The Exploratorium’s new digs boast stellar water views. Photo: Amy Snyder

The museum cafe, long a place of soggy sandwiches and mediocre meals, is getting a makeover in the Bay Area. Case in point: The recently reopened Exploratorium in new digs at Pier 15 in San Francisco, which offers creative fare tied to the mission of the museum, known for its interactive exhibits and playful approach, designed to encourage curiosity and experimentation.

Think seawater cocktails. Honeycomb with almonds and apricots. And living or fermented foods.

Visitors have three eating options: The 200-seat Seaglass restaurant, complete with panoramic views, a glass-topped raw bar, and open kitchen, which serves up familiar, family-friendly fare like tacos, pizza, and sandwiches — albeit with a sustainable pedigree — along with more adventurous eats such as marinated sardines, batter-fried green beans, and kelp salad with quinoa. There’s even a local riff on Welsh Rarebit (that’s gussied up grilled cheese to the uninitiated.) A full-bar serves cocktails promising a taste of the sea and in-vogue drinking vinegars known as shrubs. Near the museum’s Embarcadero entrance, the Seismic Joint offers take-away chow such as a chickpea-battered fish fingers, various spins on clam chowder, salads, and sandwiches. Mobile food trikes (built by Luigi Oldani and crew of CRO Cafe) roam the floors, peddling espresso Thanksgiving coffee, baked goods, and Strauss organic soft-serve ice cream.

The culinary duo behind the Exploratorium’s restaurant menu features acclaimed chef Loretta Keller of Coco500, a perennial Chronicle Top 100 restaurant, and her Coco500 partner, catering operations manager Clay Reynolds. The pair, who previously partnered with Charles Phan of Slanted Door fame to run The Moss Room at The California Academy of Sciences, have teamed up with Bon Appetit Management Company, known for its emphasis on scratch cooking with sustainably sourced ingredients, for the Exploratorium’s edible enterprises to form the Curiosity Catering Company.

Keller talked with BAB about her plans to feed people well and offer a side of education at the Exploratorium.

Clay Reynolds and Loretta Keller join forces at the Exploratorium. Photo: Gayle Laird

What got you excited about creating food for the Exploratorium?

What resonated with me about this project was a sense of place. The Exploratorium moved from this dark, cavernous space to a venue 800 feet over the water. Place is both a subject to explore and engage with at the Exploratorium. For me that means something in terms of food but also as a human being.

The environment and human experience, that’s everything to me. The importance of farming and where our food comes from is a very familiar mantra in the Bay Area. When you spend as much time as I do as a professional inside the food industry here you can get to a point where you’re in your own zip code. It can become precious and you can lose sight of the fact that our work is not done.

More than any other reason to be involved here, the museum offers a new and incredibly creative, intelligent and organic opportunity to do work on environmental consciousness, sustainability, and awareness around food and the planet. The Exploratorium is a great way to shake things up and have people engage with an exhibit in a hands-on way. That’s where the learning begins.

Is that where the honeycomb comes in?

Yes. The honeybee is in peril so by serving the honeycomb I’m hoping to help people stop and think and connect the bee with the almonds and the apricots — that’s why those things are always going to accompany the honeycomb. We want it to be a real exhibit and educational model that people will become intrigued by and realize how endangered bees are, which means your almonds are endangered, and all your stone fruit is endangered, and a whole way of eating is at risk. Bees are struggling with so many things right now; they’re overworked and experience bee jet lag. Bees want to winter in Florida, but instead almond growers in California pay exorbitant prices to have them flown or trucked here and put to work to meet demand. California is the biggest producer of almonds in the world, something like 70 percent, and people just take that for granted.

Japanese chef Sachio Kojima, who developed fervent fans for his sushi over the years, heads up Seaglass’s seafood and fermentation section. Photo: Gayle Laird

How are you incorporating living and fermented foods into the menu?

We are so lucky to have master chef Sachio Kojima, who had his own popular restaurant, Kabuto Sushi A&S, on Geary for more than 20 years, come on as our director of fermentation. He’s making seaweed and kelp salads, with kelp gathered from Marin, Mendocino, and Monterey counties, we’ll have algae on the menu too. And from our pickling program, we’ll offer traditional Japanese pickles, kimchi, and sauerkraut.

Visitors to the Exploratorium’s Seaglass restaurant can order from a raw bar full of sustainable seafood.
Photo: Gayle Laird

Where does sustainable seafood fit in?

We are doing an ocean bar, serving sushi, sashimi, and oysters that Sachio oversees as well. It’s all West Coast, Monterey Bay Watch-sanctioned seafood.

We missed the herring run this season but we’ll be serving herring next Spring. And we’ll serve anchovies in season too; these are really the last of the commercial fisheries within the bay. People have to understand that their choices are becoming so limited with regards to fish. There are very few wild fish that are sustainable. So we’ll be serving what people think of as bait and also serving whole fish. That starts a conversation in the U.S. because most people here are not used to seeing a whole fish or bait on a plate.

Sea grapes add a salty kick to cocktails at the Exploratorium. Photo: Loretta Keller

What about seawater and its connection to the new space?

My partner Clay Reynolds wanted to serve filtered seawater to drink, but the technology isn’t quite there. And then we wanted to run the dishwasher on seawater but it became clear that that was a whole project on its own. But the Exploratorium is using seawater to heat the building, which is quite extraordinary.

We’re using seawater in a cocktail. It turns out that the health department doesn’t recognize seawater as a consumable, so we’re not allowed to serve seawater per se. But there are kelps available that contain seawater, and there’s a Monterey County kelp called sea grape, that we add to our signature martini, which tastes great with a little bit of seawater. So we’re garnishing the drink with this kelp whose buds are full of seawater, when you burst them in your mouth you get a nice jolt of salt.

We’re including seawater in other ways in the restaurant too. The multi-hued glass tiles are based on a museum exhibit called “Color of Water.” To create the piece, a fixed-position camera took time-lapse photos of the bay, the color variations are caused by sunlight, tides, and microorganisms.

The piece in the dining room called “Thermal Mixing” also demonstrates the dynamics of the bay: It’s a triptych of panels of colored water of different temperatures that swirl like giant mood rings on the back wall. “Icy Bodies” is an exhibit where fragments of dry ice are pushed into a tank and spin around like comets across a sheet of water below a glass-topped bar. All these are nods to one of the most extraordinary places on the planet for moving water.

What role does food play at the museum?

By and large, with few exceptions, the food served at museums in this country is like prison food, just terrible. All this money was being spent on creating the new Exploratorium, which is a gift to residents and visitors of San Francisco, and so it’s critical that the food match the museum and its surroundings.

