This article I am super excited to write especially with a young family at home. I am so excited to teach my kids how to cook, (once they can walk!) and about all kinds of different foods and food cultures. Some of the most amazing memories I have with my own parents including cooking. Especially with my Dad, he was the biggest influence for me in the kitchen. He taught me all of my basic cooking knowledge and we were ALWAYS watching cooking shows together. So, it really hits close to home for me to have kids wanting to be more and more involved in cooking and what they are eating. And I think it is fantastic! If we start at a young age learning how to cook and what we are cooking with and how to treat our bodies well, we will carry that with us for life. Here are a few trends for 2018 for our young chefs out there that I am pumped about.
- Kid’s Cooking Classes– Everywhere you turn you are finding more and more places offering kids cooking classes. I teach them at my workplace and I also do a summer camp every year for kids. I think it is so great to get them in the kitchen early and get them knowing about food and what they are eating and how to make it. Now I am seeing them pop up everywhere and more and more places are being built even as cooking studios that offer primarily kids classes. This is an awesome trend that I hope stays around and we see more and more kids classes popping up all over.
- Importance of Nutrition at an early age- This is a great one. More and more kids today are learning about nutrition and what is in foods at such an early age. This is so great to take with you and carry throughout your whole life. I was the private chef at an early education school for some time and with that I would go into the classrooms and teach the kids about nutrition and cook with them. And I am talking kids 5 and under! This was so awesome to me though to be able to teach them about what they are eating and why some foods are better for their tummies and strong bones than others. Nowadays with all of the allergies out there and unhealthy “kid-friendly” options, I think this is an important trend that we can start at home and in schools.
- Family Dinners are back – This too is a super important one to me. Maybe even more important to me because when I was a kid, we only had family dinners together on weekends if we were lucky and I always felt like we were missing out. In a world where cell phones, games, tablets and electronics in general rule, it is so great that more and more families are getting back on track with electronic-free dinners. It is a great time to unplug, unwind and spend quality time with each other. You will be so much closer with your kids if you actually just sit and talk with them for a bit and what better time than the end of the day when we are all gathered around the table for dinner. You can even have the kiddos help you cook the dinner and then do the family meal time, this way you get even just a little more of their undivided attention.
- Eating around the world – Todays family vacations look a lot different from those of 20 years ago. Most people fly to awesome destinations even with kids at a young age. Even if you are doing the good ole’ road trip, there are so many amazing places to eat along the way, you can make it a food adventure road trip and see how many different restaurants you can stop in along the way. This is so great though because not only are kids experiencing different cultures and places from a young age, they are eating and learning about food in all of these places. Kids today know so many more ingredients and food types than I ever did growing up. We can thank all of the specialty markets and wonderful regular markets carrying so much more variety today as well. I think this is so great to learn and know different foods and food cultures, hopefully we all keep traveling and venturing out to explore food!
- Upscale Kid menus – There is nothing more frustrating than going to a restaurant and seeing the same three items on a kid’s menu. Chicken fingers, pizza and grilled cheese… kids eat more than that!! AND they should, and they should have the option to. I think I stopped ordering off of the kids menu at the age of 5 for this very reason and I am so excited to see restaurants today offering smaller portions of the adult meals on the kid menu. We are taught as mothers to think of our babies as little people and remember that even at a very young age, they have their own thoughts, ideas, wants and needs. Yet, I feel like as they get older and are in that elementary school age, we forget that we treat them just as kids. They are still just little people and we need to remember that they can have developed tastes and wants and we need to cater to them as smaller versions of diners, not just kids that came to eat because their parents were going out!
