Summertime has come at last! Hot, steamy, sunny days cry out for the cool, delicious taste of summer fruits.
Strawberries and raspberries are in season right now, so why not take your kids to a farm and pick your own fruit. What a great way to spend a day with your kids learning about how local produce is grown. Look in your local phone book or go to www.pickyourown.org
Looking for another field trip to do with your kids this summer? Search out your local Farmer’s Market. Once a week, farmers bring their produce to sell and what could be better than fruits that are fresh and ripe, as they usually picked that same day. The kids will love the free samples given out freely by the vendors, so it’s a great way to taste new foods. If you don’t have a Farmer’s market near you, then a field trip to your local supermarket will be just as educational.
Talk with your kids about the summer fruits you see: yellow and white peaches and nectarines, plums, apricots, melons and cherries. Look out for the variety of berries, such as blackberries, raspberries and blueberries - local berries can be picked later in the summer. Don’t forget to watch out for the unusual summer fruits such as greengages, rhubarb, kiwi, figs, star fruit, mangoes and papaya.
Have a geography lesson and let your kids guess where the different fruits are grown. Explain why some of the fruits are available all year round, for example, pineapples from Hawaii.
Carefully, pick up the fruits and compare their colors, shapes and sizes. Smell and feel them. For example, compare the fuzzy, soft skin of a peach or the prickly skin of a pineapple to the smooth, shiny skin of a nectarine or plum. Teach your kids how to choose unblemished fruits; ripe fruits will smell sweet and yield to gentle pressure but hard summer fruits can be bought and stored in a brown paper bag until ripe. Older kids might like to know that fruit in a paper bag will give off ethylene gas and hasten the ripening process.
When cooking with fresh summer fruits, have your kids taste them first to determine their sweetness. If they are sweet and ripe, less or no sugar can be added to the recipe. Try to be gentle when stirring summer fruits, ripe berries will break down very quickly and it’s much nicer to see the whole fruit in the finished dish. There are many recipes for fruit cobblers, pies and shortcake that kids love, but if you’ve gone to all the trouble of picking your own fruit, then choose a recipe where the fruit is the star of the show.
If you are looking for kid friendly recipes, you will find many kid tested recipes on my website www.letsallcook.com
Strawberries and raspberries are in season right now, so why not take your kids to a farm and pick your own fruit. What a great way to spend a day with your kids learning about how local produce is grown. Look in your local phone book or go to www.pickyourown.org
Looking for another field trip to do with your kids this summer? Search out your local Farmer’s Market. Once a week, farmers bring their produce to sell and what could be better than fruits that are fresh and ripe, as they usually picked that same day. The kids will love the free samples given out freely by the vendors, so it’s a great way to taste new foods. If you don’t have a Farmer’s market near you, then a field trip to your local supermarket will be just as educational.
Talk with your kids about the summer fruits you see: yellow and white peaches and nectarines, plums, apricots, melons and cherries. Look out for the variety of berries, such as blackberries, raspberries and blueberries - local berries can be picked later in the summer. Don’t forget to watch out for the unusual summer fruits such as greengages, rhubarb, kiwi, figs, star fruit, mangoes and papaya.
Have a geography lesson and let your kids guess where the different fruits are grown. Explain why some of the fruits are available all year round, for example, pineapples from Hawaii.
Carefully, pick up the fruits and compare their colors, shapes and sizes. Smell and feel them. For example, compare the fuzzy, soft skin of a peach or the prickly skin of a pineapple to the smooth, shiny skin of a nectarine or plum. Teach your kids how to choose unblemished fruits; ripe fruits will smell sweet and yield to gentle pressure but hard summer fruits can be bought and stored in a brown paper bag until ripe. Older kids might like to know that fruit in a paper bag will give off ethylene gas and hasten the ripening process.
When cooking with fresh summer fruits, have your kids taste them first to determine their sweetness. If they are sweet and ripe, less or no sugar can be added to the recipe. Try to be gentle when stirring summer fruits, ripe berries will break down very quickly and it’s much nicer to see the whole fruit in the finished dish. There are many recipes for fruit cobblers, pies and shortcake that kids love, but if you’ve gone to all the trouble of picking your own fruit, then choose a recipe where the fruit is the star of the show.
If you are looking for kid friendly recipes, you will find many kid tested recipes on my website www.letsallcook.com
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