First and foremost we want to serve healthy, well-prepared fresh food to the museum goers, that’s our mandate. The challenge within that framework is to build in education, implicitly and explicitly, about sustainability. I get to be creative and think outside the box. We plan to do corn education tied to an exhibit and blind wine tastings at our adult nights. At the Exploratorium it’s not about looking at stuff, it’s about interacting with stuff. There’s an intimacy here that provides a direct way to get to people’s minds. And food has always been a great platform to reach people because it is so intimate and it’s a necessity; people have to eat every day. There aren’t that many mediums that offer that.

Details:

The restaurant is open during regular museum hours: Tuesday-Sunday 10am-5pm; Wednesday evenings until 10pm; every Thursday evening adults only (ages 18 and up) 6pm-10pm. It caters primarily to museum guests, but the public can access the restaurant from an exterior entrance.

Mom’s Posh Porcini Popcorn stashed behind the cookbooks. Photo: T. Susan Chang for NPR

Post by T. Susan Chang, Kitchen Window, NPR Food

Get recipes for Slow-Roasted Butter Pecans, Matzo Candy With Caramel, Chocolate And Halvah, Rhubarb-Ginger Fool, Posh Porcini Popcorn and Curried Egg Salad Sandwich

My mother didn’t plant a great many spring bulbs. But over by the pachysandra patch, there was a single lovely pink tulip, and I kept my eye on it for two weeks before Mother’s Day. When that Sunday morning arrived, I rushed out, snipped it and ran inside to where she lay sleeping to present it to her. “Did you pick that outside?” she inquired, her expression shifting from sleepy surprise to something more complicated. I nodded proudly. “Oh … thank you, sweetie.”

Today, some 40 years later, I can read that image of my mother’s face like a book — chagrin for the flower-picking (she would rather have enjoyed it in the spot where she’d planted it), affection for her impetuous daughter and perhaps a bit of resignation. For it is traditionally the lot of mothers to receive, on their special day, clumsy, heartfelt versions of the domestic miracles they themselves pull off so adeptly the rest of the year.

Much has changed for mothers in the decades since. So many of us work that a day free of housekeeping chores really seems more like a right than a privilege. And being taken out for brunch is maybe a mixed blessing when what you really want is to sleep in. So I’d like to make a subversive sort of argument — for us moms to take charge, at least in part, of our own Mother’s Day.

Rather than passively waiting around for somebody to think of and give you a treat, why not make one of your favorites for yourself? Something you can snack on all week when no one’s around. Or, better yet, something you don’t have to share. Flowers are nice, perfume is nice, but what really makes me feel special is having a stash of slow-roasted butter pecans that nobody else knows about.

Some of us like it savory; some of us like sweet. Maybe we pack snacks every day for our kids, or we get dinner on the table every night, or we bring a Tupperware to microwave in the office. The point is that we rarely take the time to make a treat for ourselves. Little salty snacks like nuts and popcorn are satisfying, and really not all that bad for you. Custardy individual-sized sweets are irresistible, as are brittle sweets that go crunch. You could make spicy seaweed or chocolate bread or candied orange peel or dumplings or macaroons. Really, there are no rules to what makes a good secret stash food for Mother’s Day, as long as you like it and you have the time and energy to make it.

Where can you hide your treats? Well, the obvious place is at work, if you work outside the home. If you’re at home, seek out the places nobody else seems to know about — like the file cabinet that allows you to produce a months-old receipt from Target when you have to return a nonfunctioning toaster. Or the place where your daughter keeps her chorus folder, or where the button batteries are kept. Store them high (unless your spouse is 6 foot 3) or store them low. The idea is to keep them away from eye level.

Does this seem small-spirited? Somehow calculating? Then I suppose I should admit that deep down, I’m just as sentimental as anybody. When it comes right down to it, the sight of my children growing tall and strong and the sheltering embrace of my husband’s arms are all I really ask for as a mother and a wife. And in then end, I will probably end up sharing my treats anyhow.

But when everyone’s away or asleep and a mom’s left, once again, with her cares and dreams and never-ending lists, it doesn’t hurt to have a little something set aside. It’s a reminder that, even then, when Mom’s the last thing on everybody’s mind, there’s still one other person who cares enough to make you smile: you.

Recipe: Slow-Roasted Butter Pecans

These are a Southern specialty I first learned to make from Damon Lee Fowler’s The Savannah Cookbook (Gibbs Smith, 2008). The long, slow roasting brings out delicate, coffeelike undertones in the pecans. In the unlikely event that there are any left after you’re done snacking, you can mix them into or scatter them atop ice cream.

Slow-Roasted Butter Pecans. Photo: T. Susan Chang for NPR

Makes 6 to 8 servings

Ingredients:
1 pound shelled whole pecans
2 tablespoons unsalted butter

Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Line a 9-by-13 pan with foil and place the pecans in it, shaking to level them. Cut the butter into 8 small chunks and scatter it over the pecans.

Roast the pecans in the center of the oven for 1 hour, tossing them well every 15 minutes (it’s particularly important after the first 15 minutes, when the butter has first melted). The pecans continue to cook after they come out of the oven, so don’t let them get too dark. To test them for doneness, cool a pecan slightly and break it in half. The center should be a delicate but distinct beige.

While the pecans are hot, salt them generously and toss until they are well-coated. Devour them immediately, wait until they’re cool, or store them (cooled) in an airtight container.

Recipe: Matzo Candy With Caramel, Chocolate And Halvah

This is adapted from Susan Feniger’s Street Food (Clarkson Potter, 2012). I like to use lightly salted matzo, which gives you a little bit of that salted-caramel effect. You can get halvah at most Middle Eastern groceries. You can break up the finished candy into very small, decorous pieces if you are concerned about gorging yourself. I have to warn you that it is terribly addictive.

Matzo Candy With Caramel, Chocolate And Halvah. Photo: T. Susan Chang for NPR

Makes 11 matzo candies

Ingredients:
Olive oil for spraying or filming
1 (11-ounce) box matzo crackers (11 crackers)
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/4 cup light corn syrup
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 pound semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped
1/4 pound (1 cup) halvah, crumbled

Instructions:
Set the oven to 300 degrees. Spray 3 baking sheets with olive oil spray, or spread a small quantity of oil over the sheets with a basting brush. (You can line the sheets with foil if you don’t wish to scrub them so much later.) Lay the matzo out in a single layer on the prepared baking sheets.

Put the butter, brown sugar, corn syrup and salt in a small saucepan set over low heat. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 3 to 4 minutes, until the butter melts. Raise the heat to medium and cook until the mixture is bubbling rapidly, 3 minutes. Add the baking soda, turn off the heat and stir. The caramel mixture will be thick and bubbly.

Spread the caramel over the top of the matzo crackers, covering their entire surface. Put the baking sheets in the oven and bake for 10 to 15 minutes.

Remove the baking sheets from the oven and immediately sprinkle the chopped chocolate over the caramel-covered matzo. Using a rubber spatula or the back of a spoon, spread the chocolate pieces so that they melt and coat the caramel matzo evenly. Work quickly, to take advantage of the hot caramel, which cools rather fast. Then, while the chocolate is still warm, sprinkle with the halvah. Let the matzo cool in the refrigerator for 1 hour or longer.

