Lee - The 52 new foods challenge: a family cooking adventure for each week of the year

Praise for Crunch a Color and The 52 New Foods Challenge

Fun? Simple? Rewards dinner conversation, good manners, and setting the table? Encourages even the most reticent childor adult!to eat their veggies? Supports nonprofits dedicated to combating the childhood obesity epidemic? You can see why we love this game.

LAURIE DAVIDS THE FAMILY DINNER

A simple, fun, and playful way to get kids to eat healthy and try new foods.

RACHAEL RAYS YUM-O!

A mom and genius game creator helping kids eat fresh food!

JAMIE OLIVERS FOOD REVOLUTION

Invites kids of all ages into the kitchen to cook, and gives them exactly what they need to get excited about kale, salmon, and quinoa instead of pasta, pizza, and other kid food. Jennifer Tyler Lee has planted the seeds of comfort and confidence in the childs kitchen.

JESSE COOL, AUTHOR OF SIMPLY ORGANIC

A year from reading this book, the fact that your family is eating healthier will be a symptom of something far deeper. The food will have been a delicious prop, an opportunity to think and communicate differently. Thats what makes Jennifer Tyler Lees book so valuable. If it helps, think of The 52 New Foods Challenge as a delicious blend of Dr. Spock and The Joy of Cooking for twenty-first-century foodie parents. But its much more than that.

RAJ PATEL, AUTHOR OF STUFFED AND STARVED

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) LLC

375 Hudson Street

New York, New York 10014

USA Canada UK Ireland Australia New Zealand India South Africa China

penguin.com

A Penguin Random House Company

Copyright 2014 by Jennifer Tyler Lee

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

Illustrations 2014 by Summer Pierre

Crunch a Color is a trademark of Tiny Green Bee, LLC.

Most Avery books are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchase for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, and educational needs. Special books or book excerpts also can be created to fit specific needs. For details, write Special.Markets@us.penguingroup.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lee, Jennifer Tyler.

The 52 new foods challenge : a family cooking adventure for each week of the year / Jennifer Tyler Lee.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-698-15187-1

1. Seasonal cooking. 2. FamiliesNutrition. 3. Food habits. 4. Adventure games. I. Title. II. Title: Fifty-two new foods challenge.

TX714.L4426 2014 2014027128

641.564dc23

The recipes contained in this book have been created for the ingredients and techniques indicated. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require supervision. Nor is the publisher responsible for any adverse reactions you may have to the recipes contained in the book, whether you follow them as written or modify them to suit your personal dietary needs or tastes.

For Catherine, James, and Anthony,

who fill me up

with love

Contents

Foreword

Getting kids to eat healthy food is the greatest challenge we facenot only as parents but also as a nation. We live in an era when our childrens life spans may be shorter than those of their parents, an era when cancer is the foremost cause of death of children under fifteen, an era when diabetes and obesity are rampantthree times the rate of a generation ago. It will take us all to reverse these stats.

And it will take healthy, unprocessed food.

Food literacy must be one of our most important goals in overcoming our countrys food and health crises. But where do we start? It begins by finding our kitchens again; and not only finding them but also sharing them with our familiesand most especially our kids! Schools can be part of the solution, but parents also have a major role to play.

Enter The 52 New Foods Challenge by Jennifer Tyler Lee.

In this book, and the Crunch a Color game that complements it, we meet a mom, advocate, and inspiration who helps families move from bland to bountiful platesfrom the freezer section to the farmers market. Through an ingenious and simple game, The 52 New Foods Challenge inspires kids, their parents, friends, and families to get into the kitchen to cook, taste, and eat healthy, unprocessed foodstogether.

I believe that the 52 New Foods Challenge is a positive journey that every family can embark on. With it we can truly change not only our childrens relationship with food but also our own. This book may actually help families save the health of our children, our nation, and perhaps our planet as well!

Chef Ann Cooper

A Note to the Reader

The 52 New Foods Challenge is about more than the foodsits about the journey the foods take you on. Along the way, you will experience failures and frustrations, successes and celebrations. In the end, though, you will transform the way your family eats because of the experience you have together.

Maybe your kids refuse to eat their vegetables and youre at your breaking point. Or you feel like youve done everything right, preparing wholesome meals from the start, and all of a sudden your kids no longer eat the healthy foods they once did. You may have a family that eats healthy most of the time, but youre looking for ways to break your recipe rut and try something new. Regardless of the reason, the solution lies in taking the journey together.

I started the 52 New Foods Challenge to get my kids past pasta and peas and to encourage them to be more willing to try new foods. What I discovered was that the journey wasnt about getting my kids to change. It was about creating a change in me. The 52 New Foods Challenge transformed me, which in turn transformed our family dinners.

The key to making a change at your family table lies in learning to see things in a new lightto change your perspective. Thats hard. This book will help you get there. Peppered throughout this book, I have included stories from my familys adventurewhat worked and what didntand practical tips to help you achieve your goal. My hope is that my story will inspire your story. Meet your family where they are, and move forward from there. Everyone will start at a different place, and everyone can make lasting changes. This is your familys adventure, and like any good recipe, the secret is to make it your own.

Jennifer

Introduction

In every job that must be done
There is an element of fun
You find the fun, and snap!
The jobs a game.

MARY POPPINS

Where We Began

When my daughter, Catherine, was two, she ate everything. A happy little sprout, she would bounce around the table snatching and sampling healthy bits of food until her big, round belly was satisfied. I was a beaming mom. To be sure, she had her go-to favorites like habas (otherwise known as strawberries) and mum mums (her code for mushrooms), but for the most part she had a pretty broad palate and was willing to try new foods without much fuss. Naively, I thought I had avoided picky-eater syndrome and the terrible dinner struggles that plagued most of my friends at the time.