FoodieTots @ the Farmers Market Week continues with some background on why we love the market for teaching healthy habits. This post was originally a guest contribution at Food with Kid Appeal ~ visit Jenna’s blog for more tips to inspire healthy eating with your kids.

This weekend, my son rediscovered his toy shopping cart and insisted on hauling it out for a pre-bedtime grocery shopping trip. He proceeded to entertain us by driving back and forth across the living room and kitchen, visiting the orange juice guy, the ketchup guy, the jam place, and returning his empty milk carton to the door for the milkman to refill. I love that he thinks we have “a guy” for everything!

My son has been shopping our weekly farmers market since he was an infant in a baby carrier. At the time, it was the perfect Saturday morning outing when he woke up at the crack of dawn and nothing else was open. At two and a half now, his tastes are still fairly fickle but he generally will at least try a bite of anything that comes from the market. By engaging my son in the shopping experience, and the sensory wonderland that is available at a farmers market rather than a grocery store, I have found that he is genuinely curious and excited about food.

Shopping at a farmers market or organic grocer provides you with a much wider array of fruits and vegetables than what are generally available at the big box grocery. From heirloom tomatoes in shades of yellow, green, red and purple to orange cauliflower and purple beans, they provide a rainbow of choices that appeal to kids visually. My son was never a huge fan of green beans, but the day we brought home purple beans from the market, he was enthralled. One day this past fall I asked him to bag some beans, giving him the choice of yellow or green. To my surprise, he chose to take some of both, and when we had them for dinner he proudly held them up to his dad and exclaimed, “I picked these yellow and green beans all myself!”

I also find that while my son may look skeptically at a new item placed on his dinner plate, he is almost guaranteed to sample something handed to him by a vendor at the market. Our neighborhood market’s cheese man is his favorite, no doubt due to the generous sample of cave-aged cheddar he receives each week. My son devours it, exclaiming to everyone in sight that, “Tom the Cheese Guy gave me this!” (He now asks at home, “Are those Tom’s eggs? … is that Tom’s cheese?” before determing whether to taste something. Heaven forbid we run out mid-week!) One of our favorite fruit vendors will sometimes slip him a perfectly toddler-sized Seckel pear, which he enjoys with relish. A while back, I was checking out something new to me, sunchokes. When the farmer handed me one to sample, my son demanded a taste as well. He declared it “too spicy,” but I can guarantee that he never would have been interested in trying it had I tried to slip it onto his plate at home.

As parents know, kids love to feel like they are in control, so empowering them to choose their favorites while you shop is a great way to get them engaged in what they are eating. By shopping at a market or organic grocer where virtually all the options are healthy, it helps reduce the temptation of processed foods and gets them excited about healthy foods. My son will often request fruit or cheese as a snack, which I hope will remain a habit as he gets older. When he’s older, I plan to use the market as an opportunity to teach him about money as well, by giving him his own budget and letting him determine what, and how much, to buy. And of course I will be encouraging him to join me in the kitchen as much as possible to learn how to cook his healthy selections, too.

Shared with Fight Back Friday hosted by Food Renegade — check out the round-upround-up!

Calling all farmers market fans! One Local Summer returns in June. If you’re up for the challenge of cooking one all-local meal each week, click the image above to sign up. Here’s a reminder of some of the Chesapeake Bay foodshed meals we enjoyed last year.

This was an easy pasta dish made easier with a few Trader Joe’s favorites – cooked, peeled frozen shrimp and Ginger Soy Broth, plus my own prepped and frozen broccoli and garlic scape pesto from last week. I also used TJ’s flax seed pasta to fulfill my Whole Grains Challenge quota for the day. (OK, so it was 1 of 3 meals, but every small step counts, right?)

Ingredients:

• 1/2 bag flax seed fusili
• 3 c ginger soy broth (added to water to boil pasta)
• 1 c frozen broccoli
• 1 bag shrimp, thawed and tails removed
• 2 T garlic scape pesto* (or whatever kind you have on hand)
• 1/2 T olive oil
• 1 t roasted sesame oil
• 1/3 c cashews

Instructions: I added the 3 c of ginger soy broth to the pasta water. Cook pasta as instructed, adding broccoli for final 2 minutes. Reserve cooking water for later. Heat pesto and oils in skillet over medium heat. Add shrimp and cook just a couple minutes, about 3-4, adding cashews for final minute. Toss with cooked pasta, broccoli, and about 1/4 c of the pasta water. Enjoy!

* Recipe: Garlic Scape Pesto

Take one bunch of garlic scapes (3-4) and chop into 1 inch pieces. Add to food processor with 1/4 c olive oil, 1/4 c nuts of your choice (I used cashews, pecans and pistachios are also great), and 1/4 c parmiaggano cheese. Chop till fine. This is pretty potent, so use with care!

Toddler Notes: I believe this was the first time we really served shrimp to the toddler. He wasn’t interested the first night, but ate one bite the second. He ate all his broccoli first and then stole every last piece off the husband’s plate, before getting to the noodles. Hooray for broccoli!

Submitted to Presto Pasta Nights, created by Once Upon a Feast and hosted this week by Closet Cooking.