I’m doing a four-day cooking class for kids. We have all had a lot of fun being mad scientists in the kitchen.  I gave the children some colorful recipe books with fun recipes. For even more fun recipes go to pcrm.org. There are a few more fun recipes to try on this link.

The emphasis is on high-fiber plant foods to help prevent cancer. It’s good to avoid MSG and other excitotoxin flavorings that kill brain cells, white sugar that puts your immune system to sleep, and any other unnatural substance. Too many animal products in the diet contribute to cancer and disease. Try to have more fruits and vegetables in the diet that include the various colors of the rainbow in produce, which help to fight cancer.

Here are the recipes we did in class that are different from the class workbook.

• Soda – Club soda and your choice of  flavor. For orange soda, we added orange juice (1/2 juice and 1/2 soda),  a little raw sugar to taste (try 1 tsp at a time to taste). For lemon-lime soda, we juiced the lemon and lime 1 cup, then 1 cup club soda and added raw sugar 1 tsp at a time to taste. For root beer, we added root beer flavor and raw sugar to taste. The root beer extract is very concentrated so we started really small – 1/8 tsp with 2 tbsp water. The kids experimented, starting with small amounts of ingredients and adding more of raw sugar as needed. The club soda was very strong and exploded out as the lid opened. The kids thought that was exciting. Club soda is basically carbonated water and just tastes like water. Add ice.
• Salsa – 4 medium tomatoes, 1/2 small onion, 1 avocado, 1 lime, 1 jalapeno, 1 red bell pepper, 2 garlic (minced), and 1 tsp salt. Everything was chopped finely with a special chopper you can get at Bed, Bath, And Beyond
• Fruit Shakes – 1 1/2 frozen bananas broken in 3-4 pieces each and set in a ziploc sandwich bag in the freezer, 1 cup frozen strawberries with enough orange juice or apple juice to not quite reach the top of the frozen fruit. Blend to smooth. Porter used his fruit shake of frozen strawberries and orange juice in a cup with a spoon to make his very own popsicle idea.
• Chocolate Shake – 1 1/2 frozen broken banana pieces, 1 1/2 cups organic soy milk (from the dollar store), 1 1/2 Tbsp raw cocoa or carob powder, 1/2 tsp cinnamon (optional). Blend to smooth. The carob powder is very nutritional with lots of B-vitamins. Go to this link to learn more about how healthy it is and how the taste compares so much to cocoa.
• Cheesy Popcorn – One batch of air popped popcorn – start with 1/2 cup uppopped popcorn that you pop in an air popper (You can usually get one at D.I. for $5.), extra-virgin olive oil, which is one of the healthiest oils to use to replace the typical butter or margarine, 1 tbsp nutritional yeast flakes (from the health food store), 1/2 tsp real salt. Pour the oil (about 2 tbsp) over the popped popcorn and sprinkle with the nutritional yeast flakes and salt.
• Ramen – 1 pkg ramen, boiled (throw away the MSG excitotoxin seasoning packet), 1 tsp miso (from the health food store), 1/2 tsp Nama Shoyu (raw soy sauce from health food store), salt to taste. Prepare noodles. Reserve about 1/2 cup hot water. Dissolve miso in the water, add shoyu and salt to taste. The miso and shoyu have more probiotics than yogurt. White sugar in conventional yogurts kills the probiotics.