a busy mom, who wants to find time for grocery shopping and farmer's markets and recipe hunting and cooking every night? It's hard. If you're in the same boat, maybe you'll find something we share that helps you, like a dinner your picky kid might actually eat or a tip or a trick that helps. That's my goal. And hey, if all you get is the knowledge that you're not alone in your own food fight, that's fine, too. We're all in this together, and I'm honored to have the opportunity to share stories that bring us all together.

Conner: (09:49)
I like cooking, and I'm a good chef. I'm proud of myself, and I'm five years old!

Stephanie: (09:57)
So welcome to Kiddos in the Kitchen, season one. Let's get cooking.

Conner: (10:02)
It's fun.