Special Helpers in the Kitchen - Guest Post

In honor of Autism Awareness Month, I invited author and mother of four (including a 10 year old boy with Autistic Spectrum Disorder and an 8 year old daughter born with Down's syndrome) to share her experience cooking with special needs kids. Deborah teaches cooking classes in her home to mothers and children with mild special needs. Check out Deborah's amazing, powerful, and insightful new memoir A Brief Moment in Time, published by ASD Publushing Co, New York, available where ebooks are sold.

Cooking can be hectic, messy and stressful. A brief loss of focus or minor slip up can lead to overly-spiced and over-cooked food, or blood and burns. Because adding children to that mix is quite often a ‘no no’ for many mothers, children are missing out on grasping the tools of a fundamental life skill.  

Photo from Nicole Mays

Cooking time with mum gives children an opportunity to learn about the different food groups and the importance of health, safety, and hygiene during preparation.  Furthermore, whilst we live in an environment where the consumption of processed food is more appealing than spending time preparing fresh food from scratch, we have a responsibility to teach our children how to make the correct culinary choices.

As a mother of four children, two of whom have special needs, finding the patience as well as the time to teach my children is no easy task.  Yet making the effort has taught me that cooking with children who have special needs is just as effective as a therapy session.  

How is this so?  I am certainly not a professional in the medical field with little expertise in the different techniques used when working with children with disabilities.  However, what I do have is a very specific skill set when preparing food.  This skill set is managed by rules and regulations that ensure safe food management and consumption.  Children with communication, coordination and attention difficulties thrive on rules and boundaries because they help guide them on how to behave.  By learning to cook using this skill set, they become more confident and focused by being able to reap the almost immediate benefits from their efforts by enjoying the food they have prepared.

Photo from Nicole Mays

It still amazes me that my 10 year old son, who has Autistic Spectrum Disorder and thereby has trouble focusing on a given task and trouble with hand eye coordination is able to egg, bread and fry chicken, under my watchful eye of course, with absolute precision. 

Below are my top 5 tips for cooking with all children:

1.  Allocate a 30 minute time slot for cooking:

  

For the first few sessions outlining a start and finish time will help the concept feel more manageable to you.  Also your child, who may have difficulty starting a new activity due to concentration issues, will be more inclined to participate knowing that this activity has a start and end time.

Healthy Comfort Foods

This is a guest post from Yocheved Golani, auther of It's MY Crisis! And I'll Cry If I Need To: EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge. Yocheved is writing a new book, The Comfort Foods Cookbook: Recipes to Calm You Down FAST Without Widening Your Waistline. The idea intrigued me, so I asked Yocheved if I could share an excerpt with you. Below is an excerpt from the book about whole grains and sandwich spreads. These foods are comforting in the mouth and on a chemical level, but won't expand your waistline and made you feel like lethargic like traditional comfort foods.

Use fresh produce and grains. The evidence is in that commercially prepared products hold harmful synthetic chemicals. Fake foods are wreaking havoc with thyroids, metabolism (your body’s ability to burn calories), fertility rates, lifespans and lifestyles. Keep life simple. Don’t sicken yourself on additives, preservatives, food colorings and flavor enhancers. They make the scale stick its tongue out at you, too.

Want some bread? Great! Make yours whole grain. Those complex carbohydrates leave you feeling fuller. They also balance your body’s chemicals, including sugar levels. Bye-bye hunger pangs!

BONUS: Better4U Sandwich Spreads!

Smear avocado on the bread. Packed with potassium, hormone-balancing avocado (yes, ladies) is especially good for a woman’s cervical and womb health.

Men, avocados are guy-friendly, too. Avos, as South Africans call the fruit, hold compounds that can prevent oral cancer. Their oleic acid is a protection against breast cancer (YES, men do develop breast cancer!).

One avocado week can help almost anybody to shed excess weight and possibly prevent some cancers. The fruit is rich in lutein to support everyone’s eye health, too.

Top that snack with sliced tomatoes, loaded with lycophen for healthier hearts and blood systems! Tomatoes even hold four chambers, just like human hearts. Lycophen compounds are linked to lower rates of breast and prostate cancer.

Pears have the same properties as avocados, so enjoy them often. Ladies, pamper your PMS-y selves with avocado salads, guacamole and even plain old avocado scooped from the peel. Their natural fats are soothing.

Red Beans and Rice in the Pressure Cooker

My version was mild enough for every member of my very white family.  Even both my picky kids liked it and asked for seconds and thirds!  Look at the end for tips to spice it up and a low-glycemic version.

Ingredients:

• 1-2 red onions
• 2-3 cloves garlic
• olive oil
• cherry tomatoes (or other ripe or canned, drained tomatoes)
• 1-2 dry bay leaves
• 1-2 large dry hot peppers - seeded, no need to chop or pre-soak
• 
• dry or fresh chopped thyme
• 1 cup long-grain brown rice, rinsed
• 1 cup red/kidney beans (See step 1 for soaking tips.)
• 3.5 cups water or broth, plus water for rinsing and soaking
• smoked paprika
• salt

Sweet and Sourdough Rolls

I tried to make bagels based on the Sourdough Oatmeal Bread recipe from Israeli Kitchen.  The dough fell apart in the boiling water, but I still got some very tasty rolls.  By substituting apple juice for water, I got a slightly sweeter dough, as well as what we call "mezonot rolls."  For observant Jews, that means instead of washing our hands in a ritual fashion and making the blessing on bread, then a full grace after meals, we say one blessing before eating the rolls and a short blessing afterward.  This can be preferable when you want a snack or when you have limited time, like at work.

Crepes

Last week I made crepes with my kids.  I took a big risk letting them pour the batter into the pan.  I also let them splash water in the pan to see that it sizzled, meaning the pan was hot.  The fun part, which young and old can both enjoy, is spreading/sprinkling the toppings.  Sautéed spinach, onions, and mushrooms are all good choices for a savory crepe.  You can skip or reduce the sugar in the recipe and even add herbs right in the batter.  Alternatively, you can add honey or agave syrup to the batter and fill the crepes with sweet crepe, cottage cheese, bananas, chocolate spread, and/or peanut butter.  I made thick whole wheat crepes with agave syrup.  I'd like to try the following recipe from composer Peter Vamos, on YouTube.

Barley Sushi

Today is the second episode of "Sugar Slashing Sunday."  Barley might be my new favorite diabetic-friendly food.  It is a great substitute for rice, and it has culinary benefits beyond health.  Pearl or pearled barley has had the outer husk removed.  Pearl barley has a Glycemic Index (GI) around 22-25, half that of regular rice (varies between 38-87 depending on variety), which means it will have a lower impact on post-meal blood glucose.   

Barley can be a little more cumbersome to roll into sushi, but it stays springy and tender longer than white rice, which tends to dry out in the fridge.  This makes pearl barley an excellent choice if you want to roll your sushi even two days in advance.  By following the tips bellow, even novice sushi makers can to make this delicious, good-carb treat.