Popsicle Smoothies, Sprinkle Oatmeal + Endlessly Extendable Everything Plates
A Cub Street Diet from Nick Evans of Crunch Time Kitchen
Hi friends,
Today we bring you the fifth installment of the Cub Street Diet, our monthly column devoted to what other people are feeding their kids.
Here to recount a handful of days in his family kitchen is our first Cub Street Diet dad: Nick Evans, the Denver-based creator of Crunch Time Kitchen. A self-trained home cook, Nick has developed over 1,000 recipes on Crunch Time Kitchen, each of which comes with thorough, good-natured explanations, methods, and tips. His first cookbook, Love Your Leftovers, was published in 2014. He’s also been featured on two major cooking shows over the years, including NBC’s show Food Fighters in 2015 and, more recently, the Netflix cooking show, Cook At All Costs.
Most importantly—as far as we’re concerned—Nick is the father of a nine-year-old son and seven-year-old daughter, both of whom are prolific snackers.
If at the end of reading Nick’s account you want more Everything Plates in your life, you can sign up for his Substack Crunch Time Club or join the nearly 60K people who follow him on Instagram.
We hope you’ll find Nick’s account to be a breath of fresh, Denver air. He might not make it look like a total cakewalk, but at least there are sprinkles!
Fanny + Greta
Saturday, February 24th
In our family, most Saturdays are jam-packed with activities. On this particular Saturday though, we had a blank calendar during the day—a welcome change. I wish I could say that this meant that I started my Cub Street Diet journal with a full spread of homemade baked goods and perfectly folded omelets. But, nah.
Instead, my daughter (7) came down the stairs and wanted a smoothie. Normally, I keep an array of frozen fruits in the freezer for smoothies, but I was unfortunately out. Will that, however, deter me from smoothie-making? Absolutely not.
Listen closely, friends. What happened next is one of those odd parent moments where I can’t decide if this is going to be the best idea I’ve ever had or if I’ve started a trend I’ll forever regret.
I put a strawberry popsicle in a smoothie. Is there more sugar in a popsicle than in normal frozen fruit? Obviously, yes. But, I sometimes put extra sweetener (like honey or agave) in a smoothie anyway, so I figured I’d just leave that out and call it a day. So, yes, I put a strawberry popsicle into my children’s breakfast smoothie along with a banana, some chia seeds, and a spoonful of almond butter.
This probably comes as no surprise, but it was delicious.
When my older son (9) came down the stairs, it immediately started a sibling battle because he had missed most of the popsicle smoothie. Early bird gets the popsicle, as they say. Ultimately, I relented. By 8am on Saturday morning we are down two popsicles.
My kids have gotten to the age where I don’t schedule a set snack time in between breakfast and lunch, but that doesn’t mean snacking doesn’t happen. It seems like we have prematurely entered the pre-teen years of constant snacking. Even before lunch is in view, there’s a trail of Hot Cheetos, popcorn, and apple slices scattered around the house.
It was hard to document, but according to my notes it appears that my children actually never stopped eating between breakfast and lunch.
For lunch on this particular Saturday I was getting ready for a dinner party we were hosting that night so lunch was mac and cheese and what my Mom (aka Nonna) calls an “Everything Plate.” Everything Plates have, well, everything. From salami to chopped carrots, celery and dried fruit—you’ll find it on that plate.
An Everything Plate is great because what isn’t eaten goes in the fridge to anticipate the constant snacking that will occur between lunch and dinner.
Speaking of dinner, we hosted a few families of close friends for dinner and drinks and I made one of my favorite recipes for feeding a crowd": my Korean-Style Slow Cooker Tacos. It’s easy to toss everything in a slow cooker and I season it with gochujang, rice vinegar, soy sauce, and brown sugar, and let it simmer all day. Then I shred the meat and serve it with flour or corn tortillas and shredded cabbage.
I also served my version with Spanish rice (out of the box thank you very much—GOYA FTW) and homemade guacamole whipped up in the molcajete.
The kid version of dinner was separated so they could make their own tacos.
Saturday February 25th
I swear I didn’t plan it this way but my documenting for this Cub Street Diet happened to fall on my birthday. This means that it was kind of a strange day for me because I tried to cook as little as possible.
My wife woke up and snagged donuts from my favorite donut spot in Denver, City Donuts. They don’t make fancy, hip donuts, but they make all the classics and are a constant in our donut rotation.
The kids rounded out their breakfast with some Greek yogurt and I had some scrambled eggs alongside an apple fritter the size of my head . My forty-first year started off right!
For lunch on this, my day of celebration, I did a thing I try to not do very often which is make separate lunches for my children. When I do commit to this sort of thing, I add a little caveat: they can have separate lunches, but at least one thing on their plate has to be leftovers. It’s important to note that this is generally not a punishment or difficult. Leftovers in my house are usually delicious. But I just genuinely need to clean out the fridge on occasion and I don’t mind dressing up some leftovers as separate lunches.
So my daughter got leftover pasta with parmesan cheese and a veggie plate (re-organized Everything Plate from the day before? Impossible to know.)
