PDX Parent November 2016

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Table of Contents

Play Room
A kid chef from Oregon takes kale to the White House, plus picky-eater problems and great magazines for kiddos.

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The Kids’ Menu
What happens when you take kids out to eat and there’s no mac and cheese on the menu? Chef Jason French at Ned Ludd helps us find out. Photos by Sung Kokko. Text by Julia Silverman.

Out of the Box
Meal-delivery kits are suddenly everywhere. But do they live up to the hype? We put three options to the test. By Denise Castañon, Julia Silverman and Alison Wilkinson.

Moving To
A family looking for the rural life on a farm finds it … in North Portland? By Heather Lee Leap.

Field Trip
Wordless communication with your baby, at infant sign-language class. By Denise Castañon.

Baby Steps
Don’t let the kids eat marker caps, and other advice for the babysitter. By Catherine Ryan Gregory.

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Family Supper
Fast casual meets curry at Open Tandoor on North Williams. By Denise Castañon.

Recipe File
Tomato soup for a rainy, busy Tuesday night.By Joanna Sooper.

Video Exclusive: The Kids’ Menu Experiment

School Open House Guide

Editor’s Note

As parents, we’re told over and over again: Feed your kids what you eat, when you eat it. Long gone are the days when kids ate hot dogs in the kitchen at 5:30 pm, and parents had pork chops by candlelight after bedtime. Like many of you, I’ve done my best to follow that advice, which means that if I’m cooking, say, congee or curry, then that’s what my kids are having for dinner, too. (In a true emergency, there’s always the old “Eat three bites and then you can have a bowl of cereal” get-out-of-jail-free card.) So why then is it that we so often fall back into old patterns when we take our kids out to dinner, feeding them chicken nuggets or pasta with butter?

We wondered what would happen if the “kids menu” featured food that was just as challenging, delicious and seasonal as the regular menu at any of the fantastic restaurants that have made Portland an eater’s paradise. Chef Jason French of Ned Ludd, photographer Sung Kokko, videographer Nick Macdonald and seven special guests from the Growing Gardens program, aged 5 to 8, helped us find out.

Elsewhere in our annual food issue, you’ll find the staff’s hands-on reviews of those new meal-delivery kits that are showing up in your newsfeed, pitched as dinnertime salvation for busy parents. Plus, great recipes from French and others, a Family Supper visit to Portland’s newest mecca for Indian cuisine and up close and personal with the Oregon kid who brought kale salad to the White House. Yum  — hope you’re hungry! (And if you’re not, there’s always cereal.) — Julia Silverman

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