Family Time is Quality Time
At the Deirdre Imus Environmental Health Center®, we’re all about promoting a safe and healthy environment for our kids. What better way to promote this by teaching them about preparing healthy home-cooked meals alongside them. It’s easy and fun for the whole family!
Try these tips to get started.
First, choose a recipe that you and your child would like to cook. For some tasty and delicious ideas you can visit the Healthy Recipes section of our website. Once you’ve chosen a recipe, create a grocery list and get to cooking!
Helping out in the kitchen can be as little as peeling oranges or mixing ingredients into a bowl. For example, the family can start off making an appetizer like the Orange-Cashew Spinach Salad. The recipe calls to peel oranges, gather the other ingredients, and toss in a bowl. For this recipe, you can have your child peel the oranges or help them peel. You can also have them toss the salad, anything to help get them involved so they understand the importance of quality family time.
Another example can be Bonnie's Krispy Spinach Bites. This recipe calls to fold Fillo sheets and brush them with olive oil. You can help your child fold the sheets and have them brush the Fillo with the oil. Some other recipes that can be fun for you and your children are the Homemade Pizza with Onion, Bell Peppers, and Olives and the Mesa Grande Vegetarian Meatballs.
If you take away anything from this post it’s that teaching your child about proper nutrition will benefit their well-being in the future.
By Gabriel Gonzalez
Gabriel Gonzalez interns at The Deirdre Imus Environmental Health Center®. He is focused on continuing education in nutrition and promoting healthy behaviors with many projects at the center, including writing and designing recipes and educational materials.
He is currently in his third year at Montclair State University. Gabriel is a Nutrition and Food Science major with a concentration in Applied Nutrition and also a Public Health minor. In his spare time he works as a cardio kickboxing trainer at CKO Kickboxing in Clifton.