Break the cooled matzo into smaller pieces, and serve. Store any extras in the refrigerator in an airtight container or plastic bags.

Recipe: Rhubarb-Ginger Fool

Creamy, cool, gently tart, pink and irresistible. The Beekeeper’s Bible (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2011), from which this recipe is liberally adapted, calls for “stem ginger,” “stem ginger syrup” and “acacia honey,” but there is no need to make things difficult. As long as you can find some candied or crystallized ginger, you’re in business. If you care for a more refined texture, you could puree the rhubarb-ginger mixture before folding in the cream.

Rhubarb-Ginger Fool. Photo: T. Susan Chang for NPR

Makes 4 servings

Ingredients:
1 pound rhubarb, trimmed and finely chopped
1 tablespoon water
2 tablespoons finely chopped candied ginger
1/4 cup turbinado sugar (“sugar in the raw”)
3 tablespoons honey
1 1/4 cups heavy cream

Instructions:
Combine the rhubarb, water, ginger, sugar and honey in a small saucepan and simmer over low heat for 10 to 15 minutes, until the rhubarb is soft. Allow the mixture to cool.

Whisk the cream until it achieves soft peaks, then fold in the rhubarb mixture. Spoon the mixture into glasses and chill for 2 hours.

Just before serving, drizzle with a little more honey. If you happen to have any ginger snaps on hand, serve them with the fool.

Recipe: Posh Porcini Popcorn

I wouldn’t try to make this with air-popped popcorn. Although the porcini salt is fine and powdery, it still needs the oil to make it stick. And as for the truffle oil, it is indispensable. Don’t feel bad if you polish this all off in one go — popcorn doesn’t keep anyway.

Makes 4 cups

Ingredients:
1/4 cup dried porcini (hard to measure, but just approximate without crushing the fungi into the measuring cup)
Salt
4 cups hot, freshly oil-popped popcorn
Truffle oil to taste

Instructions:
Grind the porcini in a coffee or spice grinder until it’s finely powdered — be careful lifting the lid, as it will release clouds of porcini dust. Add about a teaspoon of kosher salt (less, if you’re using table salt) and pulse just to combine.

Scatter over hot, freshly popped popcorn and drizzle with a few decadent drops of truffle oil. Take a moment to toss really well before scarfing down by the fistful.

Recipe: Curried Egg Salad Sandwich

As much fun as it is to have hoards of secret snacks on the premises, a mom still has to eat a good lunch sometime, and I don’t mean a pint of store-bought yogurt or a package of overpriced kale chips. Here’s a sandwich that comes together in a moment, but still feels like a special treat. Don’t skip buttering the bread — it makes all the difference.

Curried Egg Salad Sandwich. Photo: T. Susan Chang for NPR

Makes 1 sandwich, piled high

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon cooking oil
1 medium shallot, finely chopped
3/4 teaspoon curry powder
1 scant teaspoon apricot jam
2 hard-boiled eggs
2 tablespoons minced chives
A few cilantro sprigs, to taste
Small handful baby arugula or watercress
Salt, to taste
Multigrain bread
Butter

Instructions:
In a small, heavy saucepan, warm the oil. Over a low flame, sweat the shallot with a pinch of salt until tender and colored a pale gold (take care not to burn on the edges), about 5 minutes. Add the curry and stir in until well blended and fragrant. Add the jam and 2 to 3 tablespoons of water, stirring until a loose slurry is formed. Simmer gently until you have a thick, syrupy sauce that doesn’t run but holds together in the pan, like a chutney or salsa.

Pour the mixture into a shallow bowl to cool for a moment. Pop a couple of slices of multigrain bread in the toaster. If you can keep one side of each slice untoasted by placing the bread face down on a piece of foil or tray, so much the better.

While the bread is toasting, mash the hard-boiled eggs into the curry sauce with a fork, until the egg salad is as crumbly as you like it. Stir in the chopped chives.

When the toast is ready, take it out and butter the untoasted sides (if both sides are toasted, don’t worry — butter them anyway). Place one slice butter side up on your cutting board and pile on as much egg salad as you like, compressing it a bit to help it stay in. Add on the cilantro and arugula or cress. Top with the remaining slice of bread, butter side facing in.

Silence your cellphone. Eat in a warm patch of sunlight while reading a novel.

About The Author
T. Susan Chang regularly reviews cookbooks for The Boston Globe, NPR.org and the cookbook-indexing website Eat Your Books. She’s the author of A Spoonful of Promises: Recipes and Stories From a Well-Tempered Table and has just released the CookShelf cookbook-rating app, which is available on iPhone, iPad and Android devices. For more information, visit her blog, Cookbooks for Dinner.

Copyright 2013 NPR.

If they grow it and cook it they will eat it Part One: Students at Willard Middle School in Berkeley. Photo: Matt Tsang

Berkeley’s beloved school gardening and cooking program, where public school children plant peas, cook kale, and chase chickens–all while discovering connections to nature, science, language, math, health, nutrition and other life lessons–is in dire straits due to pending federal funding cuts.

Come October, the Berkeley Unified School District’s (BUSD) edible education efforts will lose $1.9 million of U.S. Department of Agriculture financing (administered through the Network for a Healthy California) for 14 school cooking and garden programs, from the preschool through high school level. Unless replacement income is found, such cuts would essentially gut the district program, considered a model around the country.

“BUSD schools are deeply committed to saving their garden and cooking programs and are working closely with their principals, PTAs, the school district, and the extended community to raise funds for the coming year and beyond,” says Marian Mabel, a parent at Malcolm X Elementary and member of a group called the Berkeley Schools Gardening and Cooking Alliance, which was launched last year when Malcolm X, along with two other schools, looked set to lose their federal funds. (The alliance successfully lobbied the school board for a year of bridge funding, which, ultimately, wasn’t needed when a one-year extension of federal monies was granted.)

Now, district officials, individual schools, and a core of parent volunteers are scrambling to try and save the program, which began as a community effort 15 years ago. And prominent local restaurateurs and chefs have stepped up to show their support too.

The cooking and gardening movement in Berkeley’s schools, documented in a series of short videos under the Lunch Love Community umbrella (featured in a 2011 BAB post), has received federal funds for 12 years. But recent changes in federal funding priorities and state administering of these monies, along with changing demographics in BUSD schools, has lead to a pending shift in the allocation of resources. Despite last year’s one-year reprieve from the feds, no such extension of support is expected for the next school year, given changes to U.S. government guidelines with the passage of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010.

