Full Webinar Transcript

Laura Thompson (00:01:51): We are going to go ahead and get started here. We are thrilled you are here joining us today. We are talking today with Stephanie Enjaian nourishing Young Minds and Bodies as a Chef’s guide to CACFP success. Now, we are not leaving out K-12. We are talking about concepts today that can be helpful in both CACFP and K-12. My name is Laura Thompson, I’m the senior marketing manager here at Health-e Pro, where we provide menu planning and nutrient analysis software for child nutrition. So for a little bit of housekeeping, we are recording this session today, so if you have to step away or if you want to be able to refer to it later or pass it along to a colleague, we are recording this and this will be made available. We’ll be sending out an email tomorrow with a link to a landing page that will have this recording, the slides, a PDF so that you can have that if you ever need to refer back to it.

Laura Thompson (00:02:45): I’m going to introduce, Chef Steph, and then she is going to provide her tips for introducing new foods and creating a food culture that is helpful.Then we have a Q&A for the last 15 minutes or so of this webinar. A lot of you submitted questions as you registered for this webinar, and that has helped shape the content of this webinar. We’re going to start with tackling those, but if you have any questions, feel free to put them in the chat. We would love to be able to tackle what we can, what time allows, and then we will wrap up from there.

Laura Thompson (00:03:18): I actually think Zoom doesn’t have the Q&A button anymore. They did the last time we did one of these, so just go ahead and put any questions in the chat box. So to introduce our presenter, we were introduced a few months ago, and I’ve had the most delightful time getting to know her and, and learning about what she talks about in relation to food culture in children. And so she works as the culinary department chairperson in a community college in Maine, and she’ll get to share with you a little bit of what’s behind her. That’s one of the cool things that they get to work on. She has her, her associates in culinary arts, her bachelor’s in business, and is working on her master’s in nutrition. And I was telling her earlier, this is like the trifecta of what can help this audience here today. So I’m thrilled that she’s going to be able to share with us. She has two young children, so she gets to use this knowledge and put it into action, and she recently started a YouTube channel, and if you get a chance to check it out, it is awesome. So Chef Steph, we would love to hear from you and how we can create a food culture.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:04:20): All right, thank you so much. I’m so excited for this. This is such an awesome opportunity to talk to you folks. I feel like the people here are the people who are truly making the biggest impact on our food culture because you’re feeding kids. And to answer Laura’s question, I have two chocolate 3D printers behind me. This is something that we get to do. It’s kind of a fun thing that I get to teach here at the community college. And it’s something that I think is kind of making the way for the future and a lot of people are just super interested in, right? It’s something that I experiment with. I’m not good at it yet, but we’re trying, we’re we’re experimenting. So, today we’re going to do a few different things. We’re going to zoom way out and talk about what is a food culture.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:05:06): I’m going to talk specifically about role modeling. I’m going to talk about the food environment. We’re going to talk about general communication about food, we’re not going to talk necessarily about should and shouldn’t. We’re going to talk more about how we can positively reinforce communication about food. Then we’re going to zoom in a little bit and talk more about the best practices for food introduction. Surprisingly enough, this can also apply to older children or even adults as well. As a culinary instructor, I actually find that some adults don’t like a lot of different foods and as they grow older and get introduced to different foods prepared different ways, they actually start to like those foods. So it can be also later in life as well, and then interpreting this into a child care setting.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:06:02): So let’s get into it here. The first thing, I’m going to give you a few visuals here. As an instructor, this is kind of how I work. If you can just put in the chat what your best guess is at that first vegetable on the, let’s see, that would be the left. And then, you can also give some guesses for the other vegetables there, but, I want to see what your best guess for the vegetable with the child’s hands around them. Throughout this webinar, you’ll see pictures of my children eating and enjoying food. These are all from my garden or from my kitchen. So what is a food culture? This is something that I actually teach international cuisine, it’s a five credit, culinary lab class, so most of it is in the kitchen, but the majority of it is feeding the community different international cuisines.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:07:03): So part of what I do is actually talk about the different countries, as many as I can fit into 15 weeks, which is not all of them, but we talk through Italy, we talk through China, we talk through Japan, and we talk about the flavors there. So I find that actually starting the conversation with, what are the other opportunities for food culture? What do other people do within their food culture is a really great way to start talking about food culture. Not starting by talking about what we think ours is, but what is the whole picture of food culture. So I’ll have this on the next slide, but this is the book that I use, it is called Discovering Global Cuisines. We go through, there’s a lot of authentic recipes for different cuisines within this book.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:07:57): But we go through and there’s specific sections that talk about if you were to dine in China, what would your dining experience be like? So I’m going to read a really short piece of what this might be from this book. What might be your experience if you were dining in China? So the meal might begin with an appetizer. Fresh salads are rare. Chinese consider soup a beverage. So the liquid soup would actually come with a main meal, and you would drink it kind of as your beverage. Diners hold a small bowl of rice right under their chin, and then they kind of scoop the morsels of food from, from platters with chopsticks. And then they also kind of include those with their bites of rice. And the best morsels of food will go first to the eldest family members.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:08:48): Tea will come after the meal, and then dessert is usually fresh fruit. So that’s not directly quoted from that, that textbook. Thinking about a different cultures cuisine is something that I think we don’t necessarily do very often. We don’t necessarily put ourselves in the just thinking of how somebody might else might operate in their food culture. So the other thing I’m going to stick with China as the example because it’s, it’s a great one to highlight. I actually worked as a personal chef for a billionaire before I got this job. They had a Chinese nanny and she always would just highlight how Americans, she didn’t understand when Americans are stressed, they eat bad food, you know, she said, this is so weird to me. She’s like, that doesn’t make me feel good. She said, it actually makes me feel good and I want to eat when I feel sick, or when I feel sad, I just eat vegetables. I think that’s really interesting because you know, just thinking about how different cultures gravitate towards different foods based on what their culture has told them right? And how they’ve grown up is another really important thing to consider.

