Big dreams, little footprints

How we eat

Food Map (a work in progress). Sketch a world map on a large sheet of paper. Colour in the different continents and add food in its respective countries of origin (if it doesn't say on the packet, you'll need to ask the shop). For perishables, cut out pics from magazines/food packets/use stickers. A wonderful visual reminder of how far and wide we source our food, especially out of season - and a really memorable geography lesson. Secure to a piece of cardboard and put up on the kitchen wall (then add arrows with the country’s name on + the food items grown there). Supporting locally-produced food means more more money is spent in your local area, with benefits to the local community, economy and environment (less food is wasted in shorter supply chains, less fuel is used to transport the food and supporting local organic veg box schemes means better soil, air and water quality). You can read about it here.

How does food grow? Raid your kitchen and help your child correctly identify what part of the plant the fruit or vegetable has come from (Mrs know-it-all here had to look up a couple of things!). Then look up how everything grows and see if you can find out whether we should be eating other edible parts of the plant too (for example, broccoli leaves are truly delicious but they are just ploughed back into the soil after harvest).

Thinking about seasonality. See if your child can sort a selection of fruit and veg from the kitchen into what can be grown in the UK (at certain times of the year) and what will only grow abroad. Are you buying anything imported that is currently produced in the UK (check here)? Older children can create a seasonal guide of British fruit and veg. Talk about the importance of supporting local farmers.

Forage for your lunch! I had never really noticed this beauty of a plant until I came across common sorrel in a foraging book. Well, it turns out that the leaves are full of Vitamin C and delicious to boot. This definitely goes into my top 10 foraged foods along with nettles (great for pesto - see below right), fat hen (the leaves are great raw or steamed) dandelions (petals and leaves for a salad), wild garlic and blackberries. Foraging is great for kids because it teaches them about seasonality and helps them to better understand and value wild plants. It gets them outdoors and is an opportunity to praise weeds for the food they provide for insects and birds (look out for all the holey leaves) and the importance of leaving nature be. There are plenty of vitamins to be had too. Sorrel and lentil soup recipe here.

Developing a common-sense approach to food safety to cut food waste. So much food is wasted because of misplaced concern about ‘best before’ dates. Best before dates are a guide to the quality, more than the safety of the food product. The smell and taste of something is a far more reliable indicator of edibility. And even when there are additional visual indicators suggesting it’s too late to eat it, it doesn’t have to be! For example, just scrape or cut off mould, rejuvenate limp vegetables in some water (or just cook them as is) and they will taste the same, and of course just toast stale bread. It’s important that a child feels confident in their ability to judge for themselves. Top tip: test the food items yourself first to make sure they pass the taste test and don’t tell your child why you’re doing this until afterwards. We compared a rejuvenated limp carrot vs a normal one, cottage cheese (one tub was out of date by 1 month) and mouldy jam vs not-mouldy marmalade. My 6-year-old couldn’t tell which ones had had a dark past. Result! Though she ran out the room screaming when I showed her the scraped-off mould...
See if you have a Community Fridge near you. They share surplus food from residents and business, free of charge, to cut waste.

Cutting back on treats. The bad news is that a major driver of deforestation is our love of biscuits, sweets, chocolate, crisps and ice-cream. Because they contain palm oil. So fewer treats are better for you AND the world's rainforests. Get your child to make an unhappy face out of palm oil goodies and post a picture of it on social media to the relevant brands, asking them to source their palm oil responsibly. A great intro to how social media can be a force for good. Background info here and a list of the 29 (!!) commonly used names for palm oil here. Here is a list of brands that use responsibly-sourced palm oil.

Make butter. Haven’t done this since I was at school and kinda thought it wouldn’t work but it did! So easy-peasy and deliciously gratifying. A fun way to talk about where food comes from - so many of my kids’ favourite things come from milk. Pour double cream into a glass jar (2/3 full) and then shake it for about 15 minutes. Once a solid lump of butter has formed, drain the buttermilk and then gently ‘wash’ the butter with your hands in a bowl of cold water (do this 2-3 times until the water is clear). Store in fridge and eat within 3 days.