If they grow it and cook it they will eat it Part Two: Students at Le Conte Elementary School in Berkeley. Photo: Sophie Constantinou

The school district saw the cuts coming. So last November, the superintendent convened an advisory committee on garden and cooking to identify and secure both short-term bridge funding and long-term sustainable funding, through major donor and corporate giving campaigns, public-private partnerships, and other fundraising efforts, all of which are either in the works or being explored. At a school board meeting on Wednesday, committee members will make a case for a commitment of $300,000 a year for two years to help maintain the program, according to Melanie Parker, interim supervisor for the BUSD’s Gardening and Cooking Nutrition Program. (Last year the district pledged up to $350,000 for the three schools facing cuts to their programs for this school year.)

The committee has outlined four tiers of funding options for the immediate future. These range from a fully-funded program costing $2 million a year, to a worst case scenario situation of part-time staff offering limited instruction and charged with keeping the gardens alive at about $250,000 a year. The largest cost of the program, not surprisingly, is salaries and benefits for cooking and gardening teachers and assistants. While most of these employees work part-time, they are paid the full-time equivalent of between $25,000 and $50,000. Many of these instructors, adored by students, parents, and school officials alike, have been working in the schools since the start of this program and the thought of losing their educational experience and institutional wisdom is viewed as a potentially devastating blow to the program.

The BUSD committee is recommending funding at a reduced level, what they’re calling a “tier two scenario” or a 50 percent cut in program costs for a total of $1.04 million a year, which translates into fewer students receiving instruction and reduced staffing hours. “The committee felt it was important to be realistic about how much money we could raise — and raising $4 million over the next two years to maintain our current programs felt incredibly challenging,” says Parker, who noted a recent $100,000 infusion of state funds that has been committed to the cause courtesy of the City of Berkeley’s Public Health Department. Still, she acknowledges, there is a long way to go to secure full funding for next fall.

Fourteen of Berkeley’s 19 schools have gotten federal funding in the past, money designed to benefit schools with significant low-income populations. The programs slated to lose their funding come October include Berkeley High School, Berkeley Technology Academy, Longfellow and Willard middle schools. Seven elementary schools face cuts, including Emerson, John Muir, LeConte, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Thousand Oaks and Washington. Hopkins, Franklin and King preschools will also be impacted by the loss of income.

The community is gearing up to raise funds and awareness on many levels. A Change.org petition is gathering signatures in support of the campaign. Individual schools are writing grant proposals and holding plant sales, movie nights, and fun runs to support cooking and gardening instruction. Meanwhile, a city-wide Dine Out event is slated for May 30, with prominent local food businesses and restaurants in the mix such as the Cheese Board, Comal, Gather, Ippuku, La Note, and Revival Bar + Kitchen, who are all donating a percentage of sales to the classroom campaign.

For some who have signed on in support it’s both a professional and personal cause. “My three kids have benefited from the cooking and gardening programs at BUSD; my oldest daughter says the garden program at Willard was the only thing that got her through middle school,” says Christian Geideman, owner-chef of the critically-acclaimed Ippuku, featuring izakaya-style dining in downtown Berkeley. “And my youngest still talks about Farmer Ben and the chickens at Le Conte Elementary.” Geideman sees the benefits of such programs beyond the school years. “The restaurant industry is a major employer in our area, imagine how much teenagers could learn in four years that could prepare them for culinary careers,” he says. “I know that as a troubled teen I could have benefited from such a program; it should be expanded at Berkeley High, not cut.”

Geideman’s partner in work and life, Erinn Geideman, discovered first hand the positive effects of the program when she worked as an assistant to Washington Elementary’s cooking teacher Carrie Fehr. “At the elementary school age it’s mostly about giving them access to the process: peeling, chopping and handling food,” says Erinn Giedeman. “When you teach a small child how to cut their own food it gives them a real sense of accomplishment. And when they taste what they’ve created it’s exciting and fills the kids with pride.” Many students, Erinn Geideman also noted, mentioned sharing the recipes at home with their families, an important aspect of a program that emphasizes healthy, seasonal eating geared towards fruit, vegetable, and whole grain recipes, designed with obesity and diabetes prevention in mind. The value of such edible education programs are hard to quantify in terms of test scores but one measure in a UC Berkeley study found that young students routinely exposed to fruits and vegetables through cooking and gardening instruction ate 1.5 more servings of produce a day compared with kids with fewer opportunities to dig in the dirt and work the stove at school.

The best known cooking and gardening program in Berkeley schools, King Middle School’s Edible Schoolyard, is not impacted by the cuts, as its programs are paid for by the Edible Schoolyard Project, founded by Chez Panisse owner Alice Waters. But the ESP (formerly the Chez Panisse Foundation) project staff are working with the BUSD community to come up with a financial plan for the future of its imperiled programs. “The loss of federal funding to support BUSD’s garden and cooking programs is a tragedy and ample evidence, if any were needed, that the call for this transformational change–to bring kids in the public schools into a healthy and delicious relationship with food–needs to get still louder,” says Katrina Heron, executive director of ESP.

Kyle Cornforth, director of ESY Berkeley, is on the superintendent’s advisory committee and active in the Berkeley Schools Gardening and Cooking Alliance and the alliance’s Marian Mabel says Cornforth has been instrumental in providing assistance to help strengthen the curriculum components of the BUSD’s cooking and gardening instruction to make the strongest possible case that such programs are indispensable to students. To that end, the committee is re-envisioning the program at a district-wide level (for all schools, including four elementary schools currently ineligible for federal funds) and seek to integrate the program into Common Core State Standards and what’s known as 2020 Vision, Berkeley’s effort to end racial disparities in academic achievement.

If they grow it and cook it they will eat it Part Three: Students at Willard Middle School in Berkeley. Photo: Matt Tsang

Mindful of what is happening across the bay in Berkeley, Education Outside (formerly the San Francisco Green Schoolyard Alliance) is working hard to tie outdoor education in San Francisco public schools to core curriculum such as science, in a program launched three years ago. It’s also trying to keep costs in check, by hiring young, service corps members for $25,000 a year to run these programs, set to be in 21 K-5 schools this fall. “What is happening in Berkeley is instructive, it shows how easily these kinds of programs can be cut or lopped off, that’s why we’re focusing on making them an integral part of every student’s day,” says Arden Bucklin-Sporer, Education Outside’s executive director. “We never use the term ‘gardening’ or ‘cooking,’ which suggest that they’re extra programs not integral to curriculum.”

Back in the East Bay, another relatively new model for providing edible education is coming to Oakland schools this fall, via a national program known as FoodCorps, which places a service member in a school for a year to help tend or build a school garden, improve school cafeteria food, and talk up healthy eating with students. It costs FoodCorps about $32,500 to put a service member in a school, including a $15,000 stipend, a $5,550 Americorps award, and health benefits. FoodCorps has partnered with the Edible Schoolyard Project for a summer academy geared towards FoodCorps fellows, service members with one year of experience, who are training to become peer-mentors at sites around the country.

