​Give a kid a cookie, and you feed that kid for a moment. Teach a kid to cook, and you'll likely get some cookies out of the deal. More >>

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DooF-a-Palooza aims to educate kids about sustainable food.

​DooF-a-Palooza: A Unique Family Food Festival

Where: Jack London Square

When: Sun., May 22, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

Cost: Free

The rundown: Farmers, chefs, magicians, and clowns all sharing a stage? Yep, DooF-a-Palooza, the "food educational experience," is back for a third run, this year in a larger space at Jack London Square. Your little Tusks and Perillos will thank you for introducing them to hands-on food activities with names like "shrimp splash," "throw dough," and "mega-pop challenge." Foodie mom heartthrob Joey Altman, Cal Peternell of Chez Panisse Café (what, you thought the Alice wouldn't somehow be represented here?), and, yes, Violet the Clown will all be on hand to lead cooking demos highlighting the healthy and the sustainable.

Alex Hochman

This is the neatest your dinner will look all night.

​As parents, we're constantly begging our children to be more hands on. We get all exultant over the Zeum or the Exploratorium because they're hands on museums. We peer over our iPhone screens to yell at the kids to turn off the tv and pick up a book. We laud ourselves as breeders of honed athletes when our 10-year-old's hoops shot even hits the rim, or our 8-year-old doesn't spear herself with a lacrosse stick. But when it comes to food, "Hands off" is the regular mantra at our kitchen table. "Put that sausage down now!" and "Have you ever heard of a fork?" are phrases commonly mixed into our dinner conversation. Maybe that's why Assab Eritrean Cuisine has become our girls' most requested restaurant as of late. Hands off simply isn't an option.

At Assab, a hubcap-sized platter chock full of vegetables and/or meats atop a layer of injera, a spongy bread with a mild sour buzz, is plunked down on the table. After that, you and your kids have at it like a pack of wild hyenas picking apart a wildebeest (yes, I've been forced to watch The Lion King 10 too many times). No utensils, just hands and injera to scoop up your feast. It gets all primal and ugly really fast but in a good way.

We typically order two combinations, the vegetable and the meat. The veggies include a blend of potatoes, carrots, and bell peppers as well as zucchini and okra, both stewed in a sauce our girls think tastes like marinara. Meats include cubed beef, lamb, and a chicken drumstick, all simmered in clarified butter. Our older daughter doesn't love spicy food but she does totally fine here, deeming only the potatoes to be a little hot. A few extra orders of injera are a must, not just because it's fun for all ages to see whether it sticks to your forehead (it does), but also because you'll want to sop up every last shred on the platter. The novelty of eating with your hands would wear thin pretty quickly if the food itself weren't delicious. That's not a problem at Assab.

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Joe Morford

Kid nutrition blogger Katie Sullivan Morford.

​Registered dietitian Katie Sullivan Morford is a food and nutrition writer with more than 20 years of professional writing experience. She's been published in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Cooking Light, Bon Appétit, Self, and Parenting, to name only a few. With her brother Mark Sullivan, chef/partner at Spruce in San Francisco, and partner at the Village Pub in Woodside, Morford co-wrote a regular recipe feature for the San Jose Mercury News. Her new blog, Mom's Kitchen Handbook, focuses on quick and healthy recipes busy parents can make for their kids. SFoodie sat down with Morford recently to find out more about the blog, microwaved sponges, and why birthdays mean Cheetos time for her three daughters.

SFoodie: How did you come up with the name Mom's Kitchen Handbook? In a city like San Francisco, where lots of dads are interested in cooking, was there a concern that you were shutting them out?

Morford: Let's start with the "handbook" part. I like the idea of a handbook because it cover lots of non-recipe-related things, like how to best sterilize a kitchen sponge. It's not purely a cooking blog. As for the "mom's" part, I wondered if I was essentially shutting out 50 percent of potential readers, but honestly, I find that it's mostly moms who ask me questions about nutrition and cooking. Moms are mostly who I hang out with so I felt that was my natural audience.

What's been your biggest surprise so far? A post that got a big response?

Well, going back to the sponge thing, it was a silly little post about microwaving sponges to keep them clean. Unsexy, uninteresting, right? But people loved it, I think because it was functional. I did a simple piece on do-it-yourself microwave popcorn, just a brown paper bag, popcorn and olive oil, and people talked about it like it was Zen. A lot of moms I know were doing cleanse diets and I wrote something about the potential pitfalls of that. I was actually surprised that most of my response was positive. Nothing too angry.

Do your kids ever just want a bucket of Popeyes?

Absolutely. My girls give me eye rolls and say, "I wish mom wasn't a nutritionist," but overall, I think they like that I can cook well.

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Alex Hochman

Kids love the Matterhorn's Natural ($38), a blend of Emmenthal and Gruyère.

​A holiday meal out with the kids seems like a great idea ― until it's time to pick a spot that makes everyone happy. House of Prime Rib? Have fun waiting an hour in the packed bar while little Jimmy overloads on the free snack mix and breaks a few martini glasses. Tea at the Garden Court? That'll run you $38 per child for a few small reindeer-shaped Wonder Bread sandwiches, bland cookies with red sprinkles, and tea your daughter takes two sips of before demanding a Coke. Benihana? Nothing says Christmas like a grown man flipping shrimp tails into his hat.

Our family celebrates at the Matterhorn, the temple of fondue on Van Ness. Large vats of melted cheese make for an engaging family meal that keeps the kids busy and focused.
Swiss couple Brigitte and Andrew Thorpe (she works front of the house, he's the chef) have quietly been the proprietors here since 1994.

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