Didn't I Just Feed You

The breaded chicken piece has become a symbol of “kid’s food” despite almost every cuisine having a version of this simple but sophisticated home cooking. This week, we dive into the idea that what has been co-opted by fast food and freezer companies — in this case, chicken nuggets — can actually be taken back by parents and home cooks. Stacie and Meghan debate the merits of keeping frozen nuggets...

Classroom celebrations have nothing on us: We share ALL the ideas for how to make the easiest classroom treats for any holiday celebration. From clever kitchen shortcuts to store-bought hacks, we'll help you score points with the kids (and their classmates!) and still keep your sanity. Or with Valentine's Day coming up, still have time for some kid-free hanky panky — or you know, alone tim...

This week is all about nachos — but not for the reason you might expect. Because would we ever dedicate a whole episode to game day food just because of the World Series? (We kid. We know it’s a super white Maroon 5 concert.) No, we’re talking nachos because they are one of the most underrated family meals around. We’ll tell you why, fill you in on all the gloriously easy ways you can use nachos t...

Ever heard of the “health halo”? This week, we break down the idea that a food is healthy just because a single claim of healthfulness can be made about it. Are those cookies healthy because they’re made with organic sweet potato? Maybe — but maybe not. It depends on a lot more than the sweet potato. Dietician Katie Morford of Mom’s Kitchen Handbook helps us think through issues like how to quickl...

Over the last few months, both Stacie and Meghan have taken a long, hard look at their families’ finances and were shocked to discover how much they were spending on groceries. As it turns out, they’re not alone. When Meghan reached out to Kumiko, aka The Budget Mom , she found out that food is the biggest expenditure for most families. In fact, before Kumiko became an accredited financial counsel...

Welcome to season 2, dedicated to solving kitchen problems & building practical cooking skills to help feed your family more easily, quickly & affordable. When thinking about how to save time, energy & money in the kitchen, there was no question of how to kick things off:  with the Instant Pot! And if doing a primer on the IP for busy parents, there was no question of who to talk to Mi...

Just like the first semester at a new school, Stacie and Meghan (that's us!) nervously launched Didn't I Just Feed You in Aug 2018 and wrapped season one in Dec 2018, right before winter break. From our first conversation about school lunches to our last on mastering the holidays, we not only survived our freshman season, we learned tons from interviews that still make us giddy. In this &#...

There’s no escaping the holiday onslaught now! So this week, we do our part to keep it all from feeling overwhelming by helping you take charge of how you want the next month to look. We pull out our kitchen expertise to share tons of suggestions for easy homemade food gifts that will save you time and money, and also our fastest, simplest family meals that you can whip up when you’re super exhaus...

This week, to help us sort through the best cookbooks of the year, we invited Brian Stewart of Salt and Spine , a podcast that explores the art and craft of cookbooks. Tune in for his picks in unconventional categories thought up just for us: the home cooks who have to feed families night after night. After night. Show notes for this episode can be found at Didn't I Just Feed You.com See acast...

We love shopping, but just like every other busy parent, we get overwhelmed as soon as the holidays hit. So this year, we asked our friends at Parents magazine for holiday gift inspiration. This week, Parents Senior Editor Karen Cicero shares fun food gift ideas for kids, and even some holiday shopping tips to help save money, keep kids from obsessing over immediate gratification, and even keep us...

Food writers, editors, and recipes developers love good food and want to spread food joy. Truly, we do! But we also have jobs that rely on selling magazines and getting enough clicks to sell ads on the sites that hire us. So sometimes we can get a bit, well, aggressively helpful, as Meghan puts it. In this episode, Stacie and Meghan get honest about the holiday cooking tips, kitchen strategies, an...

We get it — cooking with our kids is not the joyous, breezy bonding that Instagram promised us, but we’re doing it anyway. Joined by guest and Raddish Kids founder Samantha Barnes, Stacie and Meghan dive into the practical aspects of engaging our kids in the kitchen and exactly why we all need to do a bit more of it. Show notes for this episode can be found at Didn't I Just Feed You.com See ac...