For now, in Berkeley the focus remains on saving a lauded program many years in the making. “What’s in jeopardy is losing the groundwork from developing a nationally-recognized program,” says Willard Middle School parent Cindy Tsai Schultz, who is on the school’s gardening and cooking committee. “In 1995 at Willard, Matt Tsang, our gardening coordinator, started with two small planter boxes. Today we have a model program with a flourishing garden, six chickens, and gardening and cooking classes that integrate nutrition education with math and science,” she adds. “Our garden produces enough food for cooking classes for over 500 children. The garden also provides a safe and peaceful place and offers students a sense of security. We can’t lose the last 15 years of hard work and kids’ strong connection with the program. We can’t let all that nurturing turn to weeds.”

Donations to the BUSD Garden and Cooking Program can be made through the Berkeley Public Education Foundation, when making a donation through BPEF, specify that the contribution is earmarked for the BUSD Garden and Cooking Program. For information on volunteer opportunities for the Dine Out fundraiser, to offer suggestions for major funders, or to donate email: berkeleyfundraiser@gmail.com.

If they grow it and cook it they will eat it Part Four: Students at Malcolm X Elementary School in Berkeley.
Photo: Rivka Mason

A thriving sanctuary at school. Photo: Rivka Mason

A pregnant woman holds a glass of wine.
Photo: iStockphoto.com

According to a new study published in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, there doesn’t seem to be any measurable risk.

The study found that drinking up to two alcoholic beverages per week during pregnancy is not linked to developmental problems in children. But even the study’s authors caution that abstaining from alcohol is still best for mothers-to-be.

The research was done at the University College London, using data collected as part of the Millennium Cohort Study. The researchers looked at about 10,000 children born in the U.K. between 2000 and 2001. When the children were 7 years old, they were given math, reading and spatial skills tests. And parents completed questionnaires about the children’s emotional and social development.

The researchers found that children born to women who consumed a little alcohol during pregnancy had higher test scores on some tests compared with children of nondrinkers. But the researchers conclude that most of these differences were too small to be statistically significant.

“While we have followed these children for the first seven years of their lives, further research is needed to detect whether any adverse effects of low levels of alcohol consumption in pregnancy emerge later in childhood,” professor Yvonne Kelly, of the International Centre for Lifecourse Studies (ICLS) at University College London, and co-author of the study, said in a statement released by the journal.

The Department of Health in the U.K. recommends that pregnant women avoid alcohol altogether. But if moms-to-be do choose to drink, the government’s advice is “to not have more than one to two units of alcohol once or twice a week, and not to get drunk,” according to this U.K. government site. Under the British government’s definition, a small 4-ounce glass of wine is about one-and-a-half units.

Experts on fetal alcohol syndrome in the U.S. aren’t so convinced by the new findings. “Failure to see an effect doesn’t mean that there isn’t one, or that drinking in pregnancy is safe,” says Dr. Robert Sokol, director of the C.S. Mott Center for Human Growth and Development at Wayne State University, in an email to The Salt. He explains that the ability to detect effects of low levels of alcohol exposure depends largely on what’s measured.

Another shortcoming of the study is that people tend to under-report alcohol consumption when they’re questioned about it, says Dr. David Garry of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University. And in this study, women weren’t asked to recall how much alcohol they drank until their child was 9 months old, so memories may not have been so clear. It’s “not a convincing study,” says Garry.

“If a woman has had some drinks in pregnancy, I would reassure her that the [child's] development is likely to be normal,” writes Garry in an email to The Salt. But overall, he says, drinking does pose a risk and should be avoided during pregnancy.

Robert Sokol agrees. “It’s still the case that it’s safest not to drink during pregnancy,” Sokol says.

Copyright 2013 NPR.

A precociously independent toddler packs a healthy homemade lunch and heads off to snack in Bernal Height’s Holly Park in San Francisco.

This seriously cute video is the promo for author and BAB blogger Kim Laidlaw‘s new book Baby & Toddler On The Go: fresh, homemade foods for a busy life.

The book will be available April 30 and offers up 75 simple-to-prepare and easy-to-transport recipes made with fresh ingredients for the busy 4-month to 3-year-old child.

Kim Laidlaw took some time out to share information about her new book.

The toddler in the video is your daughter. How have you introduced her to your world of cooking and food?
Laidlaw: She has been watching me cook and bake since she was born, and now that she’s a bit older she is starting to “help” me cook and bake, which is a lot of fun. I also take her to the farmers’ market every Saturday morning and we talk about all the seasonal fruits and veggies and we try lots of samples. Oh, and we set up a little play kitchen in the kitchen so we can cook together.

What motivated you to write this book?
Laidlaw: I had just started to feed her solid food when I started writing the book, so I “learned” how to feed her by doing all the research and writing all the recipes for the book. Plus lots and lots of input from my mom and friends.

The book is designed to feed 4-month to 3-year-old children. How did you tailor your recipes nutritionally and tastewise to this age group?
Laidlaw: I did quite a lot of research, and also used the sister book Baby & Toddler Cookbook as my starting point. Then I just tried to get as many age-appropriate veggies, fruits, meats and dairy into the recipes to keep them healthy but friendly.

Author Kim Laidlaw and her daughter

Economically speaking, how do costs compare preparing fresh foods for kids versus buying healthy store bought alternatives?
Laidlaw: Well, I think if you can buy seasonal fruits and veggies you will save a lot of money, and many of the purees and minis can be made in bulk and frozen. Making your own food is definitely cheaper than buying individually-sized pre-packaged foods.

Sometimes kids are picky about eating diverse types of healthy food. What are 3 tips you can share with parents about teaching kids to be food-curious.

Laidlaw:
• Take your kids to the farmers’ market or the grocery store and let them help you pick things out that look good to them.
• Then, let them help you cook so they can see you making the things you picked out together.
• Finally, eat together at the table as much as you can (my daughter always wants to eat what I’m eating).

Take a Sneak Peek and Get Recipes

Disclosure: In addition to Kim Laidlaw being a BAB blogger she and her daughter are personal friends.

“I’m always going to err on the side of whole foods, that’s my philosophy.” Rebecca Katz

Rebecca Katz. Photo courtesy of Rebecca Katz

(Get recipes for Golden Roasted Cauliflower and Bella’s Moroccan Spiced Sweet Potato Salad below)

Included in the book is a list of the Super 16 Power Foods, foods that “nibble for nibble offer the highest levels of antioxidants.” I liked the list, but it was missing some of my favorite medicinal foods. Where was the broccoli with its anti-cancer and hormone balancing effects; or turmeric, the potent anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer Asian spice? So, I was pleased to find that the second chapter of the book contained a culinary pharmacy — a list of over 80 foods that are used as ingredients throughout the book along with their various health benefits. Here I found turmeric, medicinal mushrooms, broccoli and many more. There are also notes included with many of the recipes that talk about the health benefits of specific ingredients. These notes go into greater detail and explain the benefits of important foods that aren’t included in the Super 16 or the Culinary Pharmacy like flax seeds.

