With such busy schedules, families are constantly challenged to find enough quality time to spend together. This year, Uncle Ben’s is encouraging families to get in the kitchen to cook and eat together to connect, one meal at a time. As a strong supporter of healthy eating and family togetherness, Uncle Ben’s is also helping parents establish healthy beginnings in their children’s lives.
How can something so tiny cause a huge change in the way we eat? Studies show that when you begin preparing your meal with rice, you end up with a meal that's better for you. Plus, beginning your meal with Uncle Ben’s rice opens your plate up to better eating because rice attracts colorful vegetables, savory spices and leaner cuts of meat that the whole family loves!
Social Moms has recently teamed up with Uncle Ben’s to have some of us mom blogger's tips for cooking healthy meals with kids! Just last night my 6 year old daughter and I were in the kitchen making dinner together! Both my 6 year old and 4 year old have been helping me in the kitchen since they could sit up on their own! They love it and it helps them to learn about food and the process of making it!
Here are some of my tips for cooking with kids!
- Safety First. With hot cooking surfaces, hot dishes, and sharp utensils, make sure you go over the ground rules first! I recently had a bad burn on a finger that blistered, just by showing my kids what can happen if they touch something hot, I think they learned a valuable lesson!
- Cooking with a child should be a positive experience for the both of you! So make it fun! I bought both my kids their own aprons, and they love to get "all dressed" up to help.
- Make it educational! In the summer we have two raised gardens and the kids help with them. They help from planting, to watering, to picking the veggies and then ultimately help mommy or daddy in the kitchen cook them!
- Let the kids help plan the meals! Granted most the time the answers you will get from my 6 year old is Mac n' Cheese, but it they are the ones helping decide on what's for dinner, then there is not noses turning up at the table!
- Take a simple ingredient like rice and show your kids how many options you can have with just one ingredient! Serve rice with curry chicken (a favorite in my house), stir-fry, with Mexican or in a soup!. You can create a healthy, well balanced meals that everyone loves.
- Make it healthy! It you start young serving foods like rice, meat, fruit and veggies, it will help your kids understand the value of healthy foods. Granted a fast food break isn't so bad once in while, but if that is all you serve to your kids, your kids are missing out on key nutrients their little bodies need!
- Crock-pot cooking. You can seriously have an entire dinner made with little effort and little time! Teach your kids how they can add rice, chicken and veggies to a crock pot in the morning and have a meal made in no time! Perfect meal for a family that is always on the go. Plus this will be great knowledge for them later if mom and dad work late, they could easily dump all the ingredients in the pot and in a couple hours have a healthy dinner made and not reaching for a microwave meal!
To empower and encourage parents to connect with their kids, one meal at a time, Uncle Ben’s has launched an exciting national contest called Ben’s Beginners! By entering the contest, you could win $20,000, along with a $50,000 grant towards a cafeteria makeover for your child’s school. In addition, you will have a chance to appear on The Rachael Ray show! Uncle Ben’s is calling for parents with children ages 5-12 to submit a 2-3 minute video of you cooking a rice-based dish with your children. For more info on the contest, please check out Ben’s Beginners on Facebook!
About Uncle Ben’s
Uncle Ben’s®, the number one rice brand in America, is proud to offer a wide range of rice dishes with flavors and textures that will help bring more to your meals, both for convenient side dishes and savory main courses. Uncle Ben’s® offers a wide variety of white, whole grain brown, and flavored rices in cook times ranging from 30 minutes to 90 seconds, as well as rice for food service operations such as restaurants, schools and hospitals. The first mass-produced parboiled rice, Uncle Ben’s® is the top-selling branded rice in the United States and products can be found in more than 100 countries worldwide. Uncle Ben’s® Brand products are manufactured by Mars Food NA, part of Mars, Incorporated. For more information, visit www.UncleBens.com.
More info on Uncle Ben’s: http://www.unclebens.com/
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Check out recipe ideas from Uncle Ben’s.
“I wrote this blog post while participating in the SocialMoms and Uncle Ben’s blogging program, for 6,000 My SocialMoms Rewards Points. For more information on how you can participate, click here.”
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