Living Vegan For Dummies - Alexandra Jamieson [149]
Making kid-friendly meals out of healthy ingredients isn’t as challenging as it sounds; you can make veganized versions of thousands of favorite nonvegan recipes. (Check out Chapter 10 for more information on veganizing old favorites.)
Keeping a well-planned and well-stocked pantry and fridge
Offering healthy snacks and meals at home is the first step in creating a lifetime of great eating habits for kids, tweens, and teens. If you don’t have junk food in the house, your children will have to work much harder to get it. And sooner or later they’ll instead opt for the natural flavors that are readily available.
By providing constant access to fresh, healthy treats, you’re offering a valuable lesson in how to plan and succeed in being a healthy vegan. Use these guidelines to help stock your kitchen:
Whole grains, including brown rice, quinoa, millet, and oats, need to be stocked regularly. These are filling go-to products when time is scarce.
Whole-grain flours like whole-wheat pastry flour, buckwheat flour, brown rice flour, and cornmeal help you whip up special healthy treats for your little vegans.
Nuts and seeds, including almonds, cashews, pecans, walnuts, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, and pumpkin seeds are protein-filled snacks that kids can reach for any time. Nut butters help make healthy snacks even tastier.
Beans and legumes can be dried, frozen, or precooked in cans. Keep a selection of different types on hand, including black beans, kidney beans, chickpeas, lentils, white beans, peas, edamame, soybeans, and green beans.
Fruit should be plentiful and fresh. Offer a variety of seasonal whole fruit. To encourage kids to eat it, always make it available either washed, dried, and in a bowl on the counter or cut up in a fruit salad (which is always accessible in the refrigerator for snacking). If kids come to you hungry for a snack, send them to the fruit bowl!
Vegetables can be frozen or fresh. Cutting up a variety of raw veggies for snacking — cherry tomatoes, jicama, bell peppers, carrot sticks, celery, and cucumbers — offers a healthy treat for hungry children.
When searching for whole-grain products to stock your kitchen, use these criteria to make the smartest choices:
Focus on fiber. Cereals and breads should have 5 grams or more of fiber per serving.
Bring in the bran. Even though bran cereals and wheat germ aren’t officially whole grains (because they’re missing the endosperm of the grain), they’re still an excellent healthy option for filling up hungry tummies.
Grab some granola. Make your own muesli (see Chapter 12 for a homemade recipe) or granola and keep it on hand. These snacks allow you to incorporate more whole grains easily into your child’s diet. If time is short, you can find excellent naturally sweetened, organic granola in health food stores.
Search out the hidden sugars. Minimize the sugar in your kid’s diet by choosing whole-grain products that don’t include any sweetener or that are sweetened with blackstrap molasses, agave, or brown rice syrup.
Promoting equal participation when feeding the family
Every member of the family can help plan menus and shopping lists. Ask each person to participate in filling out a weekly menu chart found in Chapter 9. After you figure out which ingredients you need, your kids can help you go through your cupboards and refrigerator to see what should be added to the shopping list.
Children as young as 2 or 3 years old can help plan meals in this way. If they’re asked what they want, help in the planning, and participate in the shopping, kids are more likely to be invested in the meals after they’re prepared. This method works really well over time to help children understand what’s necessary in feeding a family. Life skills like these are invaluable and sadly lacking in many young adults. By training your kids early on how to plan, shop, and prepare healthy meals, you’re ensuring