Laura Thompson (00:10:10): Stephanie, I just want to share some of the chat responses that we’ve gotten so far.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:10:14): Okay. Yes. Yeah.

Laura Thompson (00:10:15): I have to admit, it is so fun reading these because I know I was kind of curious myself when I first saw it as like, I don’t know that I know what it is. So we’ve been seeing a lot of, Jicama, that is what we’ve seen the most of, and potato, turnip and rutabaga. That’s most of what we’re seeing, but a lot of Jicama.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:10:34): Okay. Okay. So I’ll go ahead and answer that. So it’s rutabaga, but a Jicama is an amazing guess. It definitely looks like a Jicama, but this is the first video that I did on YouTube with my kids is a video just kind of about rutabaga and introducing it to my kids and how I did that. It was really fun because I had all these rutabagas around and my son was literally just pretending like they were bouncy balls. So, that’s the picture, and then the middle picture, is kimchi pancakes that I made for breakfast one day, and then it has cucumber and tomato. Then the last picture is of my garden. It’s three different varieties of Bok Choy, which was a few years ago. It wasn’t this year.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:11:18): We don’t have, in Maine, unfortunately, we don’t have enough sunshine to have Bok Choy this early. All right, so a couple more things for this slide is, let’s see. So when we examine another country’s full food culture, it is, you know, the questions that I would ask are, what are people excited to try? What foods are you excited to try? How do parents talk about food in general to other adults or to their own kids? Are there any foods that are considered bad or good? So those are kind of the questions that go around what is a food culture and what is our food culture? So I already mentioned the Discovering Global Cuisines textbook. This one is a little bit more pricey. I think that Amazon still does have it. But another one that I really recommend if you’re thinking about including any other types of cuisine within your food program is the salt fat acid heat book.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:12:18): I actually think that this one answers some of the questions that were sent before the webinar, but this has amazing visuals for, if you were to say, I want to add a Chinese themed menu for a week, I would definitely, consider thinking about the flavors in that region first before you start looking for recipes. So what are the flavors that define, that region. So, for example, this one is like a really big circle graph of all the different acidity ingredients that you could add. So, for example, we’ll go with China again, it’s rice wine or black vinegar. Black vinegar is super pungent. I’ve used it quite a few times. Versus Japan would be just rice wine vinegar or rice wine, which is a little bit sweeter. So there’s differences, you know, within some of the cultures that we think as Americans, we are very similar. There’s some big differences just in the types of acidity that are used. Then there’s also some diagrams for, you know, what are the flavors, so like for Mexico, dried chilies, cilantro, and different types of peppers, you would you use there. So this is a really great resource as well.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:13:45): Alright, so let’s get into role modeling. So, I forgot to mention at the beginning that part of what has really inspired me to be in the world of child nutrition is that of course my kids and being in the industry and just being able to feed my kids the stuff that I enjoy making. But then also I, for my nutrition, one of my nutrition classes, I did a literature review. And so I looked at 12 different peer reviewed articles, and came up with kind of the topic that I wanted to do this on. And so the topic that I wanted was the micronutrient needs for children that are aged six months to five years. And I’m taking my master’s at Johnson and Wales. And they actually published my my research or my literature review.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:14:42): You can see that I can provide a link for that. But, something that I studied was specifically the behaviors that go along with meeting micronutrient needs. So I’ll reference some of this throughout the slides here, again, you can see the references as well within that paper. You know, the biggest influence that children have is the parental, perception of foods. And so it kind of all goes back to the parents and modeling healthy eating practices. However, it’s also the caregivers and something that was in one of those 12 articles was the overly restrictive or overly pressured food environments can both have negative effects, you know, so saying the article didn’t give specific examples, so I’m kind of extrapolating here. But, saying something, you know, along the lines of overly restrictive being, let’s just eat within a very specific amount of calories or a very specific amount of, you know, quantities, so cups and, and whatnot versus, you know, overly pressured.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:16:03): Like you have to keep eat, you have to eat a certain quantity. You know, both of those can have really negative side effects. Then another item that I found was that positive peer pressure from other children can actually really engage children with food. So of course, schools and childcare can be a beautiful opportunity for that. In my video that I did for rutabaga, used this to my advantage. And we had a few children in the neighborhood that I essentially roasted some rutabagas and I was doing this for my video, so they were just like, I had roasted vegetables around. They’re just like, what’s that? You know, they’re very curious, whatever adults are doing, children are curious. And so they asked me questions, you know, what is that?

