Product Description

Every toddler goes through the stage where they want nothing but "O"-shaped cereal. The challenge for parents is getting kids to ask for fruit salad instead of cupcakes. Faced with this seemingly impossible task with her own child, Jennifer Carden has created The Toddler Caf , a guide to making mealtime with children fun and interactive. It offers simple, creative ways for kids to identify with their food, like saying tuna salad is what mermaids eat, or making Minty Pea Pops in ice cube trays. Carden has created over 50 unique recipes that encourage families (including toddlers) to work together to prepare, eat, clean up, and best of all, look forward to a healthy, delicious meal.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6950 in Books
• Brand: Chronicle Books
• Published on: 2008-03-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 132 pages

About the Author
Jennifer Carden is an artist, chef, food stylist, and mother in the San Francisco Bay Area. She contributed to The Healthy Baby Workbook.

Matthew Carden is a photographer in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Customer Reviews

A beautiful cookbook with lots of yummy toddler recipes
I have bought a few cookbooks focusing on babies and toddlers, and this has been my favorite. Not only are the recipes creative, fun and delicious, but the photography within the book is also beautiful (there are pictures accompanying about half of the recipes). The author provides recipe notes for each recipe, which often include ideas for variations. I've already made several of the items in the book, and they have been a hit with my daughter (and with me!).

Yummy in my Tummy
My daughter is 16 months and not a bad eater but she seems to eat the same things over and over. I made the rice balls with beets and she loved them, as did I! I have also made the pumpkin ravioli and the pea pancakes. A word of advice, DON'T change the recipes. The author knows what she is doing. I tried to make the ravioli with baby food because I could not find frozen pumpkin and it was a disaster. I did however start to experiment with my own "toddler cafe" ideas. Some worked and some did not. I made potatoes pancakes in a mini muffin tin (so I did not have to fry them) and it worked GREAT! I can't wait until my daughter is a little older so she can make these fabulous recipes with me. Keep on cooking!

Your child enjoy healthy meals without being duped!
As a former early childhood educator, I was a little dismayed about the trend to sneak healthy foods into children's meals. In my years of working with young children, I found that their palates are much more sophisticated than we know.

By preparing a limited menu and keeping them out of the process, parents unwittingly create picky eaters who'll explode at anything but chicken fingers, cereal, and peanut butter sandwiches. If you cook yummy healthy meals, they will eat them! Of course, some foods might take a few tries and incarnations, but isn't that how you learned to love avocados, brussel sprouts, fish, and other formerly yucky stuff?

I love that Jennifer Carden has such respect for the littlest budding gourmets. I really enjoyed flipping through the inventive and inspired recipes in this book. Can't wait to try them out with my favorite tiny chefs!