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Food People, Parent Picks: we ask our favorite chefs, food writers, and industry insiders who we interview in our Order Up! Series to share the products, books, and bites they can’t live without.
Earlier this week we talked with pediatric dietitian Jill Castle about the light bulb moment at her own high chair, the night she stopped plating her kids’ food, and what she means when she says “health is an inside job”. If you haven’t read it yet, you can find that interview right here.
Now we’re getting practical. Jill raised four kids in five years while feeding them full time for a decade, and she came with specifics: the three things always in her pantry, the Caesar salad that fed everybody on a weeknight, and the reason a pediatric dietitian keeps potato chips where her kids can see them.
Three pantry or fridge staples you always keep on hand because they’re easy to throw together?
Pasta and tuna fish in the pantry. And eggs. Always eggs. It’s a panic attack if there’s no eggs in the house.
A weeknight dinner you knew all four kids would eat?
Caesar salad with chicken, with a caveat: I used to make my own bread and save the heels, so I’d make my own croutons. Chop up romaine, the shredded parm from Trader Joe’s, my own Caesar dressing, and chicken tenders cooked quick on top of the stove. They always ate it.
The other one was chicken broccoli pasta with Alfredo sauce. Jarred Alfredo sauce. Remember, I was working full time by then.
How do you make your Caesar dressing?
Mayonnaise, anchovy paste, a little vinegar or lemon juice, some parm. Shake it up.
Anchovy paste is a great invention. I always keep it in the fridge.
A snack you always had on hand to head off the hangry meltdown?
I had a lot of snacks, so there wasn’t one standard snack. But baked potatoes with shredded cheddar and salsa, done in the microwave, because I had athletes coming home. Cheese quesadillas. Peanut butter toast. A bowl of cereal with milk was often a snack.
My snacks were always a little heartier, because I didn’t want my kids coming back an hour later asking for more. It’s not that we didn’t have the goldfish in the house. We had that stuff too. I just tried to give them something pretty substantial.
People are surprised a pediatric dietitian keeps potato chips in the pantry. Why do you?
People do come in and say, wow, you’re a dietitian and you have potato chips in the pantry. Yeah. I don’t profess to be a perfect eater. I like all kinds of foods. Part of my philosophy was that if I don’t have all the stuff around, not all the time, but if they don’t get to see all the stuff, then it becomes taboo and forbidden and scarce. And then I’ve got the child who’s overeating at the neighbor’s house.
A store-bought convenience product you buy with zero guilt?
Frozen shrimp. Frozen vegetables and frozen fruit. Pasta. Tinned fish, whether it’s tuna, or tinned chicken. Potato chips, pretzels, nuts. I don’t have a lot of food guilt. It’s a very free way to live.
A kitchen tool that genuinely makes feeding a family easier?
This is kind of a boring answer, but I cook a lot in a skillet. And I do a lot of hand chopping. My cutting boards, my good knives, my skillets, my spatulas.
One food that reliably got eaten in your house without a fight?
Fruit. I always had fruit offered at all the meals. Always at breakfast, always at lunch, and always a bowl of fruit as part of dinner. Chopped, or peel your own oranges, whatever. That was always a home run.
A cookbook you actually cook from?
I love all of Ina Garten’s cookbooks. She’s my primary gal. I have other cookbooks, but I always know that if I want it to taste good and turn out well, I’m happy with her stuff.
A food educator you trust and point parents to?
Ellyn Satter’s work, obviously, on the Division of Responsibility.
And a pediatric dietitian named Dani Lebovitz. I have a lot of respect for her because she creates education for children about food, and she just came out with a book this year: Food Positivity, How to Ditch Diet Culture and Talk to Kids About Food [Bookshop, Amazon]. What I really like about Dani is that she’s very relational. She’s into how kids feel, and how a kid’s behavior is communicating something to parents. She uses that lens, and she also makes these beautiful books meant to teach children about food, fruit, vegetables. She does it without shaming children and does it in a way that’s cognitively appropriate.
A family table rule that actually stuck?
Stack them. Everybody stacked their phones in the middle of the table, and nobody touched a phone until we were done at the restaurant. My kids still do it. My oldest came home a week or two after starting college and said none of her friends eat with their families. They never sit down for a family dinner. That was mind blowing for her.
One food rule you’d retire, a line you wish parents would stop repeating?
Something around: that’s not healthy for you, or, you have to eat a healthy diet to be healthy. It doesn’t have to be an uber healthy diet to be healthy. The body’s pretty forgiving.
We want children to learn to love and eat healthy food. We want to be the example of that and provide the opportunities for it. But it’s not a report card. It’s not like you’re getting an A because your child eats perfectly.
