Welcome to a page of family-friendly eating tips and recipes only CFR attendees and students.

Elaine Wilson is doing cooking demos as part of Agriculture Education at Farm Fair for over 1000 children and Home Grown Alberta as part of the CFR in 2011. Focusing on creating delicious, easy-to-make food is important (using local ingredients where available). With many years experience cooking for and with children, here are some of the tips and recipes she shared during the CFR.

Agriculture Education Days - Healthy Snackable-style Snacks

The three things we want the students to remember with respect to food and healthy eating are:

No preservatives | No artificial ingredients | No added flavour or colour

When in a rush, pre-packaged, processed meat & cheese snack packs for your kids may be fast and convenient, but they are filled with preservatives, excessive sodium, and added flavours/colours to make them last long on the shelf and trick the mind into thinking they taste good. (Click on the image for a larger version so you can better see the ingredient list and nutrition info.)

Children were taught that they need to read the ingredient list and labels of the foods they eat to make sure they're eating real food. When a processed cheese food slice has water and sugar as its first two ingredients, that is not the healthiest or best choice for anyone.

They sampled the homemade crackers and three real cheeses - Edam, Gouda and Provolone. And we used the new deli meat selections available - no preservatives, no artificial flavours or colours. Ideally we want to move to preparing the meat from scratch, but these new lines from May's and Maple Leaf are both excellent (except for the sodium which is still too high).

The other tool we gave children was an understanding of portion - that a child shouldn't be eating the same portion as an adult, and that at least 1/2 their plate should be vegetables and fruit, 1/4 should be a whole grain carb, and only 1/4 should be protein (meat, cheese, etc.)

All of us should be using smaller plates to eat off of, to understand portion sizes better - small children in particular should be served on plates no larger than 6 inches in diamter to meet the above proportions. The temptation to fill the plate is too great in our culture. Large plates encourage overeating, while using smaller plates automatically limits our portions, encouraging more balanced eating.

Yummy & Quick Recipes

Homemade Crackers

Oven-Baked Chicken Fingers

Scallion-Cheddar Dip

Dill Pickle Dip

Berry Smoothie

Chocolate Banana Smoothie

Great Online Resources for Recipes & Healthy Family Eating

Alberta Government's Healthy U Program

My Amazing Little Cookbook (part of the Healthy U Program)

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution

On Elaine's blog, hear about local food finds; get access to recipes and find healthy eating tips. Discover where great food can be found, who's got what and where, and up-to-the-moment food news by following @alliumfoodworks on Twitter and becoming a fan Allium Foodworks on Facebook.