Summer has a funny way of making tweens simultaneously bored and too busy. If you're looking for an activity that gets them off their screens, teaches a real-life skill, and just happens to end with warm cookies, King Arthur Baking is ha…
Trying to keep family dinners healthy, affordable and interesting is one of those invisible household management tasks that can be really draining. We've found meal-kit services can be a real game-changer... especially if they use pre-me…
So many parents are looking for fresh ideas for screen-free activities for kids now that we finally turned a corner. I know I'm not the only parent with kids whose screen time increased significantly over the quarantine . It was their pr…
We're big fans of pulling kids into the kitchen early and often. But that also means setting kitchen safety rules for kids -- and for you. Not just because it keeps them safe (though that's obviously the most important thing), but becaus…
We are always thrilled to find new cookbooks that make life easier for parents, especially because meal planning (and cooking and serving and cleaning and cajoling the kids to eat any of it in the first place) can be...well, not our favo…
Need some last-minute help planning a deliciously sweet Valentine's Day menu? We've put together all our favorite easy Valentine's Day recipes that we've been sharing on Cool Mom Picks and Cool Mom Eats -- from breakfast to dessert -- in…
There aren’t many vegetables that I don’t like, but asparagus is among my least favorite. When my kids bellyache about the green stalks (and, yes, how their pee will smell afterwards), I get it. I pretend like I enjoy asparagus more than…
Reducing meat is one of the hardest shifts I’ve ever made in my family’s eating. Even though I’d been a vegetarian through college, I had no idea at the time how to go meatless healthfully. (My youthful diet of pizza, pasta, and more piz…
Anyone who’s dealt with a picky kid (and who hasn’t?) knows that feeding a picky eater is the opposite of fun. And I've found two new parenting resources—one a book, the other a game—which aim to change that. Both were developed by moms …
Great one-pot recipes are a family dinner lifesaver -- so long as they are truly a one-pot meal. As in, no cheats. These recipes are, and they are amazingly delicious, too. If you ask me, every parent should keep a list of recipes like t…
The cronut, a dessert made by frying croissant dough like a donut, set off a nationwide phenomenon in 2013, when Time magazine also named Dominique Ansel 's creation one of the best inventions of the year. Having had one, I can tell you …
It may not be frigid everywhere, but I think it’s safe to say that plenty of us are winter weary and as done with cooking as we are with gloves with scarves. This last stretch of the cold weather (and the exhausting lack of daylight) is …
What better way to celebrate the upcoming Chinese New Year than with a crafty project that you can easily do with kids? And, yields dumplings! If you hit the kitchen with the kids to make one of these six easy dumpling recipes for Chines…
Valentine’s Day doesn’t have to be all about sugary sweets, of course. Though kids do clamor for those conversation hearts and pink jelly beans, they may get enough of them elsewhere this week. So I've put together ideas for non-candy Va…
Every time we parents make dinner, family cooks work to strike a balance between what the kids are willing to eat and what the grown ups actually want to eat. Sometimes holidays make this balancing act even harder. Ever make a heart-shap…
Recently, there was a whole lot of controversy about marketing Nutella as a healthy breakfast food. Apparently, someone thought that the kids of the world need help eating toast by slathering it in a chocolate-hazelnut spread. But on Wor…
I recently tried to figure out how many food blogs populate the internet. The answer: A lot. I couldn’t find an exact number—not a recent one, at least—but it’s big enough to demonstrate that yes, there can be too much of a good thing. W…
’Tis the season for chicken soup, a magical elixir said to be good for the soul and known to boost your immune system. You can never go wrong with a classic chicken soup recipe, especially when you’re feeling under the weather (the chick…
Another year, another pile of cookbooks. I’ve added some amazing titles to my cookbook collection this year, but eight in particular are in heavy rotation in my family kitchen, which I think makes them among the best cookbooks for famili…
As someone who develops recipes professionally, you’d think that I’d always have a plan for feeding my family dinner. Just like everybody else, though, the busier I get, the harder it is to get dinner on the table. Thanks to natural bran…
Whether we like it or not, all of us parents become the family cook at some point, and even those of you who hate to cook know that it doesn't get us out of it. (Darn kids and their need to eat.) These fab kitchen gadget gifts are some o…
You need last minute Thanksgiving help? We've got it for you. We've put out so many amazing features from the best Thanksgiving recipes of all kinds to fun printables to keep the kids busy, that we wanted to put them all in one place for…
So yeah, making your own baby food can become daunting and tedious surprisingly fast, even for people like me who love to cook, and even if we have awesome baby food gadgets like the excellent Beaba Babycook . But even with the Beaba (an…
When celebrating Halloween with little ones, there’s a fine line between fun creepy and scary creepy. Lucky for me—a firm believer that the creepier the better—my kids are finally old enough to handle scary Halloween. I’ve spent a lot of…