Edible Experiment: Homemade Yogurt

Make yogurt with your kids this summer for a refreshing, fermented, food experiment! Rich in protein and calcium for building strong muscles and bones, this cool, creamy treat makes an excellent snack on an active, summer afternoon. If your kids aren't into plain yogurt try sweetening this reci-pea with a homemade flavored honey (suggestions below).

Homemade Yogurt with Flavored Honey

• 4 cups of whole milk
• 1/2 envelope (5 grams) of freeze-dried yogurt starter such as Yogourment*
• Thermometer

In a pot on the stove, heat the milk to 180F, then remove from the heat. Let the milk cool to about 110F, then stir in the starter culture, whisk to combine.

If you do not have a yogurt maker, no problem. Transfer the milk mixture to a 1 quart mason jar or other glass vessel. Suspend a thermometer in the yogurt and cover with a damp cloth or piece of plastic wrap. Leave in a warm but not hot place (for example, on a sunny counter top or in a warm oven with the heat off). The thermometer in the yogurt should stay between 80-100F until the yogurt gels. This will take about 4 to 8 hours depending on temperature.

Refrigerate for up to 5-7 days.

Infused Honey:
This reci-pea is a great opportunity to use up those half empty jars of crystallized honey. Here are a few flavors that will help sweeten our yogurt reci-pea.

Rosemary Honey:
• 1 cup honey
• 4 sprigs of rosemary

Cardamom Honey:
• 1 cup honey
• 1 teaspoon ground cardamom

Vanilla Honey:
• 1 cup honey
• 1 vanilla bean, cut lengthwise

Place the honey and flavoring of choice in a pint sized mason jar and heat in the microwave until it starts to boil. Turn off the microwave and let the honey cool for 30-45 minutes. Screw on the lid and store at room temperature for up to 2 weeks.

*Yogourment can be found in the baking section at Whole Foods, or online

Let Kids Play with Their Food

Well, with fruits and vegetables at least!


Nurture your kids' curiosity and creative side by encouraging them to arrange fresh foods in fun ways. 


Just like the ambiance of a nice restaurant might have you eating foods that you ordinarily avoid, making a game out of eating fruits and vegetables (and by playing and eating right along) can get kids to try and enjoy foods they used to 'dislike strongly' (rather than 'hate').


Here at Peas, we know that the eating experience is very important to kids. We love the looks of shear delight as kids hold, dip and dunk our Veggie Wedgies into organic ketchup.  Those moments are the highlights of tradeshows and other events, watching a child smile while eating a broccoli fry and watching their parent's eyes bulge out of their head in disbelief! 


How else can you and your kids have fun together with healthy foods?

"Name this fruit?" photo from "Kids: 3 Reasons to Play With Your Food" on http://whatscookingwithkids.com

• bring your kids with you to the store. Let them pick out a fruit or vegetable of their choice. Let them select, weigh and bag it. Let them (with help, as needed) take it from the cart to the check-out belt, let them do it all. Prepare this new item together. I used to play this game with myself in college. Every time I went grocery shopping, I'd look for a new-to-me vegetable and just buy it. I'd bring it home and consult Deborah Madison's - Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, prepare and enjoy it. It was always a highly satisfying experience, even when my dish wasn't perfect, and for some kids, the "I made it myself!" factor cannot be underestimated! And you'll be learning too.

• have a taste test. As a family, try 2 or 3 different varieties of apples, for example. Talk about how they are different, ask each person which is their favorite, discuss textures and flavors, embrace your own descriptive language and encourage you child to join the conversation. Ask them what they think?

• give it a year or two and then try again. Humans are born with innate dilikes to certain tastes, particularly bitterness and astringency. From an evolutionary standpoint, this is useful because many poisonous plants taste bitter and/or astringent, so this innate reaction of disliking bitter foods makes sense. However, over a lifetime, a person's ability to detect these unpleasant tastes degenerates. In fact, by age 65, a person can only taste 25% of what they could taste when they were born. As sad as it may be to think about in that context, use this fact to your advantage. Kids really do 'grow out of' dislikes. If your child had a repulsion to a particular food when they were 1 or 2, at age 5 they may not be able to taste the exact compound that they reacted to at 1 or 2. They may just shrug at eat it. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

Have you had a new-food-breakthrough playing with your child? 


Sources:
 * http://whatscookingwithkids.com
 * http://fatherhood.about.com

A Lemon and Five Senses

We thought it'd be fun to see how a single ingredient can affect each of the five senses; hearing, smell, sight, touch and taste. 

Let's look at the lemon. Here are some ways that we experience lemons, both directly (when we recognize the lemon's presence) and indirectly (when lemons can change the color or flavor of another food in a covert way that doesn't scream "lemon!")

Lemon and Five Senses

Hear

Using a vegetable peeler, remove a wide strip of peel the length of the lemon. Over a lit candle, twist the strip of peel with the yellow side facing the flame. Listen as the oils from the peel crackle and sparkle over the open flame and hear your child squeal with delight as though you just performed a magic trick in the kitchen!

Smell

As you peel and twist strips of lemon rind, it smells lemony, yes, but also piney and herbaceous. Meyer lemons have an especially savory aroma of thyme and spice. 

Here's a neat trick. Should you happen to bring home fish from the market that smells a little bit fishy, using lemon juice will cut the fishiness in two ways. First, it will encourage free (unpleasant) aromas to react with water in the fish and then, second, the acid in the lemon juice will work on a chemical level to keep those fishy aromas tied down to the surface of the fish so you won't have to smell them anymore!

See

Beyond the color of the lemon itself, lemons can dictate the color (or discolor) of many other foods. Squeeze lemon juice on cut pieces of apple and the apple will not brown. Squeeze lemon juice on sauteed asparagus, store the leftovers in the fridge overnight and you'll find that the lemon juice turned your asparagus brown. Make a smoothie with mixed berries and milk and it will be purple, but add lemon juice and watch the color of the smoothie shift from blue-purple to red-purple.

Touch

Here's a great trick for getting the most juice out of a lemon. Roll the lemon on the counter, really using your body weight to apply lots of pressure. Feel the juice pockets bursting inside as you liberate the juice within the lemon.

Taste

Sour and pallet cleansing, yes, but lemons can also enhance the flavor of other foods without making them taste lemony. Like salt, lemon juice is a natural flavor enhancer; adding lemon to nearly any food will intensify the other flavors in that food. Next time you make a dish that seems to be missing that certain 'something' that you just can't identify, try adding a little lemon juice. This tip is most impactful in dishes that are cooked for a long time, like soups and stews. The acidity brings brightness back to a dish where most of the freshness had boiled away.

What are some of your own clever uses for lemons?