Stephanie Enjaian (00:16:58): And then my daughter started eating it because this is something that she’s been introduced to, and so they’re like, huh, I guess I’ll try it. Then they liked it, you know? So just having an environment where it’s not that you have to eat this, I think is really important. Then another example I have is about seaweed. So, my daughter actually brought seaweed to school one day, and she said that the kids moved away from her. Like, they were like, Ew, that’s kind of gross. And so I said, that’s okay, you know, if you don’t want to bring it, it’s okay. You know, but she still had seaweed in other situations because we like it, right? So she actually took seaweed to, yeah, I see the chat. Crispy seaweed. Yes. Those are so good.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:17:43): It’s really high in a few like minerals that most kids are lacking in. So we took it, we still had the seaweed around and she took it to jujitsu once. So we were having that snack, and lo and behold, some of the kids at her school were also there, but they saw that some of the kids in that situation were also eating it and thought it was good. So therefore the children that kind of initially thought it was gross tried it, and now at her school, like other kids are bringing seaweed. So I just thought it was a really cool example, you know, of something that I did not tell her that she had to take that or that she didn’t, and I didn’t take it out of our diet.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:18:27): It’s just a different setting. So I like to think that maybe we had a little tiny impact on increasing the nutrient diversity of a few kids at school. I think that that’s everything for that one. And then, the food environment. So children are captive audiences. This is a little picture of my garden and we have to cover it because it’s so cold, until the very, let’s see, it’s still actually quite cold here in Maine. It’s like 45 today. So we have to really capture the heat for a while. But I think that the literature on this topic I found really interesting. It’s not only is it the availability of the food, it’s also the frequency with which the adults eat. It’s also the perception of food and what the adults in the house think of food and how they talk about food.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:19:28): So food environment is so much more than just is the food available, it’s also what the other people around are doing. But one of the most remarkable things is that the behaviors of parents and caregivers can give the most important impact, especially for the younger children. It was found that the majority of food is consumed at home. However, we’ll get to the family style eating in a minute here. Depending on how foods are eaten within a social environment, that can directly impact the amount of vegetables that a child’s consumes. So, let’s see, I think there was one other thing here that I wanted to, so another part of that study, I just want to make sure that I’m pointing back to some of the research here as well, was that, I’m going to quote part of it. This study found that children who had a better family environment, less family pressure to eat, actually had lower level of soft drink consumption and higher levels of physical activity. So that impact from the parents and the social environment can directly impact how much sugar sweetened beverages that they’re drinking, as well as how much activity they have.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:21:03): Alright, so food communication. This is something, again, that is kind of more highlighted towards the younger age category, the six months to six or five years. I do find that it also works really well with adults. I’ve had some really cool moments where we’ve fed people in our dining room, some new foods that they just were like, wow, I’ve never had it prepared this way. I love it. So one of the most important things, and the message that I want to get across is that children have to try foods many times before they know that they like it. I think that the way that we frame this, the way that we talk about it, is critical. A great example of this is, I model this in my house. So, if I have something that I know I’m not crazy about yet, then I’ll talk about it in front of the children.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:21:57): For reference, I have a 6-year-old and a 2-year-old. So I love raw milk. I’ve had raw milk since I was a kid. But I don’t really love it in my coffee. I also don’t really like goats milk that much. I have not grown to like that yet. So if I am offered that, I had somebody offer that to me at one point, instead of saying that I don’t like it, I say that I haven’t tried enough times to enjoy it. So I think that that terminology and how adults speak to children is just critical in shaping the child’s mind of it’s not, you don’t like it or you do like it. It’s well, maybe I just haven’t tried it enough times.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:22:46): I think that we can relate this to nutrition as well, right? We can actually change what we crave eventually, you know, which is fascinating. But part of this came from a book called French Kids Eat Everything. I highly recommend anybody, in this kind of world of child nutrition read it. It’s a great peek into the culture of another country and how essentially French kids are offered new foods to try, and how their culture highlights that and uses things like positive peer pressure. So it’s a really great example. There’s another example I think that I had.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:23:40): Oh, yes. So also, the way that you introduce a food can also impact, essentially which season something is offered, can also really kind of change if somebody likes it. So, for example, I never liked raw tomatoes until I had a specific variety of a raw tomato, and now I’m more likely to enjoy them. So seasonality of ingredients can really impact the enjoyability of a food, right? As chefs, we work so hard to get the best, highest quality ingredients within our budget. That’s kind of like a lot of what we do, right? Trying to find the highest quality ingredient within the means that we have. So I think that that also can really impact, you know, if a child enjoys that food or not, is if they have the opportunity to try something in season.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:24:41): I put these two pictures here because one of them, my husband makes some absolutely gorgeous croissants. And then the other one is a breakfast taco. This is almost what I have for breakfast every day. It has chives from my garden and some breakfast radishes on it. I would say if you were presented these two pictures, how would you talk about them? How would you talk about, if a child was sitting next to you and you had these two pictures in front of you, what would you say about either picture? I want to know. So put that in the chat. I’ll keep going, but I want to know what you would say. If you would say anything you know about the two pictures, would you make any comment?

