New website aims to get kids in the kitchen

It can be a challenge to get kids to eat healthy food or even to get them interested in cooking. Parents employ any number of strategies, some of which include disguising vegetables (the premise behind Jessica Seinfeld’s Deceptively Delicious, for example). Bristol (UK) cook Claire Thomson, author of the family cookbook The Five O’Clock Apron, along with actor Katy Carmichael, has a different approach. Thomson and Carmichael recently launched a new website called The Table of Delights.  By combining influences that range from author Roald Dahl to the popular television show ‘Horrible Histories’, the website hopes to pique kids’ interest in cooking and eating well.

Thomson and Carmichael worked together to produce an award-winning children’s theatre show, also called Table of Delights.  After the show ended, they wanted to continue to spread the message that cooking should be celebrated and eating well can be fun. Says Thomson, “it really annoys me that we’re still teaching people to ‘hide’ vegetables when feeding them to children, rather than celebrating them as food, and I wanted to address that.”

The website tries to straddle the line between silly and educational so the children will remain engaged and want try what they see on the site at home (with their parents’ assistance, of course). “There are some great recipes on the site,” says Carmichael, “but there’s also a lot of entertaining stuff – things to muck around with.”