Small Bites: The lunch they pack themselves with help from our friends at Raising Healthy Families! A kid who can safely handle a knife can pack most of their own lunch, and that’s a smaller skill than it sounds — Katie Kimball starts kids as young as two with dull tools and proper technique. Her knife skills and safety class is free and runs about ten minutes. 👉 Watch the free class
Keeping These People Alive: Katie Morford on What Ten Years at Home Actually Taught Her
Katie Morford’s oldest daughter was about 13 when she came home with three bottled Starbucks drinks, put them in the fridge, and announced that this was what she’d be having for breakfast from now on. Katie is a registered dietitian and doesn’t consider a coffee drink a suitable breakfast. But she didn’t react. She didn’t say no. She just calmly told her daughter exactly what was in the bottle. Her daughter drank one and didn’t bother buying them again.
Katie lives in San Francisco and has written three cookbooks. Each one came out right as her own kids hit the stage it covered: packed lunches, then quick breakfasts, then basic cooking skills for a kid about to move out. She writes the blog Mom’s Kitchen Handbook and puts out a new meal plan every week.
Before any of that, she took about ten years off. She had three daughters, and with each one she pulled back from work a little more. When her youngest started kindergarten and she decided to go back to work, she looked at how much had changed in nutrition and the magazine industry and thought, what do I even know? Then it occurred to her that she’d been feeding three kids, every day, for ten years. That was the job she knew best.
We talked about why she never jumped ship with her pickiest eater, what she tells parents who are drowning in nutrition advice online, and how a neighbor whose husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s ended up changing what she wants to write next. She also explains why she stopped trying to cook every single night, even though cooking is her whole career.
Her daughters are 23, 26, and 28 now. They all live on the East Coast and they all cook. Katie never sat them down for a cooking lesson. She was in the kitchen for work, they were nearby, and she handed them something to do.
Introduce Yourself: I’m Katie Morford. I’m a registered dietitian, a food writer, and a cookbook author. I live in San Francisco with my husband. Our kids have all flown the nest. My youngest is 23, my middle is 26, and my oldest is 28. They all live on the East Coast, which I can’t quite believe.
I got my master’s in nutrition and started out writing for magazines. At first it was all nutrition, and then it got more and more into food. When I was raising my three daughters, I was out of the workforce for probably ten years.
When my youngest was starting kindergarten, I thought, I have to get back in there. And so much had changed. Magazines had changed. I didn’t have contacts anymore. I felt completely disconnected from nutrition, and I remember thinking, what do I even know?
Then I realized I had been feeding young people. I had been keeping these people alive with food and good nutrition. I had been bringing everything I knew about nutrition and cooking to the table every day. So I started working in that space. I started my blog, Mom’s Kitchen Handbook, pitched my first cookbook, and stayed in the feeding-kids world as long as my kids were little.
I’m always going to be a mom and I’m always going to care about feeding a family. But my focus is a lot broader now.
There’s so much conflicting nutrition advice online now. How does a parent know what to trust?
It’s a different time than when my kids were little. There’s a lot of nutrition nonsense out there. A lot of influencers who don’t have the knowledge base, who don’t know what it means to look at research. They’re looking for soundbites.
So I’d turn to a dietitian. If you’re on social media, go find some good ones. They’re out there. And go the old-fashioned way too. Pick up some good books about raising kids. I keep Jill Castle’s book Fearless Feeding on my shelf. She’s raised four kids and she’s so smart. [At One Potato, we interviewed Jill a few week’s ago! You can read her Order Up! interview here.]
Mostly it’s about turning down the noise. Don’t eat that. Do eat this. This is going to harm your kid. If you feed them artificial sweeteners they’re going to blah-biddy-blah. It can make you crazy.
We also have our own inner wisdom, and we should be listening to that too. When it comes down to it, it’s pretty basic. Minimally processed, real food. It doesn’t have to be fussy. And you don’t have to freak out every time something goes sideways.
You’re a dietitian who makes room for chocolate chip cookies. How do you teach that balance?