Apple rings. Yummy intro to preserving food and avoiding fruit waste. Really easy to do - slice, dip in salty water and then hang up to dry for 5 days. They last for ages in an airtight tub. Step-by-step here. Can also freeze berries, then blend them from frozen and add to yoghurt to make 'instant ice-cream'. Over-ripe bananas are uber tasty if you bake them. Most fruit can be turned into jam or chutney too, obvs.

Dung balls (aka energy balls). You don't need shop-bought, packaged snack bars. Rummage in your cupboards for something sticky (peanut butter, honey), something sweet (any dried fruit) and then mix in some good stuff (quinoa, ground almonds, chia seeds). Make it up as you go. Lots of easy, no-bake recipes online.

Sprouting seeds. Give me edibles over ornamentals any day. By far the most satisfactory way to germinate a seed is to do it in a glass jar so you can see the roots grow. Put some moistened loo roll into a large jar and pop marrowfat peas around the edge. Keep it on the windowsill and make sure the loo roll doesn’t dry out. Pea shoots (both the leaves and flowers) are truly delicious. Don't forget to chop up and freeze any that you won’t manage to get through.

If bums could talk… Young kids love a bit of banter about bottoms and poo. Well, it appears you can tell a lot about your diet from the kind of poos you pop out – says Great Ormond Street hospital. Paint a face on your child’s bottom, create a pet for it (ours is called Stinky and it’s a …. poo [pictured]), and chat about what their bottom might say to them: “Oi! That was a smelly one. More fruit please”. “Hey, that was a sore one. Get some greens down ya”. “Uh-oh. We have a floater. Quit the greasy food!” “Get up. Stop sitting on me. I want a walk”.

Wall of cans. Supporting a local food bank is an easy introduction to giving back locally. Food poverty in the Western world is a grim reality and there will undoubtedly be a food bank near you. See if you and your child can organise the building of a Wall of Cans outside your house, made up of donations from neighbours and other community members. Pop a sign next to it to explain what you're doing and see how long and high you can make your wall.

Cricket bics. Yup. Insects are a low impact source of animal protein. We followed a choc and ginger oat biscuit recipe and included 30g of cricket flour as well as some melted down Christmas and Halloween chocolate. Recipe here.

Chocolate dip! It’s hard to find chocolate spread without oil in (palm oil being the most notorious) and I could eat a lot of the stuff if the children weren’t looking. So we made this and it all got eaten. Straight away. 100g roasted hazelnuts (in oven, 10 mins, 180C), 3 tbsp cacao, 180ml boiled water, 90ml maple syrup. It would have been smoother but our blender is a bit rubbish.

Wee as fertiliser. So wee is absolutely buzzing with nitrogen, which plants love and need for growth. Get your child to have a wee in a tub and then - this is the important bit - dilute it to use on your cress crop. Because wee is so nitrogen-rich and salty - and kids’ is particularly concentrated - we went for 1 part wee, 40 parts water. We had a control group of seeds (fed with pure water) and guess what? The wee-fuelled ones grew faster and more prolifically. You could have a competition between two kids to see whose grows better and taller. And then, of course, you eat it. More info about using wee on your plants here.

Origami ‘craftivism’. Influence others to get more plants into their diets by giving them something beautiful. Make creatures to represent the species impacted by climate change in your country, with old maps of said country - the tulip represents the plants, a butterfly the creatures of the skies, the endangered white beaked dolphin the species of the seas and the threatened mountain hare all creatures on land. These are all easy origami creations for beginners. Attach heart-shaped tags (with a needle and thread) with your message - don’t forget to sign it on the reverse: 'Love from xx', or 'Handmade with love by xx').

We have the fairtrade power. Do you know what the fair trade logo represents? The blue is the sky and the green is the land, and the black shape in the middle is a person holding their arm up in a powerful stance. Supporting fair trade empowers workers and consumers alike. Have a chat about what fair trade is, and watch this video to understand how the fairtrade foundation is helping farmers adapt to climate change. Talk about supply and demand - if we don’t buy fairtrade products, the shops will stop selling them. Then using scrap paper, recreate the logo and pop the photo up where you will see it every day, to remind you to support fair trade. Get your child to dress up in their most ‘powerful’ outfit.

