Delaware's Caribbean Fiesta!

Delaware!  The Diamond State. Jamal Bin-Yusif is the winner of the 2016 Healthy Lunchtime Challenge with his creation of "Caribbean Fiesta!" We got to meet Jamal and his mom a few times while waiting to meet Mrs. Obama.

He was interviewed a few times by radio and TV broadcasts about what inspired him to create this dish.  WDEL 101.7FM and PRI's The World covered Jamal's recipe via radio broadcasts.  

Delaware is the second smallest state and has only 3 counties.  We picked up "From Sea to Shining Sea: Delaware" by Amy Miller and "America the Beautiful: Delaware" by Ann Heinrichs to learn more about the First State (it was the first one to approve the US Constitution!)

There is a lot of water in Delaware - about 8% of its land area is covered by wetlands.  They specialize in fresh seafood due to its long coastline.  The Pennsylvania border is called the "Twelve-Mile Circle" since its border is a perfect arc!  Our current Vice President Joe Biden is from Delaware.

Since we are big fans of the National Parks, we found the "First State National Historic Park" and above is a picture of the historic Dover Green.  Since it's getting close to Halloween, we found out that Rehoboth & Dewey Beaches host a Sea Witch Festival, which looks like so much fun:

Now - onto Jamal's Healthy Lunchtime Challenge award-winning recipe: Caribbean Fiesta!  The flavors of this recipe were inspired by his Jamaican born grandparents.  First, we assemble all the ingredients.  We had both green & orange bell peppers that are hiding in our fridge (I forgot to add them to the picture!)

And it was a simple cook of the chicken & chop of the veggies - it was a super fun, simple and healthy recipe.  We decided to create a nacho bar where the kids could add their own healthy toppings:

And zap it in the microwave to melt the cheese a little and voila!  We have a delicious, fun meal for our family.  The best part were the leftover, chopped fresh veggies to add to our morning eggs and other various healthy recipes.  Thanks Jamal for creating this award-winning recipe.  We will serve it up for future make-your-own-nacho parties!

Connecticut's Springtime Lunchtime!

Connecticut - the Nutmeg state!  Although it's not springtime - in fact, we are entering into our favorite season: fall!  Today, we are making Kalaya Moody's award-winning recipe from the 2016 Healthy Lunchtime Challenge.  We met Kalaya, her mother & grandmother several times while we were in Washington DC.  In fact, without even knowing it, we rode on the same United Airlines plane from Hartford, CT to DC!  They were also our neighbors at the Westin Georgetown Hotel.

There is a cute video that the Hartford Courant put out that shows Kalaya making her recipe. Other media outlets also focused in on this creative chef:  Fox 61, the Windsor Patch, and WFSB.com are just a few articles that featured Kalaya.  One of the big sponsors of the Healthy Lunchtime Challenge was the Newman's Own Foundation, which is located in Connecticut.  Kalaya recently visited their headquarters and made a few healthy meals with them!

As a family, we have visited Connecticut a few times.  Last year we met up with good friends at the Portland Agricultural Fair and we regularly fly out of the Bradley International Airport in Windsor, CT.  Even though Connecticut is only a hop, skip and a jump away from us, we still want to learn a little something more about its history.  We checked out "N is for Nutmeg: A Connecticut Alphabet" by Elissa D. Grodin.  There's lots of rich history in this state - for the literary fans, we learned that Mark Twain settled in Hartford, CT and wrote the famous Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer.  Uncle Tom's Cabin was written here by Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Prudence Crandall is Connecticut's state heroine because she allowed an African-American girl (Sarah Harris) to be educated in her school way back in the 1830s.  And for our next venture to Connecticut, we hope to visit Dinosaur State Park and learn about these prehistoric creatures!

Now, onto Kalaya's award winning Springtime Lunchtime recipe!  First, we gather all of our ingredients:

Then onto the re-creation of this yummy recipe!  There were several parts to this so we created the Egg Birds Nests first:

We had added help with our cute little neighborhood friend - it was a full kitchen with many hands helping out!

For the French Toast Flowers, we didn't have a flower cookie cutter so we used a variety of holiday cut-outs.  The kids had the most fun with this process:

Kalaya serves up this recipe with a fruit smoothie so we decided to do the same:

Here are the variety of plated up meals:

And now we get to dig in!  Yummy Kalaya!  Thanks for getting into the kitchen and being so creative with this recipe.  We loved it!

Colorado's Hannah's Sweet and Savory Chicken and Peaches

Colorado - the Centennial State!  It's been a little while since our last blog entry - school started in late August and now things have started to settle down a bit.  We made Hannah Skalicky's award-winning meal from the 2016 Healthy Lunchtime Challenge a few weeks ago and loved eating it again (it was one of the few recipes featured on the Kids' State Dinner menu!).  Hannah is from Fort Collins, CO and has helped her dad sell Palisade Peaches in her town's Rotary Peach Festival.

