When choosing food that comes in a packet, the first thing you should do it read the ingredients list to know what’s going in your body and to help you make a healthy choice.
In Canada, by law companies must list all the ingredients in a packaged food. Ingredients are listed in order of weight from most to least. This means that a food contains more of the ingredients at the beginning of the list and less of the ingredients at the end of the list.
On your last nature walk, did you find any plants that made your heart sing? Have you revisited them to see them grow and bloom? It’s beginning to look like summer with blooms, fruits and all kinds of plant delights. What will you spot in your neighbourhood?
If I had to pick a favourite fictional food-related children’s book, one of the top tier books would be Chicks and Salsa, written by Aaron Reynolds and illustrated by Paulette Bogan (Bloomsberry USA Children’s Books, 2007).
What could be more fun than farm animals deciding to cook Latin inspired food and holding a fiesta? This book is begging to be read aloud as the words spring to life with alliteration that captures their fabulous feast. The illustrations are equally rich with delicious details.
Enjoy the video retelling of the book then get busy searching for wonderful words that feel good in your mouth. After that, make a sumptuous snack with our Latin inspired recipes.
Cook. Healthy. Edible. Food. That’s what the CHEF in Project CHEF stands for. It’s called an acronym. We think that the words stand for what Project CHEF is all about. An acrostic poem starts with a word and this is the topic of the poem. The letters of the word become the first letter of each line of the poem. The word or phrase in each line of the poem is related to the word topic.
Scientists keep records, so do farmers, and so do we! Since planting your potatoes, what have you noticed? What can you observe? After planting your seed potatoes, in Part 1 of this activity, your Project CHEF task over the next two months is to look closely, pay attention to the details, and write down your observations. The more specific, the better.
Sharing meals around a table is one of our favourite things to do. In Project CHEF, when it’s time to dine together, we share conversation as well as food. We assign Table Talk Topics everyday to get the conversation going. It’s interesting how we can start talking about a favourite meal then before you know it we’re talking about something else. That’s how conversation works!
Another book we love is The Sandwich Swap, by Her Majesty Queen Rania Abdullah of Jordan (with Kelly DiPucchio and illustrated by Tricia Tusa, Disney Hyperion Books, 2010). It’s not often you read a book written by a Queen! Queen Rania wrote this book about her experiences as a child. The Sandwich Swap shows us that though we’re all different, friendship can see beyond differences to focus on what we have in common.
An Apple A Day Keeps The Doctor Away
Have you ever heard of this expression? An apple is a fruit and is not only delicious, but packs a punch in nutrition as well. Fruit is an important part of a healthy eating pattern. It contains nutrients such as fibre, vitamins and minerals that are needed to fuel our bodies and stay healthy. Technically speaking, a fruit is a seed-bearing part of a flowering plant that is edible. Fruit is fun to explore with its many flavours, shapes, textures and sizes. Try to eat a wide variety of colours to give your body all the nutrients it needs. The term used to describe this is ‘Eat the Rainbow’.
Food brings people together, no matter how old or young they are. At Project CHEF we cook with kids, teachers, parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles, and volunteers. We have also cooked with seniors from Tapestry Retirement Community at Wesbrook Village. We believe that when people come together in the kitchen there is always an opportunity to learn from each other.
BC is blessed with a bounty of good food grown right on our doorstep. We get to enjoy what our farmers grow and producers make throughout the year. Many of these ingredients we recognize right away but others may cause us to pause, look at carefully and do a little research to find out what they are and how can we enjoy eating them.