By Megan Gillette
Meal planning is one of the most important tasks I undertake each week. I take care to make sure we are getting two servings of fish, one pasta or egg meal, one to two meat dishes, and an abundance of vegetables. This is how I choose to eat. My family doesn’t complain (much), so I create a balance of what I like and what they will tolerate. For the most part they have become very adventurous eaters.
While I plan the menus, everyone shares in the hunting and gathering. I feel it’s important for kids to understand the entire process of feeding oneself. After I plan the week’s menu and write them on our kitchen dry-erase board, we all head out to the stores and make a family event of it.
In the summer, we start with the farmer’s market and follow with larger grocery-chain store. In the off months, we go from large-chain grocery to the Common Ground Food Co-op, Strawberry Fields and Art Mart, or other specialty deli if needed. With the breadth of fresh produce available today at any given time of the year it’s easy to get just about everything you need at a chain store. But is it everything you want? I want the fresh, house-made mozzerella from the Art Mart. I want the local, farm-fresh eggs from the Co-op and the locally pasture-raised ground beef, sans pink-slime. The quality and flavor of the local products come off extremely well, when compared to the big farm factory’s. Maybe the kids are picking up on that, maybe not. But most importantly, they are aware of the choices and they like the food!
At the grocery store everyone gets to pick out a fruit or vegetable for the week. My older son has always been an enthusiastic green vegetable eater. Broccoli, spinach, snow peas — he can’t get enough and sincerely believes he is getting bigger and stronger with every bite.
My 3-year-old has been a tougher sell. There was a lot of bribing and blubbering before he made the astute observation that any vegetable is not only tolerable but delicious if served with browned butter. Browned butter is just exactly that, melt butter in a pan and cook until lightly browned. From there he moved on to roasted vegetables. Roasting vegetables in an oven at high heat caramelizes the sugars and makes them taste sweet and savory. Roasted veggies tossed in a bit of olive oil sprinkled with sea salt and black pepper until lightly browned and al dente. Asparagus with browned butter and roasted broccoli are their favorite specialties.
We try to include the kids on some level of all meal preparation. Chopping and sautéing isn’t an option yet but egg-beating is a popular pastime as is the Monteissori-learned carrot-peeling.
There are markedly fewer complaints about dinner when one has had a hand in preparing it. For then, if you bite the hand that feeds you, it’s your own hand … .
Megan Gillette is a mother of two active little boys — FIT kids (Foodies in Training). In her “spare time” she is a senior graphic and web designer at Wolfram, a real-estate broker with TeamKay at Keller Williams, and a real-estate maven for the family holding company. Megan is in constant pursuit of perfect food, exciting dining experiences, and farm-to-fork meals with her husband and personal sous chef, Kurt.