The Supernatural Kids Cookbook: Haile's Favorites

by Nancy Mehagian

Easy lessons for preparing natural food from kid chef and Kids Can Cook host Haile Thomas, who knows how to make cooking fun

By the age of nine, Haile Thomas was in the kitchen, experimenting on her own. Now, the TEDxKids cooking sensation shares some of her favorite recipes from healthy-cooking expert Nancy Mehagian. With a focus on kid-approved recipes that are as tasty as they are nutritious, Haile has selected fifty of her favorite recipes, plus five of her own creations!

This charming cookbook shows you the secret to making fresh, healthy food that children will adore. Whether it's monkey muffins or an egg-tastic frittata, these recipes are fun, fast, and positively delicious, offering all the nutrition kids need with no artificial processing. Even more valuable are her tips on healthy eating, kitchen safety, and the basic cooking techniques that your child will need to become comfortable in the kitchen. The Supernatural Kids Haile's Favorites won't just give you recipes to cook for your children--it will teach them to cook for you.

88 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 25, 2013

About the author

A friend once called me the Picasso of the potato. I'm a first generation Armenian American whose family narrowly escaped genocide. I left the security of suburban American life to wander the globe and in 1969 established the first vegetarian restaurant on the magical island of Ibiza. After a stint dancing cabaret in Syria, I was incarcerated in an infamous London prison, along with my newborn baby, where I managed, even there, to pioneer a healthy way of eating. Of my culinary memoir Quincy Jones wrote "A spicy brew of recipes and adventures. I don't know whether to eat this book, smoke it or make love to it.
Siren's Feast--part cookbook-large part raucous memoir."

Reviews

[Erica · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you’re looking at this and making assumptions based on the title, let me just tell you now, it’s not what you think.
This is not for under-18 fans of Supernatural.

It’s also not for children who commune with ghosts, practice magic, or are aliens from outer space. There is nothing beyond the natural in this cookbook.

It should be called the super natural kids cookbook, for kids who like to be really really really natural. I assume they run around naked all the time, as that is very natural.


Now the recipes - I haven’t tried any of them, I just read through the book and they seem fine. Nothing wrong with them. However, also not super natural (or supernatural)

The basis of this cookbook for kids is using natural foods in recipes.
What are natural foods? Take a stroll through a farmers’ market and you will see for yourself. Natural means that the food was grown without using pesticides that upset the balance of NATURE and the cows were not given hormones like BST.(p. 6) and then there’s the Supernatural Kid Food Groups which does not contain things like ectoplasm or interdimensional portals but, rather, portray nutritional groupings of fresh & dried fruit, nuts & seeds, vegetables, whole grains, beans, dairy products & eggs, fish & poultry. So...ya know...basic food groups. But each food group is then explained in depth or, rather, the author’s thoughts on each food group. You will learn that she never met a fruit [she] didn’t like and Grains are an important and necessary part of every diet and that is why it’s so important to eat them in their whole, natural state instead of after they have been refined. Ground your own flour, kids! DO IT OR DIE!
But, I’m being nitpicky and snarky.

Let’s talk about those aforementioned recipes.
They’re easy enough and if you’re living in a household that makes its own food in its own backyard and only buys raw, organic, natural ingredients, you’ll have all the items on hand. If you live in a family that can’t afford raw, organic, natural ingredients and has no garden, you can still make most of this stuff, though you’ll have to go to the store to pick up the fresh items, like zucchini. Let’s face it, that’s the biggest part of learning how to recipe: procuring ingredients. As you level up in your newfound non-processed food-making abilities, you, too, can learn to make super natural baked apples, sesame breadsticks, split pea soup, and 47 other things.

So would I get this cookbook for my nephews and nieces?
Nope. I wouldn’t.
It would frustrate the hell out of them.

First, there’s a lot of narrative text written in a myriad of fonts all over every page.
Second, the ingredient list doesn’t include the actual cooking items one needs to make the dish. Instead of listing things like Stockpot, Frying pan, Wooden spoon, and Rubber spatula, you have to read through the instructions which say things like Melt the butter in a large stockpot and stir in the onion. Saute the onion until golden...Stir in the sage, nutmeg, and salt in order to know that you’ll need a stockpot and a stirring spoon. This makes total sense to someone who knew in advance what you’d need to make soup but it’s not too explanatory for beginning cooks which is what I assume kids usually are. I look for more concise recipes when helping my passel of kids learn cooking.
Third, the pictures. They’re quite fetching and whimsical but not actual photographs of the food items and some are rather misleading for any literal-minded child (like the blue corn bread picture and the popsicles - are those butterknife handles coming out of the wallpapercicles? WTH is going on?)

If your kid is already cooking on his or her own and has shown an interest in making food you’ve harvested from the garden, this would be a fun cookbook. If you’re using this book to demonstrate how to make recipes, it’s probably going to be a good work-together book. Otherwise, maybe find something a little more kid-friendly and let this be the book you use to make super natural (not Supernatural) foods your kid might like.