Kids Cuisine

I have always wanted to grow my own vegetables. In fact, I’ve always wanted to make my own (fill in blank with name of any homemade food item here). But having kids is enough to give me that nudge. Not only do I want them to have the most local of local food, but I like the idea of showing my children how food goes from a humble seed to a stunning dish on the plate.

That is why I decided to start my own personal Sustainable Kitchen Project. Obviously, one of the first steps to having a self-supporting kitchen is to grow your own vegetables. So despite my dreadful black thumb, my daughter, husband and I are starting our own (and our first) organic vegetable garden.

My daughter helped me with planting all the seeds, and they grew nicely into seedlings (like the bibb lettuce seedlings you see growing here). We also have seedlings for cantaloupe, two types of tomatoes, yellow bell peppers, and broccoli. We built a raised bed, and planted some of the seedlings already.

But here is the really interesting thing. We have nothing more than seedlings and a couple half-inch beginnings of tomatoes on older plants I bought at Lowe’s. But I am already seeing the influence. My daughter, an avid and persistent broccoli hater for as long as I can remember, just voluntarily ate broccoli this weekend. Seriously. I am not kidding. I didn’t even prod, and I wasn’t even going to put any on her plate.

But she asked me to give her some of the broccoli. She said she likes it now, and she plans to gobble up all the broccoli we grow in our garden.

Score!