Author of "Kalamata's Kitchen: Taste Buds In Harmony" Sarah Thomas joined us to give her expert tips on how to introduce diverse food to kids. "Taste Buds in Harmony" is available wherever books are sold starting Tuesday, June 28.

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Introduce New and Unfamiliar Foods to Your Kids!

it's officially summer. So of course we have all the hot dogs were craving and the hamburgers that are gonna be in the grill here this weekend, but that doesn't mean she can't out incorporating more diverse foods at your next barbecue and don't count out introducing those new kinds of foods to your kids as well. That's true. But as we all may know, that may not be so easy to do. So here to teach us how to do just that is the author of the new Children's book, Kalamata is kitchen taste buds in harmony. So sarah thomas, thank you for joining us this morning. So what is your main tip for getting kids to try new food? Well, thank you so much for having me. And honestly, the biggest tip is, it has to be fun. It has to be fun for the kids. And so what my company does Kalamata kitchen is we really get kids excited and inspired to experience the whole world through adventures with food. So we make trying something new into adventures and adventures are fun. Yes. And so a lot of times I think like trying a new food is really, you know, it's scary, right? It's it's that that's how kids don't understand. Exactly. And it's, it's really about the fear of the unfamiliar. So if you do things like tell stories, create adventures, create fun little kind of games to get your kids involved, then they're more likely to be part of the process. It becomes less scary and more exciting to try something new. Absolutely. And one of the things that I think is really interesting is you have a taste bud pledge that's inside of this book and I want to read from the book, it basically says I promise to keep my mind open and my fork ready to try each new food at least two times and to share what's on my plate when someone doesn't have enough, which I think is so amazing, so what sort of the origin of the taste bud pledge here, you know, the pledge is really about three things, it's about someone being curious, wanting to be curious enough to try something new, then it's about being, having the courage really to take that step to try something new and then once you have that, it's really about the compassion that it takes to share that knowledge, piece of yourself and a piece of someone else's life with them with, with with everyone around you, we should, we should try some of it, so we know you brought some goodies, so tell us about it, so we can give it a try, this is one of my favorite little activities to do with kids, right? Like a lot of parents will go, you know, my kid doesn't, I don't think they're gonna like spicy food and I'm like there's a lot of indian kids in the world, you know kids can do it, so let's see how we do it and you know, we just did this with with my my friend Henry who's eight years old very soon and we put these spice blends that we created actually in tandem with taste buds and Harmony. These are some of our best chef friends made some blends for us that represent harmony and spices what we have right here. Well we asked Henry if you smell these, what do you want, what do they make you think of? And there, it's really interesting because some of them like they say prawn curry masala on it or they say fried chicken spice and they smell them and he goes I want to put it on popcorn, I want to put it on potato salad and I want to put that potato salad and fruit and so it's really, yeah, it's just really just like first of all letting them be the ones that pick, you know what goes on, what they're involved in the process, they're more likely to be involved in the outcome that they already know already. That's exactly right. You're putting something slightly unfamiliar onto something they already love. It's like it's a really kind of winning situation, you have a favorite flavor, it says baker and I really enjoyed this popcorn basically impossible to pick. I mean all three of these chefs create such incredible things for us um The prawn curry masala. The spice this, this blend goes for is actually part of the recipe that's featured in this book. It's and you know I really want to give a shout out to Kyo Pang who's the chef that inspired the story in this book. She's a babylonian Malaysian chef right here in new york city at copa Tm and I spoke to her about her food philosophy and it was really powerful to me the way she spoke about how spices and babylonian culture and Malaysian food really all have this overarching philosophy of harmony and we can find harmony through food. And then put that, put that energy out into the world and create harmony in our own lives and that's really what this. Well, thank you so much for joining us this morning. Sarah thomas, author of kalamata kitchen taste buds in harmony. Thank you again.