One of the saddest things I’ve seen was at a birthday party. All the kids were eating cake and the special foods they don’t normally get, and one child wasn’t allowed to have any. It wasn’t an allergy. It just wasn’t allowed. I think that sets a child up for problems later, and I’ve seen it play out.
Home base is what matters most. Make your home the safe place, in every way, including for feeding your kids. If you can, make most of your meals in your own kitchen, or at least know what you’re giving your child. I know that depends a lot on someone’s job and everything else they’re juggling. But once that base is solid, I never worried much about what they ate somewhere else.
I watched my own kids hit that age, middle school or early high school, when they figure out they have some freedom and they’re going to try things. My oldest came home at about 13 with three bottled Starbucks drinks. She put them in the fridge and announced, this is what I’m having for breakfast from now on.
My first thought was, that’s so much sugar. This is not how you want your kid to start the day. But she was testing where the edges were. So I gave her a very clinical answer about what was in them, and I didn’t say she couldn’t have it. She drank one, and that was the end of it.
There’s something to be said for giving your kids a little room to play around. All of my kids eat well now, and they all cook. I think you have to let the path take its course.
Your three cookbooks follow your daughters as they grew up. Was that on purpose?
It happened because I was living it. My first book came out of my witnessing every parent around me complaining about packing lunches. It felt like somebody needed to make a toolkit.
Then after I published it, so many people said, I need this same thing, but for breakfast. And my middle daughter was starting high school right about then, and she asked me for quick breakfast ideas because she had to catch an earlier bus.
My third book came from my oldest’s senior year. I went into a panic about her going out into the world. Does she know how to plunge a toilet? Does she know how to change the oil in a car? All these life skills. And it got me thinking about cooking as a life skill. I wrote a blog post called something like the ten cooking skills every kid should know before they leave the nest, and that turned into Prep: The Essential College Cookbook [Bookshop, Amazon].
What should a kid be able to cook before they move out?
Get them comfortable with a knife. That’s such a big barrier to cooking. There’s the safety piece, and a few knife skills go a long way toward making cooking feel easy.
Then some basics. Fry an egg. Learn what it means to put a pot of water on the stove, get it boiling, and put pasta in it. Make a grilled cheese. It isn’t about one specific food. If you get something in every category, that’s great. Make a salad. Just enough that they feel comfortable.
And take them to the grocery store. That’s part of it, at any age.
I never sat my kids down and said, I’m going to teach you to cook now. I was in the kitchen for work, so they were there anyway. Might as well give them something to do.
Packing lunches is a lot of parents’ least favorite chore. What makes it easier?
I don’t know about a single mindset shift, but packing lunches is a great way to get your kids comfortable in the kitchen. It was one of the first places mine became independent.
We did it a lot of different ways over the years. For a while I packed the main and they packed the sides, with rules: you have to have a fruit, you have to have a vegetable. Later on, one kid would pack all three lunches on certain days. It’s a headache, because kids make a mess. But it pays off.
The other part is remembering why it matters. When you feed your kids something good, they get a little piece of you during their day.
And your best friend is leftovers. You’re making dinner anyway, so make more. Or while dinner’s on the stove and you’re standing there waiting, slap together some peanut butter sandwiches. Get two things done at once.
Your three girls were all different eaters. What did you do about the picky one?
My kids all had different eating personalities. I got lucky in a couple of ways. The first child sets the tone. That’s not always true, but it was in our house, and she was very open to food, and it went down the line from there. My youngest was the pickiest.
With her, I stayed the course. It’s really easy to jump ship, and I never jumped ship when she pushed back. There was no force feeding and no finish-your-plate. I just trusted that she was going to get what she needed. She might not want split pea soup today. Maybe next time, or the time after that.
We were one family, one meal, from day one, and I never wavered, because that’s how I was raised. I’m not saying it works for everybody, and there are kids you need to bend for. But it can work for most people, and it takes commitment. They will push back. They will ask for cereal. If you start on day one and don’t get scared, it pays off.
Is there a dish you’re passing down to your daughters?
There are so many, because this is my job. I’m trying to think what they’d say.
I make really good tacos out of nothing. I’m much more a fling-open-the-fridge-and-see-what’s-there cook than a recipe follower, even though I’ve developed hundreds of recipes. So I’d say my salads. Looking at what’s in there and making something bright and good to go with it.