Stephanie Enjaian (00:25:34): All right. And then just so general practices. So, I did explore a lot of essentially the dietary guidelines.What are some of the key micronutrients that different age categories are missing? So what are six to 12 month olds missing? What are the toddler age category missing? So as I looked into that, I found some really key things that, kind of outlined how you introduce foods to children impacts directly, which micronutrients they could be deficient in. So if sweet tasting foods are introduced really early, then it can actually impact their willingness to try other foods. Okay? So I see this in my son. My son loves all food. If I had introduced ice cream to him before I had introduced Purple Daikon, which is in the picture there. He would probably always go for the ice cream, right?

Stephanie Enjaian (00:26:51): We have, unfortunately, this innate desire to eat things that are sweet. If I had introduced mostly sweet foods and kind of my example is the squeezy pouches that you buy at the grocery store. So a lot of the pouches that have the purees have apple added to them. So there’s no real distinction of a vegetable only puree. There are spinach and apple, or pear and carrot or beets and apple. There’s not really distinct savory food purees that you can buy. So if you’re not making your own purees, or if a child care facility is not making purees, then it kind of is a default to where we’re introducing a vegetable with something sweet to where children expect that sweetness. So I’m going to stop there and see what the chat says.

Laura Thompson (00:27:55): There are some really good ones. So I do want to highlight one of them, but a lot of the comments were, looks delicious, which I fully agree with. But the comment I especially loved was from Beth, where she says, this is what she would say to kids, Oh, this bread looks fluffy and flaky. What do you think about it? Do you want to feel it? And then also commenting on what someone else said. Look at these colorful tacos. What, what colors do you see? So getting them engaged in the whole process of colors, textures, taste, everything about it. I thought that was a great comment.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:28:26): Yeah. Oh, I love that y’all are creative, that’s awesome. I think that it can be so easy when we see different things to assume that children may not like one of those things, right? If you had a menu with pizza, how many of us are going to assume that the child wants the pizza versus the salad? I think that just kind of getting rid of some of those inceptions could be really helpful. Thank you for all your responses. I’ll have fun probably reading all of those later. So best practice involves delaying the introduction of exposure to food low in nutrients and high in calories. Essentially, what we’re talking about is packaged foods, right? So, if one of the studies that I was looking at specifically highlighted the different snacks that are go-to’s for toddlers, being things like crackers, juices, things that are very low in nutrients, but can be higher in calories.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:29:29): We’re not calorie counting here for young children, but we are trying to get the most nutrient dense foods in front of them first. How I do this is I usually do roast vegetables. I get a CSA each week, and I roast a bunch of vegetables. I offer that as a snack. Instead of offering the squeezy pouches, we might go out somewhere. If we’re out somewhere we need a quick snack, then we have a package snack. But if we are at home, we’re usually, are snacking on roasted vegetables essentially. Trying to delay that introduction, I think it’s particularly challenging for child care because I think that the parents ultimately have a lot of responsibility over that.

