As a kid, food was fun. Important to life, nourishing, sure – my mom always cooked healthy food from scratch for us even before it was trendy.

But it wasn’t stressful, until life threw me some curveballs.

After overcoming an eating disorder in college, I was diagnosed with food allergies as an adult.

This is not fun to hear:

“No peanuts!”
“Almost no wheat. Avoid it when you can.”
“Almost no egg whites. If it has more than 2 eggs you probably shouldn’t eat it.”
“No dairy!” (later revised to “Take a lactaid pill and enjoy life.”)

Suddenly the challenge of healthy eating went to a whole new level.

As an adult who is still growing out of her love-hate relationship with food while raising a young one with similar tendencies, I have learned this important truth:

Eating healthy is about fulfilling our body’s physical, emotional, and even social needs through food

When I stumbled across Kitchen Stewardship, I felt empowered to make small but significant changes to find what would work best for me and my family. And today I get to talk about how I’m making sure food is fun again for my own kids (and nourishing!).

Katie here, popping in to introduce: Danielle was a participant in one of my live online events this month about helping kids eat healthier and reducing stress at the table for the whole family. She had so many good ideas to make food FUN that my team and I thought we just had to invite her over to Kitchen Stewardship to share with all of you!

Cool, crazy coincidence….love it! Here’s Danielle again:

Like most of you, I believe that holidays are for fun and gathering! I know that for some chefs and hostesses they bring unwanted stress, and for those of us with allergies life gets even more challenging. Like Katie said, I’ve been coming up with a bunch of fun and easy ways to invite friends and family into the kitchen for your holidays.

Ready for some healthy stress-busters that won’t cost any extra time or money? The first 3 tips are very important:

1. Get help in the kitchen.

I don’t mean hire a professional chef, though there are times when I think that would be lovely.

No, I mean that we should involve our family in meal time before the eating begins. Train those extra hands and willing hearts to join you in the kitchen!

Do you feel nervous like I was about how to have productive, safe helpers? Katie’s got you covered with her cooking class for kids.

Katie here, just interrupting for a sec if I may with an exciting announcement about something I’m super passionate about… you know how everyone posts pics on social media of baking with their kids around the holidays? Well, what about the rest of the year? I’m going to help you SUPERCHARGE your time in the kitchen with your kids and vault them beyond into REAL cooking, stress-free!

You’ll learn what your kids can be expected to do in the kitchen at various ages (prepare to be surprised!), how to motivate them to help out, tips to make it easy on you (they don’t have to intrude in your space when you’re pressed for time!), and why the kitchen is about to become your favorite place to watch your kids build connection, confidence and creativity.

I’m hosting a one-hour live online event for FREE, with 3 dates/times over the next week or so to choose from so it will fit almost any schedule:

TELL ME MORE!

Can’t wait to see you there!

2. Keep it simple.

Meal planning is a must as Katie teaches us with her ten baby steps. But even THAT can be overwhelming at times.

Whether it’s the holiday rush, moving to a new place, or some other challenge to your motivation, remember YOU’VE GOT THIS. A meal prepared in love as family with good ingredients can be the best medicine for mediocre motivation. Just keep it simple!

Katie jumps in to say that smoothies and popcorn (in nourishing coconut oil with lots of butter!) or decently sourced sausages from Costco and Jackson’s Honest chips (in coconut oil…see a theme? #healthyfats) from Thrive Market make up two of our family’s “uh oh there’s nothing for dinner” fallbacks! Just keepin’ it real!

3. Make it fun.

Since sometimes we forget this in the stress of nightly family meals, I try to occasionally declare a random holiday or theme (strategy 6, “Do Something Crazy,” from Katie’s fun and helpful webinar class).

It helps everyone remember that it’s okay to play with your food and that time with family should be delicious. And with so many holidays around the corner we don’t have to look hard for ideas and inspiration.

First up is Halloween, and on this year’s menu we have so many choices I couldn’t just stop at one night of fun!

Night Before Halloween Fun Food

Ghost poop: mashed potatoes and/or creamed cauliflower
Goblin boogers: green peas, in or outside of their pods, cooked or raw
Troll’s feet loaf: Gluten-free meatloaf shaped accordingly (inspired by this, my recipe below)

Halloween Pre-Trick-or-Treat Dinner

Toxic waste mac and cheese (inspired by this, my recipe below) and apple nut butter monster mouths

Night After Halloween (All Saint’s Day for Catholics)

Day of the Dead fruit pizza (using the best gluten-free sugar cookie dough) and frozen GF pizza (because every mom needs a break sometimes!) Here’s a whole grain fruit pizza for those who don’t need to avoid gluten.