Here are the three major reasons why I found “The Longevity Kitchen” to be a valuable resource.
• The first is quality. The ingredients in the recipes are truly health promoting. Katz emphasizes fresh, organic, unrefined foods in each recipe.
• The second reason is that the book is almost entirely gluten-free. There are a few recipes that contain gluten but most include easy substitutions for people with sensitivities. In fact, many of the recipes are also free of eggs, dairy, soy and sugar making “The Longevity Kitchen” a valuable resource for people with allergies and special diets.
• The third and most important reason is that the food actually tastes good. I have tested recipes from every section of the book, from Latin Kale to Mango Lassi and they have all been delicious. I have served these dishes to friends and even to my four-year-old twins. People love them. I got so many compliments on the Parsley Mint Drizzle that it felt like cheating; its only six ingredients in the blender after all.

As a naturopathic doctor I focus on optimal nutrition for each patient, and this often involves diet change. It is relatively easy for me to tell people what they should and shouldn’t eat. It is much harder to tell them how to prepare those foods. This book does an excellent job of bridging the gap and making healthy food accessible and flavorful. One caveat is that most of these recipes require some basic cooking skills to prepare. People who don’t already know how to chop, dice, mince or zest may need to brush up before attempting them.

This month I had the opportunity to interview Rebecca Katz about her new book and her philosophy on food. Excerpts from our interview are transcribed below. The content has been edited for length and clarity.

Your previous two books, “One Bite at a Time” and “The Cancer Fighting Kitchen” were specifically targeted to cancer patients and their families and this book is targeted to the general public. I’m wondering why you made that shift?

Katz: If I had one more person come up to me and say, “these books are great, but when are you going to write a book for the rest of us.” …A lot of people are afraid of the word “cancer.” So even though the recipes in both of those books are yummy for everybody, number one — people who have been through cancer and are on the other side don’t want to look at the word anymore. Number two — there was a larger audience to reach. Many of the same rules apply when we are talking about eating for a cancer-fighting diet and eating for longevity. We are still dealing with the major chronic issues that we all face which are free radical damage, inflammation, and getting a lot of antioxidants. Nothing really changes. What changes is the way the story is told, but not the principles of eating. One of the challenges with this book, in dealing with the topic of longevity was how to grab people’s attention and make it relevant to their lives.

Absolutely, one of the things I experience in working with people with cancer is that I’ve become really passionate about prevention. You see all of the steps that led to the development of the disease and you want to help other people make changes earlier.

Katz: There are very few things in our lives that we have control over. But one of the things we do have control over is what we put in our bodies and it can be a joyful experience. We are talking about longevity and our connection with food being one of joy. This is a book about all of the things that you can have, not simply a list about all of the things that you can’t have.

I was really interested in your list of 16 foods. I was a little surprised to see coffee, chocolate and green tea on the list. We know that all of those foods have a very strong profile of phytochemicals. But I wonder if you believe that people need some level of stimulation to be optimally healthy and happy?

Katz: Honestly it was really hard to get it down to 16. Here was my criteria, number one was the antioxidant properties, number two was some of the latest research coming out on brain health which shows that a little stimulation can go a long way. But really every recipe and every ingredient in that book could be considered on that top sixteen. So I was really looking for a blend of nutrient dense, antioxidants, phytochemicals, the right amount of stimulation and I wanted people to look at that list and be able to recognize those foods. I also think there is a psychological component — giving people permission to indulge in some of the foods that they resonate with. Food is such an emotional issue and if you take away everything, people really get upset. When I take something away, I always have to give something back. Just because you want to eat well and be healthy doesn’t mean you should be relegated to the sidelines.

How did you become a cookbook author, specifically one focusing on cancer prevention and longevity?

Katz: I had a motivation at the very beginning. My father was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2000. I took a leave of absence and went to take care of him and I didn’t know anything about cooking for people with cancer even though I was trained chef. There was nothing out there! There was nothing. So my father was my guinea pig. Food was the platform of his life, so it was not an option not to feed him well. Then I got a wonderful opportunity (to work) at Commonweal Cancer Health Program. I really believe, truly, in that connection to food and to being a nourisher — I felt like I had found my calling. One Bite at a Time came out of my experience working with people individually and The Cancer Fighting Kitchen came out because there was so much new science appearing. I was now at a different level, I had gotten my masters of science in nutrition, I was witness to this evolution. I look back and think, wow what a wonderful gift.

I think that is the gift that everyone is looking for in a career, being able to find the thing that you are meant to do in the world and be paid for it.

Katz: Yes, I feel incredibly grateful.

EVENT:
April 5, 7:15pm: Rebecca Katz will be signing books at Book Passage in Corte Madera

RECIPES:

Golden Roasted Cauliflower

Roasting cauliflower completely transforms it into a candy-like delight that yields to a gentle fork. The spices—cumin, coriander, and turmeric—really make this dish sing. Turmeric has anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory properties, and holds great promise for maintaining (and possibly improving) brain health.

Golden Roasted Cauliflower. Photo: The Longevity Kitchen

Serves 4

1 medium head of cauliflower (about 2 1/2 to 3 pounds) cut into 1 1/2 inch florets (about 8 cups)
2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon coriander
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley or cilantro

Place the rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 450°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Toss the cauliflower with 2 tablespoons olive oil, salt, pepper, cumin, coriander, turmeric and garlic. Spread the cauliflower mixture in an even layer on the prepared pan. Bake until the cauliflower is golden and tender, about 25 to 35 minutes. Toss with spritz with fresh lemon juice and parsley or cilantro.

Variations: If you’re not in a spicy mood, omit the spices and toss the cauliflower with olive, salt and pepper. You’ll love how sweet this vegetable tastes after its oven “sauna.”

Prep Time: 10 minutes Cook Time: 25 minutes
Storage: Store refrigerated in airtight container for 2 days

Notes: Chopping cauliflower releases enzymes that increase the bioavailability of its nutrients. Delaying cooking for 5-10 minutes after cutting helps insure that heat won’t destroy these enzymes’ effectiveness. Also, the enzymes need Vitamin C to activate, which can be accomplished with a hit of lemon or lime juice.

Bella’s Moroccan Spiced Sweet Potato Salad

This is proof that exposure to vegetables expands one’s horizons, whether they have two legs or four. My 8 year old Portuguese Water dog Bella had become known around our house for her love of carrots. She literally comes running every time she hears the carrot peeler come out of the drawer. We figured ‘hmmm, that’s different for a dog,’ and played the approving parents. Well, she’s expanded her palate (or maybe she just likes orange-colored veggies). Now she’s on to sweet potatoes. No sooner do they hit the counter, than she’s dancing and singing around my feet. I quarter and square off the potatoes so she gets the ends, and she’s been known to get some serious hang time under her paws as she leaps for a toss. Seriously, Air Bud has nothing on Bella. Maybe she heard about how good sweet potatoes are for health. Their natural sweetness is perfectly balanced with high fiber content, slowing the rush of sugar into your system. That’s great for vasculature and mood. All I can say is, whenever I make this salad, Bella’s awfully happy.