Laura Thompson (00:30:17): Just want to interject one more comment that just came through that I think is really good too, is Nancy said, my pre-K students sit at a big round table and they love to do taste tests and give a thumbs up if they like a food. We then talk about the color, texture, and taste. This way they have control input and positive peer pressure. They eat better than the high school classes.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:30:35): That’s amazing. I love that. I love that. That so directly impacts our future food culture, right? So that’s amazing. All right, so here’s my son making a massive mess. I already covered that first point, but I think young children really have to get used to a huge variety of sensations. I actually do an entire college course here just on the different tastes. So bitter, sour, savory, umami. We do a little bit of a test where students see how something that’s umami like soy sauce. I actually make them take a little swig of soy sauce, I shouldn’t say I make them, but, they take a little swig of soy sauce, and then they taste lemon juice and how the lemon juice tastes after the soy sauce.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:31:34): I find children to be just unlimited amount of curious and they want to try everything that the adults are trying, and they don’t mind if things are weird. So, I would say, here my son is eating a lentil soup with potatoes and tomatoes. And what I do is I typically take out the things that he can pick up and eat. I think here he was 18 months here. I take out the, the soft items that he can pick up and eat by hand and put that in his high chair, and then I allow him to either drink or sometimes I spoon feed him the broth. So there’s a huge continuum of where children might be in this process. I think that just the fact that they are eager is what we have to capture. I know that a lot of child care facilities are probably doing this in a way where you have multiple children in front of you. And the challenge, I can’t imagine that that sort of challenge because it’s challenging to keep track of the one. I think that that eagerness and, and the children seeing what other children are eating, is also a super powerful tool.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:32:55): All right! So one of the things that I highly recommend for the 13 to 18 month period is that children start with foods that it’s okay, that it doesn’t irritate their face when they start eating them. So one of the first things that I offered was oatmeal with blueberries. It’s kind of easier for it to grab on the spoon and instead of it kind of getting a rash on his face, if I, if I were to feed him something like, tomato soup, it’s very acidic, so you have to be careful with acidic foods at this age because they will get it all over themselves.That’s why hopefully all the parents are bringing extra pairs of clothes. I think that the food that gets on their face, I think of is the first things I want to offer this age category. Things that I wouldn’t mind putting on my face, which kind of sounds weird, but you know, like there are oatmeal masks and yogurt masks, face masks out there.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:34:00): These are really great, oatmeal and yogurt are excellent training foods because they kind of clinging to the spoon a little better. So by the time my, my son was13 probably 15 months, he started getting really confident in just getting the spoon to his mouth and getting something there. So that self-feeding really provides children with confidence and this ability to kind of explore more. And it does so much more. I can’t go into all the details for lack of time, but it does so much for brain development as well. So when they start insisting on feeding themselves, I remember for both of my kids, there was this point at which they both just kind of did not want me to feed them, and so I took that as a cue. That’s the cue that they really want to begin experimenting. I don’t know if there’s a possibility of, you know, suggesting different things that parents could send or including something like these things in the food program. But I think that starting with some of those foods for the younger ages can really help them have more success in the long run.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:35:15): All right, so this is the book that I already mentioned. The French Kids Eat Everything. I think that it, I love this quote, the table should be the happiest place. I also wanted to mention, I forgot to put this one on the slide, but this is called Eating The Alphabet book. It’s by Lois Ehlert. I can probably provide a link for this as well. This one goes through, I mean, essentially it’s a children’s, but a very young, young age, for very young children. It’s a board book, but it has everything in there. I feel like this is a book that’s great education for not only young children, but also for adults, because not everybody knows what Kohlrabi looks like, and not everybody knows what Quince looks like, and so this is a really great visual for young kids.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:36:07): All right. Interpreting this to a child care setting. So a lot of the articles that I looked at were really interesting just about that communication between child care staff and parents. You know, there’s so much that we can improve on or gain from some of the research. I think that having a really easy to follow protocol for communication between parents and staff is so important. Also providing parents with nutrition resources. If I were to run a study, I think that part of what I would do is actually include how can we provide a more, easy to go to nutrition resources for all parents. You know, something where it’s much more accessible, you know, and how that could directly impact the food environment that a child is in.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:37:10): I think that communication piece is really important. Because I think parents generally want really good communication about what their kids are eating. Then family style dining is also it replicates the power of a family meal. Unfortunately, in our day and age, a lot of children may miss out on this. So they might be going home and eating dinner in separate rooms or in front of screens. So the family style dining in a childcare setting, again, it gives them that opportunity to have that peer kind of involvement and gives them the power of that experience. Then let’s see, the sincere food environment. So, another one of the articles that I looked at was really interesting about different policies, for food brought in by staff.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:38:06): One of the things that I found, I think just a good thing to notice is that, we have a lot of restrictions for sugar sweetened beverages for children. However, staff often bring in super sweet coffee or soda and is drinking in front of the kids. And so it can kind of create an insincere food environment where children are seeing one thing being modeled, but then they’re put under these other guidelines. And so, I think that’s a really great thing for different establishments to just kind of gain their own policy and gain some understanding over, as well as offering the staff nutrition education. So offering some opportunity for the staff to just gain some of this information about child nutrition.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:39:09): All right. I want to get to the questions, so I’m going to wrap things up because there were some really great ones. It was actually really, really cool to see everybody’s questions. If you want to connect with me, you can do that on YouTube, at Chef Steph’s Food Culture. I can also do that on Instagram as well. I’m posting videos every other Saturday. Some of them are about introducing nutritious foods to children, but then some of them also might be geared towards education for parents as well. We’ll, we’ll also link that literature review. I feel like some of you might want to see some of the articles that I’ve been referencing.

Laura Thompson (00:39:51): Awesome. That is fantastic. Thank you so much, chef Steph. So, one question really quickly. Someone was asking, what was the name of the last book that you held up again, kind of the picture book.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:40:01): Eating The Alphabet.

