EAT: Zid Zid Kids’ Moroccan Pancakes

WHEN JULIE KLEAR - founder of Zid Zid Kids and Marrakech resident - tweeted about her family’s breakfast of Moroccan pancakes, we couldn’t resist but ask for the recipe.

Here’s Julie’s version of Moroccan pancakes, known locally as M’semmen or Msimen… Enjoy making (and eating) them with your kids.

INGREDIENTS

3 cups whole wheat flour
2 cups white flour
2 and 1/2 cups water
1 Tablespoon salt
Vegetable oil for kneading as needed Read the rest of this article

Posted 8 August 2011 in Eating / Drinking

ANTI-ALLERGY BAKING: Knead Bakery

IT’S A FUNNY THING eating delicious goodies that don’t contain any of the bad things cakes, biccies and muffins are renowned for. Because you question the very reason you’re doing it at all - especially when you don’t get that familiar sugar high after stuffing your face on a chocolate brownie.

But there’s a very good reason Sim Smith has launched Knead, a new bakery producing cookies, muffins (blueberry muffin, pictured left), carrot cake and chocolate brownies that are completely safe for multi-allery sufferers. She’s one herself.

All too aware that the growing number of bakery ranges offering gluten, dairy, wheat or sugar free foods often only address one allergy issue - Sim’s new bakery goodies address ALL allergens in one fell swoop. As a girl who can barely touch food (she’s allergic to cane sugar, yeast, dairy and gluten) on her journeys around town, Sim was determined others - and in particular the growing number of children suffering from multi-allergies - should be able to enjoy sweet treats just like her. Read the rest of this article

Posted 12 May 2011 in Eating / Drinking

SMART TEAS - ceramic dinnerware

Illustration by Marina Kharkover

THERE COMES A TIME when all those melamine plates, dishes and cups seem just a little too baby-ish. And risk of breakage aside, you decide to upgrade to real life pottery on the dinner table.

Actually, we think the breakage risk is minimal - unless you have tile flooring - because the weight of real glass or ceramic usually means better anchoring to the table than lightweight plastic. The trickier challenge is finding crockery you like as much as the melamine, because there seems to be one pretty huge gap in the market for child-sized china plates.

Often the best option is to plump for adult-line side plates - we like Alessi’s Bettina side-plate by Future Systems, Muji’s Hakuji porcelain, and Habitat’s side plates by Concetta Gallo. Otherwise, these are our current favourite child-friendly crocks designed specifically for little ones.

Click on each gallery image for full caption details…. Read the rest of this article

Posted 17 June 2009 in Eating / Drinking

FOCUS: Trays of Art

GIVE MOST ADULTS a blank white A4 piece of paper and ask them to design a tray, right there and then, and they’d be petrified. Not so children, points out Ella Doran, the print product specialist, who pioneered the photographic print on table / homewares trend just over a decade ago.

“Adults do tend to get very inhibited. I can do too, but working with kids tends to free you up. They don’t have any of our hang-ups. They really like to take their time over things, and I’m always surprised at what comes out - the pattern making or the genius little quotes and designs,” she says. Ella, a mother of two boys, should know. She’s been holding occasional tray design ‘events’ for the last two years after collaborating with the Tate galleries on a couple of children’s books - and she finds that although she does hold adult classes too (one was in the middle of Selfridges department store, which, she says, was “a mad anthropological exercise.”), it’s the kids who really relish the chance to put their art work on a real-life product for the home - one that they get to take home with them.

Okay, so the process isn’t quite so instant. The finished water-based drawings are sent off to Ella’s experimental Belgian producers, where they sandwich each picture between melamine sheets, squash it and heat it until the melamine bonds, chop off the rough edges, and hey presto, finished tray (currently just £12). Once done it’s sent back to the UK for collection or posted directly to your address. Read the rest of this article

Posted 27 November 2008 in Eating / Drinking

TOP FIVE (ACTUALLY SIX): High Chairs

THE HIGH CHAIR seems to have become a vehicle for manufacturers and retailers to charge hundreds of pounds for what is usually a joyless and necessary purchase. (Where’s the fun in buying something that will end up daubed in dried food deposits?) The following are neither joyless, nor completely outrageously priced high chairs that seem to offer solutions to the hard-to-clean, unattractive, non-décor enhancing feeding chairs littering high street stores and homes. In fact our top marks go to Lula Sapphire’s K2 by Kuster - for its foldability, its detachable tray (not everyone has a dining table or wants to feed in the dining room), and mostly its price-point. Click on the pictures below to enlarge. 

Best for Classicists and older kids: Stokke’s Tripp Trapp. Okay, so it’s a little ubiquitous now, but that’s because the Tripp Trapp goes with most decors, and lasts until your child, is ooh, an adult, if they’re so inclined. The down sides are having to buy separate accessories, which bumps up the price, and a lack of tray, which generally means more fallout on clothing and floors unless you have a table handy. Lovely new colours. From £115 - £165, Stokke, www.stokke.com; 0800 051 7036 (UK). 

Read the rest of this article

Posted 21 October 2008 in Eating / Drinking, Furniture