Her dish was inspired by local ingredients which included peaches, mushrooms, cucumbers as well as using curry from a friend's mother who is from India.  Hannah received lots of press coverage as well as a YouTube video of her making this award-winning dish!  The Coloradoan, 9 News, 9 News again, The Denver Channel, The Colorado Table and our very own Uncle Mike who lives in Denver, sent us the newspaper clipping from the Denver Post about Hannah and her recipe:

My children have not been to Colorado before, but my husband and I used to live in Golden before we had kids.  We still have family who live in Denver and we hope to vacation there someday.  Uncle Mike and Uncle Willem would send us cherished children books from the Tattered Covered Bookstore every Christmas.  Our children love trains and it would be great for them to visit Tiny Town, The Durango & Silverton railroads, The Royal Gorge route, The Rio Grande Scenic Railway, and/or the Georgetown Loop Railroad.

We also love National Parks and there are about ten of them to chose from in Colorado so we have plenty of options.  In the book "From Sea to Shining Sea: Colorado" by Amy Miller, we learned that Colorado is the 8th largest state in the country - to put that into perspective: all of the New England states could fit inside Colorado comfortably!  We learned that the center North American Aerospace Defense Commend (NORAD) is located inside of Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs - the kids are very familiar with NORAD because they track Santa Clause's ride on Christmas Eve.  The Garden of the Gods are also located in Colorado Springs:

Now onto Hannah's Sweet and Savory Chicken and Peaches award-winning recipe!  The kids and I took our own course of finding the ingredients in Hannah's recipe that are local to NH.  We spent the morning at Alyson's Orchard in Walpole, NH picking apples and peaches.  Well, we tried to pick the peaches but it seems that NH didn't have a very good peach season:

It's unfortunate but glad we were still able to enjoy some sort-of local peaches!  Some of the apples were ready to be picked - Hannah suggested Gala apples:

But those didn't look so ready… we decided upon Golden Ginger apples which were delicious!  We had a great morning picking apples and playing around the orchard:

Once nice thing was that Alyson's Orchard also sold local honey.  I bought a jar of this yumminess!

When we got home, we decided to have some friends over and start cooking!  First, we assembled our ingredients:

And got to prepping:

And sauce making goodness:

We were having such a great time with our friends that I forgot to capture it all on camera - I think this is the only picture I was able to get with most of the kids - we started off our meal with some Newman's Own peach salsa:

And here is the final, delicious meal.  We made a peach smoothie to go along with this meal.  We made a "peach party" out of Hannah's recipe.

At the end, we enjoyed an apple pie from all of the apples we picked!

Thank you Hannah for your creative and yummy meal that we were able to re-create!  We had fun at apple picking and peach eating at our impromptu peach party!

California's Cannon's California Rolls

California!  The Golden State.  The very adorable, eight year old Cannon Meiers won the 2016 Healthy Lunchtime Challenge for his home state.  He was one of the few kid chefs who was featured in the White House's video about the event.  Cannon has been featured in his home state's several newspaper articles and TV news broadcasts.

And, after the trip to the White House - it was so cool to see that he was part of the Sonoma County Fair and paired with California's celebrity chef Laurie Figone to make his award winning "Cannon's California Rolls"

Cannon's demonstration at the fair was sponsored by La Tortilla Factory - it looks like he had an amazing experience participating at the fair!

Part of our journey trying out each new recipe from the 2016 Healthy Lunchtime Challenge, we are learning about the state the recipe came from.  We learned about the year-round mild climate which helps California's growing season for many varieties of produce.

We experienced this comfortable weather in southern California when we lived in Arizona.  We took annual trips to visit the Pacific Ocean and our family who lives near Los Angles.  At Campland in San Diego, Jude learned to ride a bike without training wheels, he met Spiderman on the Hollywood Walk of Fame,

experienced Jedi Training at Disneyland during the holidays,

and we all watched the sunset at Zabriskie Point in Death Valley National Park:

California is a HUGE state and there is so much more to learn about it than a from a few visits.  So, we went to our library and found a few books about this great state and picked up some Pepperidge Farm Sausalito cookies on our way home to learn more about it.  

In "America The Beautiful: California" by Tamra B. Orr, we learned that the state capitol is Sacramento and how the "Great California Gold Rush" helped this territory to become a state. In "Letters from Home: Yosemite" by Lisa Halvorsen, we learned more about this wondrous national park, its inhabitants and touristy landmarks.  In "A Child's California" by Dan Harder, we looked at pictures of different plants, animals, cultures and attractions.  And in "Little California" block book, my two youngest read about the fun beaches, mountains and cable cars that can be found there.  

Now, onto the main event of making Cannon's California Rolls!  First, we assemble the ingredients: 

And we get to work! 

And then we plated it, set the picnic table outside and enjoyed this yummy meal!  In fact, the kids didn't even wait for me to take a picture before starting to dig in and eat.  And we added grapes on the side, just like Cannon suggested. 

Thanks Cannon!  We are so glad we tried your delicious recipe and we hope to make it again soon.  Keep up with your culinary creations and healthy eating - we look forward to seeing what you come up with next!