We preach the importance of cooking with our kids but how can we get messy in the kitchen without losing our minds? This week we have craft expert Jodi Levine — author of one of our favorite websites Super Make It —on to talk about how we can have pure fun in the kitchen with our kids without worrying that they will ruin dinner or our batches of holiday cookies. Jodi dishes on her favorite super m...

In the last of our three-part series on the sweet stuff, we call on baking expert, television host, and cookbook author Shauna Sever to find out if natural and alternative sweeteners are better for our bodies. And most importantly, to learn more about how to use them effectively to keep sweets in our life smartly. Show notes for this episode can be found at Didn't I Just Feed You.com See acast...

Not sure how to manage sugar in your house? Press play now. Because if there’s one episode from which you’ll walk away with a blueprint to take action, this is the one. In our second of three episodes exploring sugar, renowned child nutrition expert Jill Castle brings her magic as a long-time expert and mom of four. Every bit of what Jill says is shared mom-to-mom, yet still manages to be a concre...

There’s something terrible lurking in our pantries. And you bought it knowingly. Even worse? It’s hiding in other foods you bought, too, some of which you may be aware of, but many of which you aren’t. Creepy, right? Even creepier is that some people consider it poison. Even worse, our kids — our precious BABIES — are addicted to it. It’s SUGAR! Show notes for this episode can be found at Didn&#39...

Interviewing is an art we’re still mastering, so perhaps it’s no surprise that our very first curveball comes courtesy of Food Network star Aarti Sequeira , who you may not know is also a trained journalist. We interviewed Aarti for our series on picky eating, but she managed to expand the conversation in such a compelling way that we turned it into a stand-alone episode. There was talk of picky e...

In the last episode in our three-part series on picky eaters, we explored the topic from perspectives on two ends of the age spectrum: Amy Palanjian of Yummy Toddler Food spoke to us as about picky young ones while Debbie Koenig chimed in about older picky eaters. Does it get better? Does how we intervene when they are young improve our picky eaters as they grow up? We may never really know, but t...

In part two of the three-part series on picky eating, Stacie and Meghan chat with TV host and cookbook author Melissa d’Arabian . The mom of four is best known for her budget-friendly family meals, but also spent a great deal of time digging into the root causes of picky eating and trying to shift her daughters’ picky habits for the Food Network video series, The Picky Eaters Project . With practi...

This week, Stacie and Meghan kick off their three-part series on picky eaters. Stacie shares her point of view as a child development expert who’s researched and worked extensively with picky eaters, though she won’t exactly call herself an expert… See, it's kind of complicated. Because in the end, only you hold the answers to unlocking your picky eater's potential — or at least not making...

Mention meal prepping and visions of spending our entire Sunday in the kitchen dance in our heads. But is this really what it takes? We chatted with the queen of meal prep, Tracy Benjamin of Shutterbean , to find out. Because we had a feeling there might be a different way. As it turns out, there are several different ways. And if you find the one that's right for you, you might even start to...

Admit it: Six o'clock on a weeknight is the worst time to be the family cook. The kids are cranky, everyone is hungry, and who knows what your picky 3-year old is going to actually eat tonight. Staring into the fridge wondering what the hell you're going to pull out is one way to get the job of feeding your family done, but what if there was a better way? In the first part of our two part...

Here's an idea: Let's take feeding kids public! We’ll bring them to a restaurant full of other adults who aren't compelled to think that our kids are cute. We’ll pay to make the experience happen. And let’s throw waiters who are loathe to deal with our small people in the mix, too, so we can pay them extra for having to serve us. Sounds fun, right? This, friends, is dining out with chi...

Welcome to the show notes for our very first mini episode. Every once and a while, when we just can't resist talking about something in the news or happening in the culture, we'll quickly hop on our mics for a quick chat.  Mini episodes will be topical and a hot 30 minutes (or so). Just enough time to vent, process, and download with each other — and YOU. Because that's what Didn't...

In the last episode of this three part series on school lunches, Stacie and Meghan explore the lunch box from three wildly different lenses. We ask an elementary school teacher to dish on what really happens in the lunchroom. Laura Fuentes of MOMables talks us through the perspective shift you'll need when your kiddos is diagnosed with a food allergy — and has great advice for what other paren...