Green Kids Cook is a fabulous recipe book which has been written to encourage children how to cook food that isn’t just good for them but is also good for the planet. The book doesn’t just include recipes, it’s full of information about eating a greener diet, reducing plastic consumption and leaving smaller ‘foodprints’. It’s a great introduction to cooking delicious plant based recipes whilst raising an awareness that recipes with less or no meat can also be really tasty.
Green Kids Cook is split into several sections. It starts with an introduction for kids, an introduction for parents and safety information while cooking.
Then we come to the main section with over fifty recipes under five different categories. The recipes are interspersed with information about a wide range of subjects including fridge storage, global warming, encouraging bees, eating with the seasons and reasons to use less meat.
Children are encouraged to start keeping a recipe journal and an index at the end of the book helps readers find recipes quickly. We find the US glossary particularly fascinating, there were several words that were unfamiliar to us including fava beans, arugula and napa cabbage.
The recipes are laid out on a white background and are really easy to follow, colour photos show each step of the process. We love the little bubbles that have extra tips on them too.
We’ve made several of the breakfast recipes which include a super-cool smoothie bowl, seeded oat bread and delicious buckwheat pancakes (we made ours with chia seeds as an egg substitute) then ate them with warm berries and sugar.
The Snack section includes Bruschetta, Veg Peel Crisps and Cheese Straws (we forgot to take a picture of ours but they tasted really good!).
There are some really original recipes for Soups and Salads including Smacked Cucumber and Crispy Green Salad (with Zingy Ginger Dressing) and this really yummy sounding Green Pea And Coconut Soup.
The Mains section includes Butternut Bean Burgers, Sweet Potato, Broccoli and Peanut Butter Curry and Courgetti Pasta. Those with a sweet tooth can enjoy Banana, Chocolate and Walnut Muffins, Baked Amaretti Plums and Apple and Ginger Flapjacks.
There are also pages of amazing information and ideas for making planet friendly items like eco bags and beeswax wraps. The information on foraging is really interesting and we definitely want to grow sprouting pulses.
Green Kids Cook give a great introduction to cooking and shows how it can be done in an environmentally friendly way. Although we still have lots of recipes that we want to try from the book it has definitely helped us to reduce our meat consumption and provided tasty and healthy vegetarian alternatives.
A really inspiring and informative recipe book which would make a great Christmas present for budding cooks!
Age: 7 +
Author: Jenny Chandler
Thank you to Pavilion for sending a review copy of this inspirational recipe book.
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