Bella’s Moroccan Spiced Sweet Potato Salad. Photo: Courtesy of The Longevity Kitchen

Serves 6

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup onion, diced small
1 teaspoon freshly grated ginger or 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon sweet paprika
1 pound orange-fleshed sweet potatoes or yams, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch cubes (2 medium sweet potatoes)
1/2 teaspoon sea salt,
1/2 cup filtered water
1/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice (preferably blood orange)
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1 teaspoon orange zest
2 teaspoons maple syrup
2 tablespoon lemon juice
12 pitted kalamata olives cut in half
1/4 cup finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
1/4 cup toasted almonds or pistachios roughly chopped

Heat the olive oil in a deep sauté pan over medium heat, then add the onion and a generous pinch of salt and sauté for 3 to 5 minutes until onions are translucent and slightly golden. Add the ginger, cumin, paprika to the onions and sauté for 1 minute. Add the sweet potatoes, sea salt, the water, orange juice, and zests. Cook covered for 20 minutes, remove lid and continue cooking until potatoes are tender and the liquid is reduced to almost a glaze. Add the maple syrup and the lemon juice, and olives. Gently combine. Taste and add another pinch of salt or squeeze of lemon juice if desired. Transfer the potatoes to a bowl and garnish with the parsley and nuts. Serve at room temperature.

Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 30 minutes
Storage: Store refrigerated in airtight container for 5 days.

Recipes courtesy of Rebecca Katz, The Longevity Kitchen

A child with his lunch at school. Photo: Getty Images

If it seems like childhood food allergies are more common than they used to be, it is because they are: nearly one in 10 preschoolers have allergies to food, and the rate of such allergies has more than doubled in the past decade. For kids with severe allergies, the condition can restrict normal everyday activities like eating out, and often results in frequent trips to the emergency room. But public awareness is growing, and there are promising developments in research and treatment.

Host: Thuy Vu

Guests:

• Kari Nadeau M.D., associate professor of allergies and immunology at Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucille Packard Children’s Hopsital
• Melanie Thernstrom, contributing writer for the New York Times magazine

More info:
• Apps Offer Few Shortcuts for Those With Food Allergies (Bay Area Bites)
• Students With Food Allergies Make Legal Gains (Bay Area Bites)
• A Cure for Food Allergies? (Forum)

Parents are currently advised to switch toddlers to reduced-fat milk at age 2. Photo: David M. Goehring/Via Flickr

Post by Allison Aubrey, The Salt at NPR Food (3/20/13)

The job of parenting toddlers ain’t easy. Consider the 2-year-old to-do list: Get tantrums under control. Potty train. Transition from whole milk to low-fat milk.

Speaking from experience, only one of these things was easy.

As my daughter turned 2 in January, we made the simple switch to reduced-fat milk. Done. Don’t need to overthink this one, right?

After all, I’m following the evidence-based advice of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The guidance is based on studies that found children who consumed low-fat milk as part of a reduced-saturated-fat diet had lower concentrations of LDL cholesterol. Given the body of evidence in adults linking high cholesterol to increased risk of heart disease, it makes sense to keep an eye on cholesterol, beginning in childhood.

And if you take fat out of milk, you’ve also reduced calories, which should help protect kids against becoming overweight. At least, that’s been the assumption.

So here’s where things gets confusing. A new study of preschool-aged children published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood, a sister publication of the British Medical Journal, finds that low-fat milk was associated with higher weight.

That’s right, kids drinking low-fat milk tended to be heavier.

“We were quite surprised” by the findings, Dr. Mark DeBoer told me in an email. He and his co-author, Dr. Rebecca Scharf, both of the University of Virginia, had hypothesized just the opposite.

But they found the relationship between skim-milk drinkers and higher body weights held up across all racial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups. DeBoer says their data also show that low-fat milk did not restrain weight gain in preschoolers over time.

The study included about 10,700 children in the United States. Parents were interviewed about their child’s beverage consumption on two occasions: once when the children were 2 years old and again at 4 years. Direct measurements of height and weight (to calculate body mass index) were taken by researchers.

Interestingly, this is not the first study to point in this direction.

In a 2005 study, researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital reported that skim and 1 percent milk were associated with weight gain among 9-to-14-year-olds.

And a 2010 study by researchers at Children’s Hospital in Boston, which also looked at preschool-aged children, found that higher intake of whole milk at age 2 was associated with a slightly lower BMI (body mass index). The researchers concluded that switching from whole milk to reduced-fat milk at 2 years did not appear to prevent weight problems in early childhood.

When you look at these studies together, DeBoer’s findings become more intriguing, though it’s unclear how higher fat could lead to lower weight.

One theory: It’s possible that whole milk gives us a greater sense of satiety.

“This is speculative,” says DeBoer, but if you feel fuller after drinking whole-fat milk, “it may be protective if the other food options are high in calories.” In other words, if whole-fat milk saves a kid from eating an extra cookie or a second serving of mashed potatoes, he or she may end up eating fewer calories overall.

As the authors acknowledge, one of the shortcomings of the new study is that the researchers did not know how many calories the children were consuming overall or what types of foods they were eating.

So is it time to think anew about switching toddlers to low-fat milk?

“I don’t think there is harm in rethinking a recommendation, particularly if there weren’t rigorous data behind it,” says DeBoer. He says he hopes his results lead to further, more definitive studies.

But not everyone is convinced. “I do think that the recommendation to give low-fat milk at age 2 is sound advice,” says Dr. Stephen Daniels, a pediatrician at the University of Colorado and member of the AAP’s Committee on Nutrition.

“I don’t think the link between low-fat milk and higher weight makes much sense from a biological perspective,” he says.

Some of the earliest studies evaluating diets low in saturated fat and cholesterol did find a link to less obesity among girls. And Daniels points out that in the new study, the toddlers who were on low-fat milk were already heavier.

“This leaves open the real chance that parents may have been choosing low-fat milk as a weight-management strategy for those who were already overweight,” Daniels says.

Parents, if this leaves you confused, one thing to keep in mind is that — whether it’s whole, 2 percent or skim — milk is probably not a major driver when it comes to childhood weight problems. Many studies have shown that sugar-sweetened beverages play a much bigger role.

Copyright 2013 NPR.

The poster for the documentary A Place At The Table.

Many of us don’t think of the U.S. as the land of the underfed.

In this era of the expanding waistlines, we hear far more concern about obesity than we do about hunger. But the two are more closely connected that many of us realize.