I see them doing that in their own lives now, meal prepping, taking it to work, which is really satisfying. They each cook a little differently. My middle one is a big baker, so she makes my banana bread and cookies. But they all use my website recipes.
Cooking without a recipe scares a lot of people. How do you get comfortable with it?
I had this realization a week ago. I really want to be able to paint. I’ve been messing around with watercolors and getting frustrated, thinking, why can’t I do this? And then it hit me. I need to take a class. I need to learn it. I have to practice.
Cooking is no different. People say, oh, I don’t know how to cook. Well, I’ve been cooking my whole life. That’s why I know how to open the fridge and figure it out. We’re all better at some things than others. I don’t know that I could pick up a violin and learn it easily. But cooking is practice.
Start with simple recipes and make them over and over. You start figuring out what goes with what. You might make a meatball and marinara you love, and then think, I’m going to make meatball sandwiches, I’m going to take this sauce and use it for something else. It’s practice.
Your fourth book is about cooking for people going through something hard. Where did that topic come from?
The book kind of found me. Taking care of people with food runs through my whole life. My kids, my husband, my community, the teachers at school. It’s how I show up for people.
I posted on Instagram about a neighbor of mine. I’d found out her husband had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, so I started texting her. I have two slices of quiche, can I bring them over? I just made pesto pasta, do you want some? And she started bringing my containers back, and after a while she started filling them with baked goods when she was returning them. Scones, muffins, potato bread. It was so tender. We’d end up talking on her stoop. I think it gave her something to do at a time when things were really hard.
So I posted about that, and a woman in the cookbook business, Leslie Jonath, reached out and said, I have an idea, and I think you might be the person for it. The book comes out in fall 2027. The working title is Cooking for Comfort. It’s meant to be food you can pack up and carry to someone, but they’re all going to be good family dinners too.
What do you wish people knew about bringing food to someone who’s struggling?
Get a little information first. People often have the one dish they always bring. Grandma’s lasagna, or whatever it is. But different dishes suit different people and different situations. A new mom is one thing. Somebody who just moved in next door is another. Somebody with the flu, or going through treatment, is another thing entirely.
People are afraid to reach out, even just to the caregiver instead of the person who’s sick. But you can ask: I want to bring something over. What sounds good right now? What isn’t working? Is there an allergy? That’s really useful information, and you’re doing something kind. People worry they’re being nosy. There’s a gentle way to do it.
The other thing is that we all default to the big casserole. I had surgery last summer, and I was stuck on the couch and didn’t have much of an appetite. A friend brought me this gorgeous chopped salad. And I thought, this is exactly what I want. I don’t want a chicken pot pie right now.
What’s one thing you’ve stopped doing that makes cooking easier?
I almost don’t want to say it. But sometimes I realize I am just full up. It’s only my husband and me now, and there are days I’ve been cooking all day for work and I’m tapped.
So I ask him to make something simple. Or we pick something up. Or we eat cheese and crackers. That’s how you keep your tank from running dry. I live in fear of running out of passion for cooking, because I love it so much, and I think, what happens if I don’t want to do this anymore?
So listen to yourself and get help when you need it. Help from your partner, help from the grocery store, the rotisserie chicken and the bag of salad. Women especially feel like we have to do all of it. Find the places where it’s fine to give yourself a break.
I always say, get a pizza, toss some arugula with balsamic vinaigrette, and that’s dinner.
What’s one cooking skill you think everyone should have?
Make a vinaigrette. Make a salad dressing. It takes seconds. Dijon mustard, olive oil, vinegar, salt, pepper. Shake it in a jar. You’ve got a dressing that’s so much better than the bottle, and so much cheaper. And then you can change it up a million ways.
Follow Katie on Instagram at @katiesmorford
& Don’t forget to follow us on IG @onepotatobox ❤️
Books, Books, Books – by Katie Sullivan Morford
Best Lunch Box Ever: Ideas and Recipes for School Lunches Kids Will Love [Bookshop, Amazon]
Rise and Shine: Better Breakfasts for Busy Mornings [Bookshop, Amazon]