All of these meals are gluten-free, peanut free, and come with lactose-free options as well because those of us with food allergies crave the freedom to enjoy eating as well.

With each of these meals there is also

an element my child has a history of not enjoying and
a part for her to help prepare

Just because it’s Halloween doesn’t mean we need to be scared of eating veggies or having little helpers in the kitchen, right?

Troll’s Feet Loaf for Halloween

Author: Danielle
Prep Time: 30 mins
Cook Time: 60 mins
Total Time: 1 hour 30 mins
Yield: 6 1x
Category: main course

Description

Recipe adapted from that of my neighbor with Celiac disease.

Scale

Ingredients

1 to 1 1/2 lbs ground beef (needs to have at least 10% fat)
1/4 c. ketchup or favorite salsa
2 to 3 slices bread (gluten-free works great), cut in 1/2 inch cubes
1/4 c. milk
1 egg
1 Tbs. dried minced onion or 1/2 medium onion, diced (save other half for garnish)
1/2 to 1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
for the BBQ Sauce:
1/4 c. + 2 Tbs. sugar
1/4 c. + 2 Tbs. ketchup (check to avoid high fructose corn syrup)
2 Tbs. vinegar
2 Tbs. water
3/4 Tbs. Worcestershire sauce
two good squirts of mustard (no more than 1 Tbs.)
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. ground chipotle chili pepper
1/4 tsp. ground lemon pepper (just plain pepper works too)

Instructions

Make a panade by combining the milk, egg, and bread.
Add in remaining ingredients and knead together.
Shape into two medium small loaves (use child’s traced foot for sizing suggestion.)
Cook at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.
Meanwhile, warm sauce ingredients in a small pot until combined and slightly thickened. This would also be the time to start boiling potatoes for mashing (russets make the best colored ghost poop but we used up the last of our yukon golds this time.)
Remove from oven and garnish with onion toenails and onion stumps of leg bone.
Top the meat with the sauce and bake for an additional 10 minutes.

Notes

Note: Feel free to use ANY meatloaf recipe and shape into big ugly feet. So fun! Katie’s easy meatloaf or meatball recipe even includes secret veggies…

2 Tools for Real Food Success:

It’s never easy to keep up with real food goals! If my meal isn’t planned ahead and/or I don’t have the right food on hand, it’s SO tempting to give up and grab convenience food!

I have to almost trick myself into getting it right sometimes…like this:

Butcher Box

I love my raw milk farm, and they usually have beef for me too – but not all the cuts. And chicken is hard to come by. And pork is hit or miss.

I’m sure you’ve experienced the same sourcing frustrations!

That’s why I’m always grateful that there’s an online source of incredibly high quality meat that I can always count on. A box from Butcher Box is guaranteed to be grassfed/organic/pastured/free range = all the labels important to your family’s health!

If you live in an area (like my mom) where organic local farms are nowhere to be found or have trouble sourcing certain meats or cuts, Butcher Box has you covered.

CLAIM $15 OFF YOUR FIRST BOX + FREE BACON!!(free shipping too!)

Real Plans

But if I forget to plan ahead, all that amazing meat just sits in the freezer! Enter Real Plans, an online meal planning software that is probably smarter than I am.

I can enter that cut of meat along with my food restrictions and find the perfect meal, then generate a shopping list, multiply it by 4 if we have company, and enter my own fav recipes too.

Real Plans takes the stress out of meal planning and puts the nourishing food BACK on your table. There’s a plan for every diet type:

FIND ONE THAT FITS YOUR FAMILY

Even with multitasking that wasn’t too scary was it? Now let’s try 3 ways to make mac and cheese.

Green Homemade Mac & Cheese: Gluten-free, Lactose-Free, and FUN

The last time I made GREEN macaroni and cheese was for St. Patrick’s day a few year’s ago and it was from a box. No one would eat it at the potluck!

Today I wanted to show my daughter that you can have pretty, yummy, mac and cheese not from a box. In an effort to not be a short order cook (something I’ve tried not to be since the first day my child eat solid foods) I set aside part of the sauce before mixing in the BBQ sauce or green veggies.

In the spirit of keeping it real I’d like to share 3 worrisome myths I battled in this recipe:

Green mac and cheese was bad last time so it will be again.
Mac and cheese is only convenient and worth the time if it comes from a box.
Good gluten-free, lactose-free mac and cheese doesn’t exist so just kiss this comfort food goodbye forever.

Now for the recipe, and then you can see who won – me or the myths!