Cooking with Mother Goose

Each time you open Cooking with Mother Goose for either a rhyme or a recipe—or both—you’ll be sharing moments that will last a lifetime. You’ll foster reading and comprehension, planning and action, collaboration and cooperation while learning and practicing essential kitchen skills together. These skills will stay with your children as they grow up into adults and parents themselves someday.

In the first section, you’ll find helpful information about feeding young children. You’ll also find answers to your burning questions about picky eating and how to support healthy food relationships.  The rest of the book is filled with delicious, family-friendly recipes inspired by classic nursery rhymes. The dishes in this book are designed to inspire, excite, and feed your growing family.  Recipes range from easy make-ahead breakfasts to fresh, tasty veggies your kids will actually eat and reimagined classics like lasagna and drumsticks. You can skip around the book based on what rhyme you want to read or how hungry your child is.

Accompanying the recipes, you will find “Nutrition Nibbles” and “Kids Can” call-outs to enhance the food and nutrition discovery experience for both you and your child.  At the top of each recipe page, you’ll find helpful information like the recipe yield, time involved and challenge level. Recipes are marked Gluten Free or Dairy Free to make it easier to identify them. If a recipe contains any of the eight common allergens, it will be listed as well.

Read, make notes, and explore this storybook cookbook with your children! You don’t need to follow everything literally; skip or change ingredients you don’t like or think your children are not yet ready to eat. This book supports the excellent job you are already doing feeding your family.

Ultimately, you’re getting to spend some quality time with your child. Use this book as a storybook and to support your children in eating a wide variety of foods, to enjoy preparing meals with you, and to join the family in the kitchen and at the table.

Praise for Cooking With Mother Goose

What to expect: Healthy Eating Habits and Recipes

With her love of family and food, Registered Dietitian Nutritionist Lacey J. Mauritz’s Cooking with Mother Goose helps grownups and kids connect and create memories through storytelling and flavorful family-style food. If you stop and think about it, many nursery rhymes include food. In her third parent-child cookbook and nutrition handbook, Mauritz has taken this concept and prepared something that works as an inspired source of recipes and a highly enjoyable adventure in healthy eating habits.

The book is well-designed with a layout that makes each recipe easy to follow, along with beautiful food and lifestyle photographs of each dish and kid-friendly illustrations for each nursery rhyme that inspired the recipes. Read the rhyming verses together first and then decide on what sounds appealing and looks good to eat. Included with each recipe are allergy information and dietary restrictions, the challenge level and cook times, a list of things kids can do to participate in the process (their involvement has so many added benefits), and recipe variations. For beginner cooks, there is a practical explanation of terms and phrases, as well as descriptions of how to make specific knife cuts. There is a clear photograph of each style of knife cut so you can slice, dice, and chiffonade like you’ve been doing it forever.

Mauritz’s tone is down-to-earth and supportive for any level of cook. Readers can also find the recipe nutrient analysis and a fresh ingredient index at the end of the book—this is so handy for when you have something fresh in your fridge that you need to use up. There are plenty of tips on what to eat and when and where to eat it. Suggested serving sizes and portions and a lesson on setting the table and language to use with fussy eaters are all incredibly helpful elements, too.

From traditional to more exotic/cultured flavors, here are some highlights:

• The Muffin Man: Two-Bite Blueberry Muffins (There are even tips for The Muffin
  Man game to play while they bake.)
• Humpty Dumpty: Egg Drop Soup
• Diddle, Diddle Dumpling: Chicken and Dumplings

Don’t be afraid to dig into this ‘blow-on-it-hot’ cookbook and get the pages dirty. You’ll be encouraging a healthy level of playfulness that leads to an enjoyment of food, as well as nourishing bodies and minds while instituting a sense of well-being. Highly Recommended. —The Children’s Book Review-Dedicated Review

Like the marks on the wall charting your children’s growth, I have a feeling this book will be with you through every stage of your children’s development marking time and experiences. You’ll go to bed reading and dreaming of this book of nursery rhymes and tasty recipes… and then wake up with it for breakfast— Wendy Bazilian, DrPH, MA, RDN

This book is awesome! Your friends will want to steal this book. Buy two! – Peggy Johansen

5 Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
“Classic beloved nursery rhymes combine with cooking to build strong family bonds from a young age. Your children will want to be in the kitchen with you.” – Dr. Susan Mitchell, PhD, RDN, LDN, FAND

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lacey Mauritz is a food-loving, registered dietitian, wife and mom who is ultra-passionate about child and family nutrition. Her goal is to engage parents and their little ones in the process of preparing, cooking and—the best part—eating meals. This is her third cookbook. Lacey lives in Jacksonville, Florida, and when away from her kitchen, enjoys spending time with her family, playing tennis, and traveling.

Jacqueline (Jaq) Taylor is a self-taught artist based out of the United Kingdom. Jaq brought Cooking with Mother Goose to life through her art and creativity. While Jaq has lent her talents to various private story collections, this book marks the debut of her work to the public. When Jaq is away from her paints, she spends time with her grandson.