How to Cook Healthy Food for Kids : Frozen Food

Fresh food just tastes better.  Therefore, if you want to get your kids to embrace vegetables, serve them fresh vegetables that are in season.  You can check out the application at the bottom of my blog to see what foods are in season in your area.  Unfortunately, if you live in an area like mine that actually has four seasons, nothing is in season right now.

Wintertime is an ideal time to eat frozen vegetables.  Frozen vegetables are picked at peak season, then flash frozen to preserve their freshness.  By cooking frozen vegetables, your kids can continue to enjoy the taste and benefits of vegetables anytime and anywhere.

One of the key historical figures we can thank for high quality frozen vegetables is Clarence Birdseye of the Birds Eye Frozen Food Company.  In his biography, Birdseye: The Adventures of a Curious Man, Mark Kurlansky shows that Birdseye was much more than just a man with a clever name.  He was a brilliant inventor, hunter, entrepreneur, and teacher.  He is also considered to be the founder of the modern frozen food industry.  

While ice fishing with the Intuit, Birdseye discovered that the fish he caught froze instantly and tasted fresh when thawed.  He later discovered that the key to fresh tasting frozen food was how rapidly the food was frozen.  Food that is frozen slowly develops large ice crystals while food that is frozen quickly develops smaller ice crystals.  Larger ice crystals are more damaging to the cellular structure of food.  Additionally, when slowly frozen foods thaw, cellular fluids leak from the ice crystal-damaged tissue, resulting in a mushy and unappetizing consistency to the food.

Birdseye developed new technology to quickly freeze food, preserve their architecture, and enhance their taste.  After running countless experiments, he found that certain types of food such as fish fillets, spinach, and peas are particularly amenable to freezing.  In the following movie trailer, I introduce Dr. Freeze, an infamous character with the power to freeze food.  Happy Holidays!

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For a tasty recipe featuring frozen spinach, try making these spinach croquettes:  http://everydaysisters.blogspot.com/2011/08/spinach-croquettes.html

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Birdseye

Kurlansky, Mark (2012).  Birdseye : The Adventures of a Curious Man.  New York: Doubleday