Food For Kids

Today's episode is a high speed run through a bunch of ideas for including more fruit and veg in to everyday meals without lots of faff. This is taken from a guide Joanne published ten years ago which included 101 different ways to help kids love fruit and veg, and the ideas in this episode are all going to be easy additions to everyday cooking. This episode is focusing on fruit and veg because th...

Today's episode is the second of our series on the theme of helpful information if your child asks to bring someone home for tea who has different dietary requirements than your own family. Back in episode 11 we talked about some tips for hosting a child who is coeliac and today we're talking about having a child for tea who is vegan or plant-based if your family is not. For this I spoke to Paula...

In this episode of the Food for Kids podcast, Joanne shares simple, family-friendly meal ideas using seasonal produce available in October including a couple of Halloween themed kids’ favourites. The focus is on easy-to-make recipes that require minimal prep time, making them perfect for busy families. Joanne discusses three main meals, a dessert, and a quick snack, all utilizing fresh ingredients...

Today’s episode is a short and fun one and is a quick roundup of some fun games you can play with your child away from the table in order to build familiarity with foods and help to increase their confidence about the fact that there is no pressure to eat when they explore foods. For all of these activities there is an opportunity for children (and adults) to taste a food, but there is an alternat...

Today’s episode is a fun one, Joanne talks to Florence Rebattet from En Cuisine Cooking School about how to teach kids to cook if you’re not very confident yourself. Flo has been running her cooking school in London for over ten years, and teached teaches children from aged 3 right through to 18 how to cook from scratch with classes, holiday cooking camps and courses. We have both worked with a lo...

In this episode, Joanne runs through a list of fruits and vegetables which are in season in the UK in October, and offers tips for getting children to try each of them. There is also a short list of imported foods that are currently in season. This will be useful if you want to increase your intake of seasonal fruits and vegetables, and want some ideas for helping to build your child's familiarity...

Today's episode is not so much an episode about children's food specifically, as just about making family food easier in general and it's going to be a list of 12 types of food that you might not know that you can freeze. So hopefully one or more of these ideas might be helpful, whether it's to help you buy a bigger, more economical pack of something and then split it up to save some money. Also,...

In today's episode Joanne talks through some of the rules and precautions you need to think through if you want to try foraging with kids. This last Thursday episode of the month is normally reserved for talking about how to store, freeze and use up a group of foods, and this month's food is blackberries. Because we already covered berries in detail back in June, Joanne does cover how to store and...

This episode forms a two-parter with episode 33 about how to talk about food, and this one is about how to take pressure away from the dinner table in general and includes an interview with Kirsty Porter from Nutrition4Kids, who we last heard from back in episode 12 where she talked about sensory issues with foods. After the interview piece Joanne runs through some other small and practical things...

In today’s episode Joanne talks about how to talk about food with your child if you are trying to take the pressure off them and especially if you have a fussy or anxious eater. She goes over why it’s important to be careful about how we talk about food at the table, and then gives some suggestions for ways that we can talk when exploring food with our child, that isn’t linked to their being press...

In today's episode Joanne is looking at reducing packaging waste in kids’ meals, so that’s mostly snack foods and lunchbox foods, and it’s something we all want to do, but it can be quite hard when there are so many things to balance. Joanne runs through some of the arguments for trying to reduce packaged foods, and gives some practical suggestions for one item at a time. Joanne then has a convers...

In this episode of the Food for Kids podcast, Joanne shares simple, family-friendly meal ideas using seasonal produce available in September. The focus is on easy-to-make recipes that require minimal prep time, making them perfect for busy families. Joanne discusses three main meals, a dessert, and a quick snack, all utilizing fresh ingredients that are in season. She gives suggestions on adapting...

This episode explores why cookery and food teaching is not just teaching a basic life skill although that is also very important, but how it is a vehicle for teaching lots of other parts of the curriculum and lots of skills that you wouldn’t necessarily think of as being related to food. So whether you have a child in pre-school, in a school, if you’re homeschooling, or if you just want to help yo...

In this episode Joanne runs through some ideas for school and nursery lunchboxes. One of the things that comes up all the time with packed lunches is that they can get boring. Some children of course don't mind having similar things most days but if your child is getting bored with the same old sandwich or you want to try and change things up a bit to add some variety, especially if your child's f...

In this episode, Joanne runs through a list of fruits and vegetables which are in season in the UK in September, and offers tips for getting children to try each of them. There is also a short list of imported foods that are currently in season. This will be useful if you want to increase your intake of seasonal fruits and vegetables, and want some ideas for helping to build your child's familiari...

In this episode, the third in a monthly series, Joanne runs through some ideas to reduce food waste and save money by storing foods well and using them up effectively. This episode is about courgettes and summer squashes so there are some ideas about how to store courgettes and thin skinned squash to make them last longer, and stop them going off. This includes how to store them in the kitchen, ho...

Today’s fairly short episode is about packed lunches for the start of term next week, and specifically, about how to keep packed lunch foods safe until lunchtime. The main issue with lunchboxes is the storage of them between them being packed in the morning and them being eaten.   If the hot weather in the last few weeks has made you think about how food will last in hot classrooms then this...

In this episode I run through some child friendly barbecue ideas for these last few weeks of the summer holidays and into the warm September weekends. In the UK a barbecue can feel like such a treat. When you’re imagining it, it’s got a relaxed vibe, the sun’s out, friends or family are around, there’s the smell of the grill and some cold drinks and everyone is enjoying cooking and eating in the o...

In today's episode I'm talking to Ailsa McHardy of Little Nutrition about the guidelines for when to wean your baby onto solid foods. There is a lot more understanding, flexibility and information out there now than when my kids were weaning and I wanted to ask Ailsa what the current best advice is for parents on how to know if their child is ready or not. We talk about why age is a guideline and...

In this episode of the Food for Kids podcast, Joanne shares simple, family-friendly meal ideas using seasonal produce available in August. The focus is on easy-to-make recipes that require minimal prep time, making them perfect for busy families. Joanne discusses three main meals, a dessert, and a quick snack, all utilizing fresh ingredients that are in season. She gives suggestions on adapting re...

In today’s episode I am going to give you seven incredibly easy two minute tasks that your children can do in the kitchen, for when you want them to learn some skills but don’t have time to cook with them. I meet a lot of parents at school events and when I am out and about selling my books and activity boxes and at basically every event one of them says something to the effect of how they know th...

In today’s episode I am talking to Kate Hall from the Full Freezer about how we can reduce food waste using our freezer, both to reduce our impact on the environment, and to save us some money and time. One of the things that can really be a stressor when you are racing around trying to keep everyone fed while not bankrupting yourselves is the knowledge that there are a couple of things in your fr...

In this episode, Joanne runs through a list of fruits and vegetables which are in season in the UK in August, and offers tips for getting children to try each of them. There is also a short list of imported foods that are currently in season. This will be useful if you want to increase your intake of seasonal fruits and vegetables, and want some ideas for helping to build your child's familiarity...

In this episode Joanne talks to Emma Shafqat from Dietitian With A Difference about childhood milk allergy, what the two main types are, what the differences are between the two and how to find out if your child has one. Emma then talks through what will happen next if you get a diagnosis and what the "milk ladder" is. She also explains the difference between a milk allergy and a lactose intoleran...

In this episode, the second in a monthly series, Joanne runs through some ideas to reduce food waste and save money by storing foods well and using them up effectively. This episode is about tomatoes so there some ideas about how to store tomatoes to make them last longer, and stop them going off. This includes how to store them in the kitchen, how to freeze them and how to dry them. There is also...