In my professional career, I spent 4 years co-founding and developing operations and programs for Apples To Zucchini Cooking School (ATOZ) in Santa Barbara. During my time with ATOZ we not only exposed hundreds of children to fruits and vegetables thousands of times but our professional chefs brought the fervor of all things food and put it point blank in front of our students.
I’d collaborate weekly with the Santa Barbara Farmers Market to bring fresh ingredients, what our chefs desired for their meals, to each of the schools we offered our programs in Santa Barbara County.
Nancy Martz did a remarkable job of finding chefs who absolutely billowed with passion for their art. Each chef curated different meals and experiences for our students, many will be remembered for a life time.
I encouraged, supported, and guided our chefs to optimize engagement with our students. This engagement included but also went beyond having the students do the slicing, peeling, chopping, mixing, blending, zoodle-ing, and cooking by:
🌈 incorporating the continuum of colors in the ingredients
🍄 sharing a spectrum of tastes and textures
🧄making it no-big-deal for unique and unusual ingredients (no emoji for kohlrabi)
🍱 practicing ways to cut, present, and clean that our students might not have done at home
🌎 storytelling of where the recipes originated
❤️ sharing ways the food impacted our bodies
I regularly enjoyed watching how the chefs executed their creativity with the kids to encompass a variety of ways to ensure excitement about food.
🍣 Chef Di and her sushi
🧁 Chef Laurie and her cupcakes
🍲 Chef Michelle and her 9 vegetable soup
🌾 Farmer & other Chef Michelle with her love of growing her food (farmbelly)
I haven’t been involved with the organization since February 2020, as I went on to further develop my health coaching practice, but what I observed and deepened during that season of my career is how fundamental food + joy is to wellbeing, at any age!
This past weekend I had the opportunity to play in the kitchen with my niece and nephew during a visit to see my sister and her family in WADC.
My niece enjoys cooking, so she requested this as our “mind, body and soul” time together. On Sunday evening we selected to make one of her faves, Umami Noodles.
(Sort of a side note: My sister is an exceptional mother. It is stunning to watch her in this space. She has implemented mind, body, and soul time with regularity, consistency and priority in both her children’s lives. At 7 and 9, each of them know how to advocate for this if it is a need of theirs and plan for it to create specialness and connection with the adults in their life. Rockstar level parenting in my book as she and her husband create kind, compassionate, and aware pathways toward self actualization in their kids as neural foundations solidify.)
Back to my story…A few hours opened for my niece, nephew and I to spend together Saturday morning. With their parents out of the house, the three of us decided to make the dough for fresh noodles to use in the recipe on Sunday evening.
Now to set the stage for a second… my nephew is 7. As he shared with me numerous times, he REALLY likes destroying things.
REALLY
REALLY
REALLY
Battling Beyblades occurred in most of his non-structured time during my visit. He’d sit on the living room rug focused, tuned in on his task to collide, combust and crush opponents. One car ride to the Nature Center he articulated the nuances of attack versus defense in his strategy of battle. There was no deficit of attention toward the task he was excited about, none. I kept on with questions about battle. His eyes lit up every time like I’d lined up three cherries 🍒 in a row on the slot machine. Ding ding ding, winner!
So what could go wrong with flour & eggs to make pasta with a battled oriented 7 year old energetic boy?
Nothing.
I immediately was brought back to the time Chef Katie made dough in an ATOZ class. I utilized her very appropriate (and common among chefs) 1st grade appropriate technique:
OPEN TABLE - all ingredients on the surface!
With my cheerleader-like guidance, there mostly to champion their decisions and get the items from the cupboard out of their reach, we embarked on making homemade pasta.
My nephew scooped and measured flour.
My niece mounded the flour and created a volcano in the center for the eggs.
Hilariously, my nephew cracked eggs like he was in combat. (I’ll try to attach the video.) Typically with OPEN TABLE we’d just crack the eggs into the center of the flour volcano but I made the executive decision to crack into a bowl and then transfer. You will understand why if you watch the video of my nephew cracking the eggs.
We turned up the 80s music and I laughed along with them so intensely my belly hurt and tears formed in the corner of my eyes.
It was the exact experience of food + joy I advocate for my clients to seek in their life.
Fairly quickly my niece and nephew dropped the fork and just began using their hands. Incorporating the eggs into the flour using the highly specialized technique called: squishing.
It was about this moment, as I took photos of them giggling and exclaiming joy while they squished, I realized I’d forgotten our first task at ATOZ when we’d begin class. In my jet lagged morning stupor, it totally slipped my mind for us to wash our hands.
Oops.
They giggled.
Now if you’ve ever made homemade pasta, you know the kneading is laborious.
We celebrated the onset of smoothness in our dough like it was an Olympic Sport… anything to encourage continuing.
Big clumps became littler clumps.
My nephew took regular breaks to go battle his Beyblades in a quick round of destruction.
We set timers to take turns.
We separated the dough into smaller sections for smaller hands.
My nephew punched, finger scissored, growled and knee slammed his dough.
My niece and I remained entertained to have him contribute as himself in this experience.
We all agreed perhaps just buying a box of dry pasta for dinner Sunday night versus continuing to knead was to be considered. A nearby playground with swings was all I needed to suggest to finalize our decision to abort.
We placed the three balls of dough in a bowl, covered it and turned up the volume on the 80s music while we cleaned up.
We all enjoyed with swings at the nearby park on Saturday morning!
Sunday evening we decided to roll out the dough and cut it to make thin ribbon noodles for the recipe.
Then, together, in our mind, body and soul time, just my niece and I made Umami Noodles using our fresh pasta.
It was delicious!
And it fueled her first Yahtzee roll after dinner!
My reason to share this food + joy experience is multifaceted.
Ordered eating… I hear numerous frameworks from professionals and experts in the health and wellness industry talk about separating or suppressing emotion from food.
Family dynamics…I’ve noticed a commonality in my clients with kids still at home. After we begin co-creating a path toward their health goals, many disclose tension in their family dynamics around food. This tension can be around selective eating, sports schedules, work demands, food allergies, food sensitivities and eating out to name a few.
Making it work…Different aged kids can complicate selecting activities at times and as parents or Aunts with limited time to connect finding food + joy is an option to consider.
Not everyone has interest to battle Beyblades or dress American Girl dolls or do crafts or go fishing... but everyone eats.
I invite a perspective, other than removing or surpassing emotion around food. A perspective that might interrupt the shame conditioned around food, the blame conditioned around food, and the guilt conditioned around food.
Invite food + joy into your life, whatever that looks like for you.
Grab a few kids, turn up the 80s music, go OPEN TABLE, destroy a few eggs and start squishing.
RECIPE: Fresh Pasta Umami Noodles, send an email to terra@betweendiabetes.com for the recipe.
Making fresh pasta is an excellent group activity for anyone seeking connection with children, professionally or personally. I helped my daughter’s 2nd grade class make fresh pasta and it was a huge hit! I’d be happy to chat with anyone interested in offering this fun activity to a group of kids.
happy squishing!
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