Karen, M.A., is an award-winning author, internationally renowned lecturer, raw food consultant and chef, the mother of two children raised raw vegan and a speech, language and feeding therapist. She organizes raw food coaching programs in the United States and online. She is the author of Creating Healthy Children: Through Attachment Parenting and Raw Foods and Raw Vegan Recipe Fun for Families. Karen’s Super Healthy & Raw Vegan Coaching Certification Course with private mentoring is available on her website, SuperHealthyChildren.com,
1. It’s important to have fun with your kids! Make sure the preparations and stress that come along with the holidays don’t affect your family life. The well-being of each individual is a more important focus than the preparations involved for a beautiful holiday table. If the preparations are easy and fun, then even the youngest child will want to be involved.
2. Eliminate artificial candy and unhealthful foods from your home to give your kids a chance to be hungry for raw foods. Once they start eating these natural foods, their taste buds will automatically love the clean, natural tastes.
3. Initially creating raw food dishes to look and taste similar to the kids’ favorite cooked food recipes such as lasagna made with flat, wide and thin zucchini ribbons instead of refined pasta flour can be a good transition.
4. Involve your children in lively raw food preparations. Let them be the chefs! Fruits and vegetables are naturally colorful, and the kids will enjoy handling them. My kids were already helping me at the kitchen counter at ages 5 and 3.
5. Provide young children with their own mini-equipment. A spiral slicer is a great gadget for creating veggie pasta; a mini-food processor and mini-blender such as the Magic Bullet are excellent child-friendly pieces of equipment that will help even your little ones participate in the festive meal plans.
6. Children like appealing and fun designs in food, so why not use special kitchen tools for making fun shapes with raw foods? It’s easy to find many different cookie-cutter shapes and holiday designs for making raw cookies, cakes and other treats.
7. Bring out your best, most beautiful holiday dishes to present a striking match to the already amazing raw vegan foods in preparation. Family and friends will be wowed!
8. Eating together with family and friends and enjoying the abundance of love, closeness and nourishing, life-giving raw foods during the holiday season will build memories of happy times.
Check out Karen’s article “Raw Foods: The Greatest Gift You Can Give This Holiday Season.”
Hungry for more? Check out Karen’s Stuffed Herb Pesto Holiday Appetizers recipe!