A new documentary, A Place at the Table, peels back the curtain on the problem of food insecurity, weaving the stories of low-income Americans who struggle to put healthy food on the table, despite the fact that they have jobs.

As we’ve reported, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that about about 50 million Americans fall into this category of “food insecure” — meaning they don’t always have the resources to buy the food they need. This includes nearly 17 million children in the U.S.

I attended a screening of the film – along with a panel discussion with the producers and folks from Participant Media (the people behind Food Inc.). Judging from the reaction of the audience, the film works. At a gut level, the story of Barbie, a single mom from Philly who grew up in poverty, is wrenching.

As Barbie tries to break the cycle, she finds at times that she makes too much money to qualify for federal food assistance. And her paycheck runs out long before the end of the month.

As we watch her open cans of cheap pasta and peer into her near-empty fridge, our hearts leap.

The film includes the voices of hunger and nutrition experts, as well as advocates who criticize federal farm subsidies of crops such as wheat and corn. These crops supply the bulk of our nation’s processed foods, which tend to be calorie dense, and nutrient poor.

Food policy expert Marion Nestle points out there are no subsidies for fruits and vegetables — one reason, perhaps, that they’re so much more expensive. Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved, weighs in, too.

But as producer Lori Silverbush (married to chef Tom Colicchio, who appears in the film) pointed out during the after-screening discussion, subsidies are just one part of a complex story.

The bottom line, according to hunger advocate Billy Shore of Share Our Strength: “Childhood hunger in this nation is a solvable problem.” Shore says we have enough food and good nutrition programs.

“What we need is to make sure the kids who need the food are able to access the programs,” Shore says.

Participant Media, which helped embolden the food movement with Food, Inc., is hoping that the film serves another call to action.

They’ve launched a website that will serve as a hub for for all sorts of hunger-related advocacy. And groups including Bread for the World, Feeding America, FRAC and Share Our Strength are all represented.

And back to that idea that hunger and obesity live in close quarters. I think Michael O’Sullivan of the Washington Post summed it up best in a review of the documentary:

“The problem, as Table shows, isn’t that the next meal never comes. It’s that when it arrives, too often it is filled with empty calories,” O’Sullivan writes.

Copyright 2013 NPR.

Catherine McCord. Photo by Jonathan Gordon

New mom Catherine McCord didn’t set out to become a food blogger. But after her son was born she had a hard time finding healthy homemade baby food recipes. So she started doing research and recipe testing and began posting her own creations on the web. Fast forward five years and McCord is the voice behind the popular site weelicious, which focuses on family-friendly dishes that are quick and easy to prepare, nutritious, and packed with flavor too.

“Even though I’d been to culinary school, worked in restaurants in New York, and cooked for myself and friends from a young age, when I had my son I wasn’t sure where to start,” says the Institute of Culinary Education graduate who has a crew of in-home taste testers: son Kenya, 5, daughter Chloe, 3, and husband Jon. McCord, who recently taught a “picky eater” cooking class for Sur La Table in Palo Alto, plans on returning to the Bay Area in early 2013.

McCord’s food philosophy is simple: She favors recipes that use just a few wholesome, fresh ingredients and can appeal to a range of ages — from toddlers to teenagers — and adults as well. “As a parent you don’t have to be a short-order cook preparing four different meals for four different family members,” says McCord, 39, who lives in Los Angeles and is the author of the new cookbook Weelicious: One Family. One Meal.

McCord, a contributing editor at Parenting magazine, advises that one of the best ways to raise an adventurous eater is to involve children in all aspects of the meal-making process. Go food shopping with your kids. Farmers’ markets are a great place to take young ones to learn about smart food choices, she says, and there are plenty of healthy, free samples to savor.

Talk with your children, McCord says, about what food you’re buying: “What should we do with this sweet potato? Could we mash it?” And invite them into the kitchen to help. “My son loves peeling bananas and pouring frozen fruit and rice milk into the blender to make his own smoothies,” she says.

The former model, actress, and athlete credits her own family background for her healthy attitude towards cooking and eating. She grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, where her mom taught her the importance of eating nourishing food for well being. “I also learned from my grandparents about gardening, composting, and canning, and these are traditions I’m passing along to my own children,” says McCord who also contributes to Babble, which named her one of the top 100 food mom blogs of 2011.

And there’s one more: Eat together as a family. “I know it’s tough with everyone’s hectic schedules but if your kids see you eating and enjoying broccoli, then there’s a good chance they’ll learn to like it too,” she says.

Case in point: McCord recounts a story from a frustrated mother whose daughter wouldn’t eat much besides plain noodles with butter — except for something she calls “Nana juice” — a breakfast drink she makes with her grandmother that includes kale, fruit, and flax. A little girl who hates almost everything drinks raw green smoothies? “The fact that that drink is her favorite breakfast tells me that kids take their cues about food from their family.”

Catherine McCord shares her Quinoa Pudding recipe families can make together, below. Oh, and just a heads up: This is the sort of dish a toddler may enjoy but, in this writer’s experience, it’s also a hit with teens and makes a nice change from porridge for breakfast for any age.

Banana Quinoa Pudding. Photo: Catherine McCord

Recipe: Banana Quinoa Pudding

This light, creamy concoction is a play on a rice pudding, with quinoa — a grain-like seed rich in protein — taking the place of rice. Makes a flavorful and filling after-school snack, dessert, or special breakfast treat. Can be served warm or cold.

• Cook Time: 20 minutes
• Total Time: 1 hours, 20 minutes *(One hour for chilling pudding)
• Serves: 4-6

Ingredients
• 1 cup quinoa
• 1 14 oz can light coconut milk
• 1 cup milk (2 percent fat or higher)
• 2 ripe bananas, mashed
• 3 tablespoons honey
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Preparation
1. Place the quinoa in a fine-mesh strainer and rinse with water.
2. Put quinoa, coconut milk and milk in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil.
3. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes.
4. Stir in the remaining ingredients and cook over medium heat for 4-5 minutes stirring continuously until thickened.
5. Pour into individual ramekins and chill for at least one hour.*
   * The pudding can also be served warm.

Kids Turn: There’s lots of opportunity in this recipe for a child to lend a hand, says McCord. Young children can rinse quinoa in a strainer under running water, shake the coconut milk can (the fat and milk content sometimes separate on the shelf), and peel and mash bananas. Small children can also measure ingredients and pour them into the pot — and can stir the saucepan while cooking, with adult supervision. Older elementary age children may be comfortable making the whole dish — with some encouragement and under the watchful eye of a grown up. “Cooking in the kitchen with your child is an opportunity to talk about where food comes from, what’s in it, why it’s good for you, and what happens when you add heat, spice, fat, or liquid,” says McCord. “It’s also a chance to work in concepts like math, science, and geography. And it’s fun to taste test together, admire the fruits of your combined labor, and eat them too.”