My son, who I swear is my son but doesn’t like cheese, got a cheese-less charcuterie plate of cured meats, fruits, and veggies with crackers. I also took time during this meal to remind him that he is technically ⅛th Italian and not liking cheese is a problem.
For dinner on my birthday, we went out to a restaurant! We’ve just recently entered a new phase in parenting where it is somewhat enjoyable to go out to dinner with our children, so we brought them along instead of getting a babysitter.
I picked a neighborhood Indian spot called The Spice Room . The restaurant is fairly new in our neighborhood, but I’ve never had even a mediocre meal there. They make really outstanding traditional Indian dishes. It’s also located in an old diner so it has a charming vibe to it.
My son ordered off the full menu (achievement unlocked) and got the momo dumplings. I got the Lamb Tandoori which was beautifully cooked. My daughter got the chicken fingers off the kids menu which I allowed because I knew I’d be able to sneak at least one and dip it in curry sauce.
Copious amounts of naan were consumed.
Monday February 26th
A school day. Even though the Denver Public School that both our kids attend offers free (yes, FREE) lunches to all kids, I still let my kids request homemade lunch twice a week. It’s a balance that works in our house.
The truth is that if they ate a homemade lunch every day, I would pack them essentially the same thing, which I don’t believe encourages healthy eating.
On this particular day though, I did pack their lunches and it included the following bento-box style situations:
For my daughter, lunch centered around melon, sliced radish and carrot, a thermos of hot butter pasta with parmesan cheese, some yogurt with honey, and a Justin’s Peanut Butter candy.
My son got similar fruit and veggies with hummus and pretzels and pepperoni on the side.
I think it’s important to take a minute to address kid lunches. Before I had children, and even in the early years, I had dreams of making beautiful lunches. I have been known to make such lunches on occasion. But, all it takes is a few COMPLETELY FULL lunchboxes returning home with your kids and I guarantee your spirit for Pinterest-worthy school lunches will die.
So, instead of stressing over it, I try to make sure that I send my kids with an assortment of fruit and vegetables. I actually don’t want it to be too exciting because I want them to enjoy the FREE version of school lunch which we are lucky to have access to (and which are genuinely very good).
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I skipped breakfast because I made lunch before breakfast. Breakfast on this Monday was something we do regularly that I think may surprise some people (or maybe not considering you just saw me put a popsicle in a smoothie).
I make a big pot of steel-cut oats and I let my kids put sprinkles on it.
I don’t do this everyday but a few times a month I let my kids have “Sprinkle Oatmeal.” (You can read my full Treatise on Sprinkle Oatmeal here.)
In short, a moderate amount of sprinkles actually contains less sugar than many common oatmeal toppings (jam, brown sugar, honey) and it’s exciting enough that kids will eat an ENTIRE bowl of steel cut oats if sprinkles are in the picture.
Plus, the judgy looks you get from other parents during drop-off when your kids blurt out that they had sprinkles for breakfast is *chef’s kiss* amazing.
For dinner on this particular night we had leftover taco fixings from Korean tacos two nights ago. This dinner makes for delicious leftovers and, in fact, I had enough to freeze for a future dinner—bonus!
Tuesday February 27th
During the night, my daughter developed a mild fever and when she woke up in the morning she seemed sick enough to stay home from school—so that’s what we did. She got a bit worse during the day so I very quickly changed my meal plan to make some delicious homemade chicken soup.
For breakfast, my family had oatmeal (although not with sprinkles, but with fruit—kiwi and banana) and I had a breakfast sandwich because I’ve been on a huge breakfast sandwich kick lately.
For lunch, my son (who went to school) got school lunch (WIN) and I fed my daughter some chicken ramen for lunch, which she wasn’t super into on this particular day.
During the day, in between working and starting episodes of My Little Pony for my daughter, I worked on a Chicken Lemon Soup which I thought was my best bet at getting her back to school the next day.
For the broth, I started around lunch and simmered a whole chicken with celery, onions, parsley, garlic, black peppercorns, and a whole split lemon.
When my son came home from school, I made both kids a snack plate with my latest cheater snack that I’m in love with: GUACKERS. It’s like crackers but with a smear of avocado on top.
Plus, I added some fruits, nuts, and pretzels because I figured my kids wouldn’t eat the Guackers. I was right, but it was their loss and my Guacker gain.
Back to soup talk… I strained my broth after a few hours of simmering and then made a soup with freshly diced onion, carrot, celery, garlic, shredded chicken, and the broth. More fresh lemon went into the finished soup and I served it with orzo pasta and parsley.
There wasn’t an exact recipe I used for this version. Most online recipes use chicken breasts or a rotisserie chicken but I wanted to start with a whole chicken for the broth which gives some great deep flavor to the soup.
It was a winner and I’ll be darned if my daughter didn’t wake up school-ready the next day!
I could go on with this Cub Street Diet, but I think you get the idea. My meal planning is somewhere between homemade classics and impromptu trashy snacks. It works for us, though! And hopefully it can inspire you to cook something delicious for your family this week.
See you Sunday!
I love the build your own taco plates! I hope to copy this one day when my son is older!
Obsessed with Cub Street Diet and so happy to see someone from Denver featured. Would love a “Green Spoon parents of Denver” meet up :)