Natalie's AnnArbor.com articles

I was fortunate enough to be selected as a regular contributor for t

he Food and Parenting sections of Ann Arbor's leading news source, Ann Arbor.com. Here you can find an archive of my articles.

Cooking with kids: the ultimate in laughs, messes, and so much more!

This past week I taught a cooking class at Ann Arbor Cooks to a group of kids (9-12 years of age). Our subject was Italy, and homemade pasta and gelato were on our menu. I was a little nervous as rolling pasta can be a little tricky, but I was excited for the challenge.

We started to make our pasta dough by pouring our piles of flour onto the counter and forming a well in the center to crack our eggs into.

Despite my instructions to make the well nice and wide, the kids made their wells into all sizes — most too small, yet perfectly round. They proceeded to crack their eggs into the well, and as they tried to scramble the eggs a bit with a fork, some of them ran over and out of the flour well, causing them to both panic and giggle uncontrollably!

Sweet corn - a perennial favorite

Knee-high by the fourth of July - isn’t that what they say? That means the first of local sweet corn is here. And have you ever met anyone who doesn’t like sweet corn? I certainly haven’t! But how do you cook it? Let me count the ways…

There are so many cookbooks touting recipes for sweet corn - some want you to boil it, some want you to microwave it, some want you to grill it, some insist you soak it in its husks before you grill it, some want you to smother it in compound butter, some want you to sprinkle it with cheese - (suddenly I feel like Forrest Gump talking about shrimp!) - you get the picture.

Cooking with kids: Kebabs

As a chef and a mom, I'm forever trying to strike that balance between trying to get my kids to eat new things and present them with things they will actually eat. When my older daughter, Ava, was 2 that became a real challenge. After all, I was a chef who prided myself in the fact that I could get my toddler to eat virtually anything - the stranger the better!