Hi!
We’re Fanny and Greta, dear friends with deep backgrounds in sustainable food—who also happened to have had babies within a month of each other last year.
With toddlers now in our arms, we’re in the thick of figuring out how to introduce our kids to yet more of the world of food while also feeding the rest of our families and, you know, working, and occasionally bathing ourselves. As everyone who has come before us well knows, this is a genuine challenge, so we launched the Green Spoon as a way to capture our learnings in real time and create a place for parental solidarity.
This is a space for the food lovers, home cooks, would-be home cooks and anyone who needs a bit of inspiration and gentle guidance in their family kitchen. It’s for anyone who wants to feel good about what they're cooking for their family—even if it's just one or two wins a week—and those who could benefit from some tips on how to stay energized and engaged for the long haul.
As passionate home cooks, seasoned food shoppers, and experienced recipe writers, we couldn’t wait to start cooking for our kids. But when the time came to introduce solids, we were overwhelmed by all of the moving pieces, not to mention an Internet’s-full of conflicting information. Honey contains botulism! Give them all the allergens right away! Gagging is ok! Choking is bad! Salt will kill them! Salt won’t kill them! Even for two people who are confident and competent in the kitchen and at the market, it’s A LOT.
When we started to explore our options for feeding our babies we were surprised by how few of the best practice recipes and off-the-shelf foods were actually delicious. It’s pretty telling that most adults—us included—are more likely to wipe a glob of baby food on their pants than taste it themselves. We knew these formulations were safe and wholesome, but they just…didn’t taste…good.
We quickly found ourselves making simple adjustments to our homemade fruit and vegetable purees and to the store-bought foods we’d use to supplement and watch as our kids truly delighted in the experience of tasting solid foods for the first time. It wasn’t rocket science, but it made a tangible difference.
As our kids have grown, we continue to be guided by flavor. It’s more intuitive than you might think: we more or less do to their food what we do to ours. Starting with great, seasonal ingredients, we keep it simple but incorporate a variety of textures, colors, herbs and spices, and a few non-negotiables like good olive oil. It’s our belief (not to mention a well-studied fact) that sound nutrition and a focus on flavor lead to a lifetime of openness and enthusiasm at the table. That said, we haven’t yet come to the dreaded 18-month-old “I hate everything” picky eater phase… but we’re staying optimistic!
Before we launched the Green Spoon, we asked a bunch of fellow parents about their experience of feeding their kids and the same stuff came up again and again: feelings of failure; utter bafflement; major time constraints; deep ruts; being stretched thin; lacking good resources; environmental, nutritional and economic concerns. And, lastly, how the fuck are other people doing this?
In response to the above, here’s what we’re planning to include in the weekly Green Spoon-iverse:
Straightforward and delicious recipes that you can shmoosh for your baby and zhuj into a satisfying meal for yourself and your older kids (exhibit A is below)
Food diaries from parents about what they and their kids are truly eating (think Grub Street Diet Jr., but please don’t come for us, Vox Media)
Nutrient-rich recipes for babies and toddlers that are actually delicious and yield multiple meals
Breakfast recipes that are either truly easy enough to make on frantic mornings or ones you can prep ahead
How to batch prepare a single ingredient and use it in multiple ways over the course of a few days (e.g., a pots of beans, a batch of grains, a huge roasted squash)
Climate-conscious ingredient lists—we’re talking mostly vegetarian with minimal high quality dairy and some responsibly sourced fish and meat.
How to resurrect and repurpose leftovers for 1,000 days without killing any of your loved ones with foodborne illnesses
Interviews with child nutrition experts, pediatricians and other people with impressive degrees who will reassure us that we’re not destroying our children because we gave them cow’s milk too early
Lists of our favorite baby-friendly pantry staples, essential kitchen equipment, off-the-shelf baby food and snacks we like, and favorite pieces of dining accessories.
Are we missing anything? Click here to let us know—we want to make this as useful to you as possible.
And finally, if any or all of this sounds good to you, please subscribe! Free subscribers will have access to our public posts (about 1x/month) whereas paid subscribers will get the whole kit and caboodle (4-5 emails/month).
About Us
Fanny and Greta have been friends since college, i.e. 10,000 years. When they were mutually ready for the adventure of motherhood, they may or may not have made an effort to sync their pregnancies. By some miracle, their daughters were born one month apart in 2022.
Fanny is the founder of the lifestyle and kitchenware brand, Permanent Collection, and the author of the culinary memoir, Always Home: A Daughter’s Recipes & Stories (Knopf, 2020). She is the illustrator of, and co-author (along with her mother, pioneering chef and food activist, Alice Waters) of My Pantry. She holds a PhD in art history and writes about art a lot, but her next book—which will also be published by Knopf—is devoted entirely to salad. Ironically, she was so nauseated during her pregnancy that even looking at a leaf of lettuce made her want to vomit.
Greta is a direct-to-consumer food and beverage veteran, having co-founded the farm-to-table grocery delivery service, Good Eggs. In 2023, she co-authored (with Jake Gyllenhaal) The New York Times Bestselling children’s book, The Secret Society of Aunts & Uncles (published by Feiwel & Friends). She eats a mountain of popcorn every day and remains insanely anxious about her daughter choking on food.
