Back to School Part 2

Back to School – Part 2

For the first two weeks of August we are focusing on Back to School. Last week in the #TimerDiet101 blog the focus was daily exercise and nutrition for children. Earlier this week in the #TimerOrganizer101 blog we talked about schedules and chores for kids and how going back to school can be a great time to evaluate these two important parts of our children’s lives. Today in our last #TimerDiet101 blog devoted just to back to school we are going to talk about teaching kids (and maybe ourselves) about menu planning, nutrients, and cooking!

Menu Planning and Nutrients

Peanut Butter with Raspberries

Menu planning and nutrients go hand in hand. If you don’t understand the nutrients that are in foods it will be impossible to create well-balanced menus. Some foods have labels so they are pretty easy to know what their nutrients are. We all need dietary fat, protein, and carbohydrates in our daily diet. I find the easiest way to handle this is to look at grams equally and try to have approximate equal amount of grams of each in your menus. No more than double; no less than half. Always be sure to have annual physicals for everyone in the family, including the kids! If your doctor gives you specific nutrient guidelines then be sure to follow them!

Write out your menu plans, but be flexible. Perhaps say that Monday is Chicken, Tuesday is Taco Night, and Wednesday is Meat, then add the vegetables and grains you want to include to make sure you have a well-balanced meal. You can even write the menus out on a white board in the kitchen so everyone knows what to expect and be looking forward to dinner time with the family and make suggestions.

Cooking at Almost Any Age

Well-balanced 

Get the kids involved young; kids can start at a very young age with age appropriate things to do in the kitchen. Tossing a salad with wooden spoons in a large plastic bowl, dropping the tomatoes into the salad (after you have them prepared), spreading peanut butter on their bread (with a child’s knife) and mashing raspberries or banana’s (with a spoon or child’s fork) to put on top instead of jelly.

As they grow get them even more involved. While I don’t recommend using chefs knives as young as some do, I did see the Junior Master Chef show and there were 8 year olds who were better chefs than I can ever imagine being. So get the cookbooks out and make dinner preparation a family event! By the time the kids are in their early teens they should be able to, want to, and encouraged to make an entire dinner from beginning to end all on their own. This will be invaluable education that really is not taught anywhere else anymore. When I was growing up (yes another ‘when I was growing up’ story!) we all were required to take home economics in high school. We were taught how to sew one half of the year and cook the other half of the year. We also were required to take a course that taught us how to budget on ledger paper, find a job in the newspaper, and make a timeline for our future.

Just think how proud you will be when your son or daughter makes an entire meal for the family and how much money they will save when they go off to college and don’t have to eat out all the time!

Next Tuesday will be our last #TimerOrganizer Blog devoted just to Back to School—go to blog.timerorganizer.com to sign up for the weekly blog

If you are not sure about the nutrients of your favorite foods check out the USDA government web-site

http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/

Sherri Sue Fisher, author of TimerDiet and TimerOrganizer