Laura Thompson (00:40:03): Eating The Alphabet, yes. Awesome. Cool. Yes. All right. Well if any of you who are on the webinar right now have any questions, put them in the chat right now. But we’re going to start with a few of the questions that were submitted when you registered for this webinar. Because some of these, as we were looking at them, we’re like, oh, these are good. And we could tell that they were, there was a theme for some of them too. So one of the themes was along the lines of how do I incorporate, and I know you touched on this before, but if you could touch on it a little bit more, how do I incorporate other cultures, other flavors, especially when there are the sodium requirements? How do I make all of that work and introduce these other cultures, foods, these other flavors?

Stephanie Enjaian (00:40:42): Yeah, I love that question. And I have to say that these sodium limitations, I do not envy anyone for that. It’s actually rather restrictive and I’m fortunate to not have that. I think that the challenge is this: the challenge is making sure that you can cook vegetables in a way that are extremely flavorful, and to do that you do need some sodium. So you have to make sure that when you’re preparing the protein, that you’re not using too much sodium in those sauces or too much sodium in the gravy or whatever you’re serving with the protein to make sure that the vegetables can really have the maximum amount of flavor. It doesn’t take much salt to make vegetables taste extra, extra good. I think that the resource that I say, you know, that’s best is, and also zooming out is what are the flavors in that country?

Stephanie Enjaian (00:41:48): If I’m going to plan a menu, which I do, I plan menus for the countries that we go through, I’m going to first think about what are the flavors that I want to highlight? What are the ingredients that I want to highlight from Mexico? I have to have dried chilies in there. If that’s going to be part of the picture, then I might do a mole sauce, you know? So understanding the flavors. Then I have found, I have to mention chat GPT, because if you give it the right information, it can spit some really great stuff out for you, and it can at least get the wheels turning. So there have been moments where I have said make an authentic, let’s see. I also go through every region of, of France, so make an authentic Nouvelle aquitaine menu for me, and it probably is not going to give me perfect answers, but it’s going to give me some things to then go in search and look for better resources, you know, so I wouldn’t count on it to make a great menu, but I would say that at least like gets the, the wheels turning.

Laura Thompson (00:42:55): There’s a lot of value in sometimes if you’re stuck on something or you just need help brainstorming chat GPT can be great for that. Yeah. Awesome. How do you do cultural food sourcing while on a budget?

Stephanie Enjaian (00:43:06): Yeah, that’s such a challenge. So the way that I do this is I do have a co-op of farmers that I work with. They have a list of all the seasonal ingredients. So it means is that, here in Maine, I’m probably not going to be offered lemons and limes, but I do get some amazing greens in the winter, thanks to some great hoop houses. I also get some amazing root vegetables and what else? Vegetables that are storage vegetables, that’s what I was trying to think of in the winter. Then I have a huge variety of things that start popping up a little bit in the spring and summer. I think that kind of capturing the local foods is an awesome way to create more diversity in the diet.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:44:08): So I think you just have to be really flexible with what you have. So initially when I came on, I’ve been doing this for eight years now, and initially when I came on, I think that it did kind of scare me to think about offering something like Rutabaga or Purple Daikon to the general public. Even though I like those things, it’s a little intimidating to think about putting that on a menu. What I found is that sourcing something that is local, not only makes sure that it is the freshest thing and something that I want my students to handle, but then it also makes me be creative. So I have to, if I get in 35 pounds of Purple Daikon, I’m probably going to pickle some of them. I’m probably going to roast some of them. I’m probably going to put some of them in some kind of soup, for a Japanese menu. I’m probably going to, what else would I do? Shave them as a garnish because they’re so pretty, you know? So, you have to, if you can get those things in, I would say, you can almost start with the ingredient rather than starting with the menu. I think that’s kind of maybe the better way to think about it, especially within a budget.

Laura Thompson (00:45:30): Awesome. Thank you so much. I loved this specific question too. Maybe you can tackle it from the specific point and then also the bigger picture question underneath it of how do you encourage kids to try new foods that have vegetables in them, like a spinach egg bake?

Stephanie Enjaian (00:45:47): Yeah, so, the way that I would answer the specific question is a spinach egg bake. I think that a lot of kids are probably not used to having the spinach, right? So the challenge is how do we get them to accept something that’s green? I would say it’s so much more than just putting it in front of them during the lunchtime. It’s also how the staff is communicating about these things and what the staff is eating as well, you know. I guess I like to think about this a lot with my own kids because that’s where a lot of my experience comes with that, in trying to introduce new things to them. If there’s something that I want them to eat, I’ll go into a different room, I’ll make it, I’ll go into a different room, sit on the floor and start eating it.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:46:56): Eventually they just want it, they just want it because mommy is like going out of her way to have my own break and eat it and enjoy it. So if they see me do that, then they just kind of come and they just want it no matter what it is. Which is really interesting. I think kids are very intuitive. So I think that I would try different modalities and how you’re offering it to them essentially, you know, are you offering it to them in a setting where other adults are eating it, or are you offering it in a setting where it’s just kind of in a food line? Or are you offering it kind of cut up or like also what does it look like? You know? I do think that children, you know, if you as an adult are interested in it, they will definitely not be interested in it. So you have to make it as, even if, even if it is a child, you have to make it almost as though you were making it for an adult.