Eating worms. Not our darling earthworms but buffalo worms or mealworms. They're kinda wafery. Easiest intro for your kids to the world of insect protein because they have no gooey centres. And a nice reminder of how you're in charge of showing your kids what's 'normal'; you'll probably find that it's the grown-ups, not the kids, who struggle eating these. Any issues, coat in melted chocolate, with a few worms sticking out. Theses guys convert water and feed to protein hyper efficiently. Learn more about how low impact insect protein is, and buy them here. Enjoy.

Healthy hearts. A nice visual reminder of the balance we all need in our diets. Make a heart shape out of card and divide into 3 parts. Get your child to help you find food in the cupboard and in magazines (some supermarkets give out free food mags) of the food they love and the food you would like them to eat more of. Divide into 3 sections: fruit and veg, protein and carbohydrates. See the British Heart Foundation's healthy heart guidance here. Then have fun creating recipes that get more of the good stuff into your diets - veggie or bean cakes, energy balls, savoury pancakes + the tried-and-tested method of whizzing them into sauces, soups and dips. Fun facts: Did you know our long digestive tracts are specifically designed to digest plants? And we see in colour to be able to distinguish between all the wonderful plant food sources out there?

Soil your undies. Get your child to find a pair of old holey pants (or some scrap fabric - make sure it's 100% cotton) and bury them in your garden, 6 inches below the surface. Dig up after 8 weeks. They should have completely disappeared (except for the elasticated bits) and been eaten by the soil’s earthworms and other microorganisms, if you have healthy soil. No soil = no plants, which means no food. Healthy soil is as important as clean air and clean water and the UN says that the world's soils are so under-nourished and over-worked that we should be worried about feeding ourselves. Where possible buy from organic farmers who look after their soil.

An introduction to branding (and consuming more mindfully)
It's never too early to get your child thinking about the power of branding. Brands have been known to hire child psychologists to ensure children will like the look of their products and experiments on children as young as three have shown that branding works. Next time you're in the shops together, ask your child to choose a yoghurt that they like the look of (they will either already know a brand they like or you can help them choose something new - guide them to decide based on which packaging they like the best). At the same time, choose the same flavour but in bland/non-descript packaging. At home, so that they can't see, divide the non-descript yoghurt you chose into two bowls. Pop the branded packaging next to one, and the non-descript packaging next to the other. Ask them which they prefer and see whether their preferred packaging matches their preferred yoghurt. Do not tell them until afterwards that the yoghurt is the same. (You can also try this with cereals or cheese, or anything where you can find a non-branded, similar tasting equivalent). You could also see if price difference influences your child's choice (as it does an adult's - the assumption being that higher prices mean better products). Discuss the findings with them.

Food cubes. A fun way to get your child to try new (healthy) foods is to cut them into cubes and see if they can guess what everything is. Some will be obvious - like bread, banana, cucumber; others less so. The inside of a broccoli stalk is really sweet and nutritious and is white, so might be mistaken for cheese, egg white, an apple. Red cabbage will give your child a purple tongue, beetroot a red one. If you’re feeling especially motivated, you could make them into heart shapes. Somehow.

A food waste crime scene (fly-tipped mould-stained mattress bread + motor oil black milk). Think about what food you routinely find past its best and lay a selection on the table (it doesn't have to be mouldy!). Get your child to create a crime scene with it. Fly tipping? A littered beach? Ransacked grocery store? Murdered banana? Because wasting food is kinda criminal.

Interview a farmer. Find your nearest organic farm - either one that grows food or rears livestock - and with your child come up with some questions for them. Email them over and hope they have time to reply. See what they can tell you about how happy their animals, earthworms, insects and farm workers are and why they avoid the chemicals that are widely used on crops to control weeds, pests and to boost plant growth. See if your child will draw a picture to thank them. Please note the beasties’ nibbles in the chard [pictured] grown by one of our local organic farms - it’s only right to share (a little)!

Making compost. Also known as soil. The trick is to get an even amount of kitchen waste and 'brown' garden waste (dead leaves, dried grass, dead stalks, small sticks, straw, paper - great guidance here). So that my two can see the mighty work of the worms and their micro friends, we made this funny-looking contraption. It's an old plastic tub with holes in the bottom for drainage and gaps in the sides for the worms to get in and work their magic. We dug a small hole, popped this into it and every week or so you can lift it out and see the changes. Give it a gentle stir with a stick to see how long individual items take to get eaten. Watch this brilliant video to see what soil beasties look like and why they are so important to plant health.

