Season's Eatings

October 22, 2012

Today I'm pleased to introduce Leah Cherry to FIMBY.

Leah Cherry teaches children and their families how to cook, sew, make and grow – traditional talents that remain essential for living well today.

Her business, Skill It, is founded on the belief that working with your hands nourishes your spirit and connects you to family and community. Her signature online class, Season’s Eatings, is offered four times a year to create joy, fun, and connection around food and family dinner time.

When I heard about the work Leah does I asked her to share with us about her upcoming course, Season's Eatings.

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Family dinner can be a sacred, restorative time in our day.  It is a welcome chance to slow down, connect, and nourish both our bodies and our relationships with one another.

How we get our food on the table can be simple and fun. It can make everyone in the house feel useful, valuable, and empowered. Working with our hands nourishes our spirits and connects us to the inherent pleasure of a job well done. And when something is handmade or homemade, we taste, smell, and sense the difference.

At heart, Skill It was inspired by a desire to bring joy to the kitchens and dinner tables of families near and far. We created our online class, Season’s Eatings, to create inspiration and connection around the pleasures of cooking and eating together.

In addition to honoring their skills and abilities, working with your kids in the kitchen instills a deeper appreciation and joy around nourishing themselves. It is also a way to pass on family knowledge and traditions. Whether you’re making a beloved grandmother’s recipe or simply telling stories about your childhood, you are creating memories and forming new traditions of your own.

When give the opportunity, children are focused, competent, and wonderfully independent cooks.

Our journey in the kitchen is focused on how you can nurture that desire to work in your little ones.  Whether they are washing salad greens, chopping up vegetables, or setting the table, little hands thrive when they are occupied with a helpful pursuit. {Big hands do, too!}

Together with your children, you can create meals from simple, seasonal foods in a way that honors their naturally delicious flavors. You can create a rhythm and a routine of working gracefully together. As the head chef in your family, you set the tone with your example.

Creating a peaceful, encouraging and patient approach in the kitchen lets your kids feel comfortable trying, experimenting, and exploring.

For four weeks in November, Season’s Eatings offers recipes, activities, and inspiration to make this vision of family dinnertime come to life in your home. More than just a class, it is community that celebrates the beauty of cooking together as a family. From wherever we happen to be, we gather at one big table, laughing, talking, and celebrating over bowls of steaming soup and plates of roasted vegetables. Bringing joy to our families, one dish, and one day, at a time.

Click here to learn more and register for Season’s Eatings.

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Doesn't this sound fabulous? You can see why I asked Leah to join us here today. Leah is also offering FIMBY readers a special discount for the course. Just enter “FIMBY” at checkout. All that course for just $15!

And because what's a food post without a recipe Leah shares her Skill It Beet Soup recipe. Perfect for this time of year.

Ingredients

• 1 large rib celery, diced
• 2 large carrots, diced
• 1 yellow onion, diced
• 2 quarts vegetable stock
• 2 medium red beets, julienned or grated
• 2 small yellow potatoes, julienned or diced
• ½ small head green cabbage, shredded
• 1 15 oz. can crushed tomatoes
• 2 T. herbs de provence
• 2 bay leaves
• olive oil
• salt & pepper to taste

Directions

1. Heat olive oil in a large soup or stock pot and sautee first three ingredients until onions are tender and translucent, about 5-7 minutes.
2. Add herbs de provence, pepper, and bay leaves and stir to distribute evenly. Then add potatoes, beets, and tomatoes and enough stock to cover all ingredients. Bring the soup up to a boil and then turn the heat down to a simmer.
3. Stir in shredded cabbage and continue simmering until all vegetables are tender, about 30-45 minutes.
4. To serve, ladle hot soup into large bowls and garnish with fresh dill. For a traditional borscht, you can also add a little spoonful of sour cream.

Kids of all ages can help by cutting carrots & celery with scissors – adults cut them into thin strips first. You can also cut potatoes into strips and pass those along to little hands to cut with a small table or paring knife, depending on their age & confidence level.

Older children can help with grating the beets and cabbage with a traditional box grater. If you are making a lot of soup, you can also have them help run these through a food processor. {Kids do love pressing the buttons on this piece of equipment!}

Click here to learn more and register for Season’s Eatings.

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