Laura Thompson (00:47:56): That’s awesome. And I’m loving two of these comments that are coming through answering this question as well. So if you’ve got even comments on someone else’s question, please bring ’em on. ’cause these are great. Lillian, yours actually made me, I had to suppress the laughter because I didn’t want to interrupt Stephanie, but it was read green eggs and ham to them. Yes.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:48:13): Yeah.

Laura Thompson (00:48:13): Make it fun. Make it something interesting. Yeah. Maybe Mr. Seus makes green eggs and ham fun, right? And so absolute a little bit of green from the spinach. Yeah, they’ll be okay. But I also love this comment from, Brittany of, we served a broccoli frittata at our school and used cupcake liners and the children were more eager to try it because it came with a cupcake liner. So the presentation.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:48:33): Yeah. Yeah. It’s that stuff, you know, it’s that stuff that you find that, like, that’s the important thing to the kid. The cupcake liner, right. It’s so funny to us, but it’s true because it’s fun, you know, it’s interactive.

Laura Thompson (00:48:48): Very true. Awesome comments. Thank you. Keep those coming. Another one that I thought was interesting and we can see if you want to tackle the specific question or again, kind of the question underneath it, but is there any way to make cottage cheese more appealing to the younger kids?

Stephanie Enjaian (00:49:03): Yeah, we were, we were joking about this one because I don’t think either of us like cottage cheese very much. So it’s kind of a funny one to, to answer. But I think that the cottage cheese, I would say, you know, my question would be why? Why do we want the kids to eat cottage cheese? And it’s not that I think it’s, I think it’s a wonderfully protein dense food that I think that is a great one to introduce. But I’m kind of more along the lines of offer it and if they don’t enjoy it, just keep offering it in different ways. I would be thinking about, well, are you trying to increase the protein content for a child? If so, you could offer it every so often, but then also throw other things in the mix.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:49:54): The one way I do use cottage cheese at my house is I actually put it in the frittata or an egg bake like we were just talking about because actually, I’ll blend the eggs with the cottage cheese and it makes it a really nice texture. It almost feels kind of like it has cream in it, but it’s actually cottage cheese, so you’re increasing the protein quantity in the food, while also making it taste really good. So that’s probably what I would do to offer in a different way. I think that it’s also okay if they don’t like it the first time, I wouldn’t be offended, you know? I think that children often really do have to just keep trying it many times to know.

Laura Thompson (00:50:43): Adults too. I need to keep trying cottage cheese. I just haven’t tried it enough to like it yet.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:50:48): I know.

Laura Thompson (00:50:50): This was another one that I thought was really interesting too, is how do you introduce new uncommon fruits like kiwi, mango, dragon, fruit, etc. on a budget?

Stephanie Enjaian (00:51:00): Yeah, that’s a great question. So I do often bring these things in for my students to work with. We work on a variety of knife skills. How you cut up a dragon fruit versus how you cut up a mango is very different. I understand the dilemma here because it is expensive. The way that I do this is I would just buy fewer dragon fruit because they are so expensive. So I really only buy two of them and then I demonstrate it one time and I allow them to taste it and we might use it as a garnish. Then mangoes are a little bit less expensive depending on the time of year. The variety as well, like champagne mangoes might be more expensive than just your regular mangoes. For those I would not be buying a case in, I would be buying a much smaller quantity and using it as a garnish for tasting instead of using it as a main fruit

Laura Thompson (00:52:08): Awesome. Thank you. I thought this one was really great too, and I know she’s specifically asking for one age group, but if we could also apply it to others as well, but I’m really trying to get ninth to 12th grade students engaged with the food service program. So how do you get any student any age engaged in your program, is essentially the question.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:52:28): Yeah, that’s a really great question. And it’s actually research that I would truly enjoy doing. You know, if I were to get the chance to write another literature review, I would want to expand the age categories, because it’s really interesting. I think that one thing, the first thing that I would ask is just put yourself in the shoes of those students. What are they thinking about? It’s kind of hard for adults, especially as you get past your thirties to think about being 18 again. They’re thinking about which boy or girl likes them and they’re thinking about like what people think about them, you know? So, with the food service, I think that where they are eating is perhaps the most important thing, and I don’t know what impact you can have over this, but I think that making sure that the actual place they are eating might be one of the most important ways in engaging children with, or that that age category with the food. I would ask the question, would somebody in their office come down to the cafeteria and want eat there?

Stephanie Enjaian (00:53:39): I think that there’s an opportunity to look at the environment in that kind of situation. That’s where I would start if it were me. For that age category as well, I think I would also look to some of the social media, like try to put myself in their heads and say, what are the kids on TikTok making and what are, even though I don’t have TikTok, I would try to enter that brain space on what is engaging for that age category, you know?