A thank-you note to the bees. We all love honey and most parents think kids should (at least sometimes) write thank-you letters. Make a picture of an elephant from trees, flowers (including weeds) or fruit/vegetables that (all) bees like to feed on. Why an elephant? Fun fact: elephants are scared of bees, so they are used to protect crops from these formidable giants - a great example of working with, rather than against nature! Hopefully you'll have some of these in your garden or nearest park (info here). Write a thank-you note to your (local) bees, telling them that bees in India are scared of elephants, and any other fun facts you can find about bees elsewhere in the world. That'll make them buzz with laughter. Promise them that you'll mow less, weed less and will think about planting more flowers that they'll enjoy eating nectar from. That'd be a proper thank you. Then you’ll have to get creative with how you ‘post’ your letter off.

Stinging nettle pesto. What could go wrong? Forage for some juicy young leaves (steam them) + pine nuts, lemon, cheddar, garlic & olive oil. Genuinely yum. Recipe here.

Where did you eat today? For one day, find out where all the food you eat has originated. Or you could pick a favourite meal and do the same. If it doesn’t say on the packet, try looking at a supermarket’s website for country of origin details. Or write to the brand directly. Then learn about the countries and make a poster. You could theme it by looking at flags, animals, landmarks, famous people, plants, sports…

Understanding the food chain. Explain to your child that plastic litter that ends up in the rivers and sea breaks down into ever smaller pieces that then get eaten by fish. Those fish are eaten by bigger fish, who in turn are eaten by even bigger fish, which eventually end up on our dinner plate. See if you can recreate this picture, cutting into bits any plastic packaging you have in the house. Go on a litter pick and post a pic of your bag of waste, using the hashtag #just1bag2020
Photo credit: Neal Layton, Wren and Rook

Blackberry frozen yoghurt. If little mouths haven’t scoffed the lot when out blackberry picking, frozen blackberries blended with yoghurt are a sugar-free treat worth exploring. Space-permitting, load up your freezer. I freeze mine whole then blend them frozen, before mixing with plain yoghurt. My two are well used to the real deal (ice-cream) but they still wolf this down.

Foraged crab apples. These oft-overlooked apples, which come in various guises, are tart to the taste but if you cook them, you’re away. The kids will love making them into mini toffee apples, crumble (perfect combined with blackberries) or jam. Grown-ups might enjoy crab apple liquer. They can also be added to muffins, bread or turned into fruit juice or sweet jelly.

Oat milk. Among the non-dairy alternatives to cow’s milk, oat-based milk is seen as the most sustainable. And it's dead easy to make. If you're used to having porridge for breakfast, you'll quickly become accustomed to the taste. Instructions for how to make it here and then get your child to decide what to do with the leftover pulp; biscuits? crumble? exfoliator?

Consumer Power! This simple activity from the Fairtrade Foundation is an easy introduction to how we consumers can make a difference to people's lives depending on what we buy in the shops. Because it involves chocolate you should get some interest and because it involves some maths, it feels like a doubly useful activity. Try and find some chocolate with the same cocoa and sugar content but use one that has been fairly-traded and one that hasn’t. In this way you’re taking taste preferences out of the equation. Watch these videos for some insight into how fairly-traded goods help farmers. Quite simply, shops won’t stock what they can’t sell. Consider making the decision, as a family, to buy only fairly-traded chocolate where possible.

Building confidence in bread-making. These recipes are a great intro for bread-loving children that require neither expertise nor special ingredients. Real Bread week in February celebrates honing your own bread-making skills at home and supporting local bakers who produce bread free of the additives and palm oil that often accompany supermarket bread. I have no expertise in making dough rise but the kids and I have been thrilled by the wide variety of dead simple 'breads' out there. Soda bread (see our deranged hedgehog-toad pictured), mung bean bread (tastier than it sounds) and sugar-free banana bread are easy and scrummy. And a recently-tried oat + yoghurt bread was a surprising hit (we added cranberries and raisins). These may not be ‘real bread’ in a strict sense, but they are a fun, easy and tasty way to kickstart your child’s bread-making journey.