A couple of weeks ago, I held my first cooking session, packed with nutrition information and cooking tips. We were a jolly group of 9 women, all from different cultures and it was really interesting to hear what were their eating and cooking habits.
We cooked four dishes, all revolving around pulses, and everyone was exchanging ideas on how to sale pulses to their meat-eater of a husband or their unadventurous children.
Well, a good starting point is to make delicious dishes.
I think that everyone agreed that the butternut squash winter spice curry would a good start to convince anyone that meat is not always required to make an A* dish. And for the children, baked beans is often already part of their diet so the step is not that big to move to other beans. The black bean quesadillas are so easy and so yummy, that they should soon become converted.
Another way of introducing a family to pulses is to add them to your classic stew, whilst reducing the meat content. Some will be looking for the meat but some others won't even notice the trick. The meat flavour being here, they will happily eat the whole lot and will be asking for more.
Next session will be around family friendly cooking. We will look at:
Quick and easy dishes, that are well balanced and liked by children
Dishes that can be prepared in advance to be deployed quickly when needed
Dishes kiddy-safe yet taking them to try new things.
Come and join me!