Laura Thompson (00:54:10): Yeah. I’m also going to put a little plug just, we had a blog post, I want to say it was maybe seven or eight years ago now. It’s been a little while, but if you go to our website and you search the blog for lunchroom design, we did a post a while back with Meg Chesley, our founder, and a lunchroom redesigned that she did when she was a food service director of taking it from just your basic tables and folding chairs to like a really cool sports themed event place, you know, with like a score scoreboard and all of that. So I think that’s a really interesting point where the environment of where they’re eating is very impactful on how excited they are about eating and, and all of that. So that’s a really interesting angle. Thank you. Here was another one that I thought, and, and maybe this is also a chat GPT type of an answer, but how do you get creative ideas or when you’re kind of stuck in something, how do you get a creative idea for I want to create some variety, I want to get more creative, I want to do something different.

Laura Thompson (00:55:05): How do you do that when you’re also introducing foods or trying to work with pallets of really young kids?

Stephanie Enjaian (00:55:11): Yeah, that’s a great one. I do teach a class actually on how to find good resources and I think it’s really challenging because we live in this age of everything’s online and you can Google or YouTube anything. And it’s interesting because a lot of times you type something in, like you could type in, healthy ideas for kids for snack on YouTube or Google, and you’re going to come up with usually some of the top ones, top results are going to be people marketing to you. Then some of the other results are going to be something like foods that might not be actually nutrient dense is what I find. You have to kind of think outside the box. It’s not exactly a chat GPT, like it can be, it could get your brain turning.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:56:04): I actually use all my book resources for that. I also find that I search more for specific things rather than ideas. So again, I’m more somebody that’s thinking about different ingredients that I want to introduce, if I’m looking to introduce, let’s see what the thing that came in my CSA this week was, fiddlehead ferns, and if I’m looking to introduce that, then I’m going to start looking for things specific to that ingredient. I find that much easier to narrow a search than just general ideas. So if you can think of just an ingredient that you would like to be in it, then search around that, I think that’s much easier. You get a lot more high quality results than just ideas, if that makes sense.

Laura Thompson (00:56:58): Yeah. Awesome. Now, here’s a question that might be a challenging to tackle, but I’m curious your angle on it. All of this information is great if you’re at a location where your younger eaters may come from a more affluent household. However, what about the youngsters who don’t? What if your kids live in a less affluent area or a household where they rely more on government funded programs? How would you introduce foods to them?

Stephanie Enjaian (00:57:21): Yeah, that’s, that’s a great one. I think that it’s really important to set the tone, kind of no matter what, no matter what they might be used to or no matter what they might be accustomed to at home. Putting them in an environment where food is exciting, I would say is probably the best thing. Interacting with it, you know, you can even do things like, engage young children in an act outside of mealtime, like pouring and different table kind of practices. Scooping things to get them in a mode of, just how to gain confidence at the table because I think that that’s something that a lot of children, all children lack is confidence in what to do at a table. Engaging them in kind of some play around food and some food communication, so what different foods are, and then also making it exciting. So something that, again I would almost, I think that having the staff be excited about the food is probably the most important thing because if they are, then the children are just going to be a lot more likely to enjoy it.

Laura Thompson (00:58:46): I love that answer of the role modeling, like you’ve talked about here. I even like the ideas that we’re touched on by some of our attendees earlier of the cupcake liner or reading Green Eggs & Ham, finding really like you’re saying, playful ways of engaging them in a process that makes it exciting.

Stephanie Enjaian (00:59:00): Absolutely.

Laura Thompson (00:59:01): Awesome. Well, thank you so much everyone for the questions, and thank you, Stephanie, for your great insights. I do want to touch on a couple things here just as we end. This is an example of Chef Steph’s YouTube. So you can go there and check out her videos on this work, which are just awesome. I love the one on Rutabaga. I thought that was great. We also have, if you are a Health-e Pro user, we have some of her recipes in Health-e Pro. So you can go and type in Chef Steph and find those there. Also, one of you had a question, that you submitted when you registered of like, how can I extend these resources that we’re trying to teach in the cafeteria to teachers? So we’re going to post here in the chat a link to this resource.

Laura Thompson (00:59:44): This is just a one page PDF that you can pass along to teachers saying, these are some tips to help continue that education in the classroom. Again, we will be passing along an email tomorrow with a link to this recording, to this webinar, these slides, and this resource here. So if you have any questions of things you’ve missed, you can catch it when you see the email tomorrow. So we’re also going to put in the chat as well, a professional development certificate. So if you want to click on that, you can get credit for attending this webinar today. So thank you so much everyone for, for coming today for your questions, for the engagement. I loved the comments that were in the chat. It made it really fun. And Stephanie, thank you so much for your time and your expertise and the knowledge that you had. It just gave a whole different angle of how to tackle some of these things that are challenging of getting the young kiddos excited about food in a way that will set them up for success in the future. Thank you. Thank you so much everyone. See you again next time.