It was targeted to kids, teaching healthy cooking: basic cooking skills plus kitchen safety and where food comes.

If you have children, look for kids’ cooking classes in your area. You’ll do yourself a favor: Fun classes lead to childrens’ empowerment, independence and responsibility for what they eat. Plus, they’ll be able to make their own simple meals, and you won’t have to spend time teaching them. They’ll be more enthusiastic in a group of other kids, where it becomes “play.”

And, they may grow up with a penchant for cooking the family meals.

Chef Toni’s healthy buffet worked beautifully for both children and adults, and reminded us that we too should eschew the fattening cheese plate for equally delightful, yet good-for-you foods. The menu included easy recipes:

• Kiwi lemonade, kiwi puree mixed with lemon juice and water

Instead of a bread-based canape, try fruit:
Here, watermelon topped with tabbouleh and
crumbled feta and a chive “bow.” Photo courtesy Watermelon.org.

• Hint flavored, unsweetened water (a NIBBLE Top Pick Of The Week)
• Stuffed eggs filled with spinach creamed with milk, instead of a cholesterol-filled deviled yolk
• Cucumber in thick slices topped with taramosalata, Greek caviar spread made with olive oil and lemon juice
• Guacamole (which is caloric, but nutrient-rich) and corn chips (which are whole grain)
• Watermelon salad: cubes of melon with shredded basil, and queso blanco substituting for the traditional feta cheese (which can be too potent a flavor for kids)
• Grape and walnut salad: halved green and red grapes with walnut halves and a light yogurt dressing
• Large, flat ravioli with scalloped edges atop skewers, covered with pesto
• Fruit skewers: melon, pineapple and grapes
• A heaping platter of red and green grapes
• Pineapple flowers, cut from pineapple slices with a large cookie cutter, placed on skewers and anchored in a box of wheat grass (really beautiful!)
• Cupcakes by Melissa, single-bite tiny cupcakes that allow you to enjoy a small bite or two of different flavors instead of eating a regular cupcake or two

Kids must really like a certain color of green food. They lapped up the guacamole, hard-cooked egg halves filled with spinach and kiwi lemonade and the grapes, plus the ravioli and fruit skewers, and left the rest to the grown-ups.

Switch nutrition-empty crouton crunch
for the healthy crunch of nuts. Photo
by Jason M | SXC.

Instead of carb- and salt-laden croutons on your salad, try nuts as a healthy, crunchy substitute.

The best “salad nuts”: almonds, hazelnuts, peanuts, pecans, some pine nuts, pistachios and walnuts, the heart-healthy nuts approved by the FDA.

These varieties contain more heart-healthy monounsatured fat and less than 4g of saturated fat per 50g (1.8 ounces).

Walnuts are the healthiest nuts of all, containing a significantly higher amount of alpha linolenic acid.* A daily 1- or 2-ounce serving of nuts is recommended by doctors and nutritionists.

*Linolenic acid is a type of plant-derived omega 3 fatty acid, similar to that found in salmon. Many studies show that it lowers both total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol (the bad cholesterol) levels.

You’ll use fewer calories if you chop the nuts roughly instead of using them whole. Instead of consuming one nut per forkful, you’ll have at least twice as much crunch spread throughout the salad.

It takes just seconds to chop them with a knife or food chopper; or you can pay for the convenience of buying chopped nuts.

Imagine ice cream that is both hot and cold. That’s what you get when you pour Three Chilies Chocolate Sauce on it. The cayenne, chipotle and jalapeño spice blend is a terrific complement to The King’s Cupboard’s superb dessert sauces.

In addition to ice cream, the sauces can be used to enhance poached pears, pound cake, waffles or any food in need of chocolate or caramel sauce.

The King’s Cupboard is one of our perennial favorite brands of dessert sauce. The ingredients are the finest; the regular and flavored chocolate sauce and caramel sauce varieties are just perfect. There’s a sugar-free chocolate sauce that is a godsend for chocolate lovers who need to restrict sugar. And, the products are certified kosher by OU.

• Read the review of The King’s Cupboard, a NIBBLE Top Pick Of The Week.
• Find more of our favorite dessert sauces, plus recipes.

Spice up your ice cream with “hot”
chocolate and caramel sauce. Photo
by Philip Wilkerson | BSP.

• Learn about the different types of dessert sauces in our Dessert Sauce Glossary.

Make a beautiful potato salad with Yukon
Gold and Purple Peruvian potatoes. Photo ©
Svetlana Kolpakova | Dreamstime.

We’re now addicted to wasabi mayonnaise potato salad, wasabi coleslaw, wasabi deviled eggs and wasabi spread on sandwiches and burgers.

• Add a tiny dice of red onion and celery to potato salad. They add flavor plus crunch.
• For the most beautiful potato salad, use a mixture of Yukon Gold and Purple Peruvian potatoes.
• For prettier coleslaw, use a red cabbage and white cabbage mix. We add a tiny dice of red onion, carrot and yellow or orange bell pepper.

If you can’t find wasabi mayonnaise, you can order it online. Our favorite is Green Dragon Lemonaise from The Ojai Cook (read our review).

We also found Spectrum brand Wasabi Style Mayonnaise at Whole Foods Market. It’s USDA-certified organic, OU kosher and uses cage-free eggs. We applaud all that; but we’ll return to The Ojai Cook’s Green Dragon Lemonaise, which has a richer, eggier mayonnaise flavor. Both are available at Amazon.com.

• Find more of our favorite condiments.
• Learn the difference between real wasabi and what most of us get, which is actually imitation wasabi.

Based on tonnage sold to consumers, foodservice and food manufacturers, 10 seafood varieties made up more than 88% of seafood consumption. And you’ve never even heard of #10!

You won’t be surprised at the top 3 on the list: shrimp, canned tuna and salmon. But what is the new fish on the block, #10, pangasius (pan-GAY-see-us)?

You may see pangasius on menus or in stores, under its more consumer-friendly names: white catfish, Vietnamese river cobbler, basa, tra and swai. Farmed in the Mekong Delta in southwestern Vietnam, this mild white-fleshed fish is a less costly substitute for tilapia. It is primarily used in food service, with new growth seen among food manufacturers.

Pangasius: the new white fish. Photo
courtesy Chinguyen.net.

In between shrimp, canned tuna and salmon at the top and pangasius in the #10 position are Alaska pollack, tilapia, crab, catfish, cod and clams.

• See the Top 10 chart comparing 2008 and 2009 seafood consumption.
• To learn more about depleted fish species and which types are environmentally safe to eat, visit Seafood Watch, which includes terrific information from the Montery Bay Aquarium.
• Check out all the varieties of seafood in our Seafood Glossary.