There are tons of ways for kids to help with this meal. The kids loved tasting the noodles and couldn’t stop snacking on the shredded cheese.
While your kids are helping out, you can also pause to discuss which FOOD GROUP each ingredient belongs to and share some fun facts about this meal’s featured ingredient: LEMONS
🍋food groups1🍋
- Fruits: lemon
- Veggies: asparagus, tomatoes2
- Grains: pasta
- Protein: none
- Dairy: cheese
1For information about food and health, go to ChooseMyPlate.gov.
2Tomatoes are classified by botanists as fruit, but nutritionally and legally they are considered veggies.
🍋Lemons🍋
- Lemons are high in Vitamin C and have strong antibacterial properties that may help fight some diseases.
- Lemons grow on trees that produce the fruit year round.
- It is believed that the first lemons were grown in Asia.
- Lemons have a sour taste because they contain citric acid.
Here are some creative ways for your kid to be your personal Sous Chef as you make our Three Cheese Pasta with Lemon, Cherry Tomatoes & Asparagus. Simply hover over each image for details. And make sure your little dudes wash their hands before starting!
🍴Pasta🍴
To help prepare the pasta, kids can:
Bring water to a boil
This teaches kids to pay attention to the stovetop and see what happens to water when it gets that hot. Yay science!
Try Noodles!
Let kids decide if noodles are done. Hungry toddlers love this job!
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🍴Veggies🍴
To prepare the veggies, kids may:
Snip the asparagus
Trim the asparagus and snip asparagus stalks into smaller pieces for cooking (see below for recs on tools).
Halve the Tomatoes*
See below for our recs on awesome kitchen knives for kids.
Measure & pour the salt
Stir veggies as they cook
For the asparagus, we recommend these Kuhn Rikon snippers for kids and these OXO shears for adults. For halving the tomatoes, check out these FOUR KIDS KNIVES that we reviewed in a recent post.
🍴Sauce🍴
To prepare the sauce, kids may:
Measure out cheeses
Zest the lemon*
This is a fun challenge for little ones.
Juice the lemon
Mix veggies into sauce
For zesting the lemon, we recommend this Deiss zester. And for juicing, we love the classic juicer.
*Note: For toddlers especially, these tasks require adult supervision and/or assistance, as items may be sharp, hot or otherwise dangerous.
Back to Three Cheese Pasta with Lemon, Cherry Tomatoes & Asparagus Recipe
