I find these sweet, soft carrots are as good as candy, but you might have trouble convincing a child of that. You could always call them carrot pops...

Roasted Baby Carrots

1) Dig up a bunch or two of baby carrots at your famers' market or grocer. Wash. Tear off the greens leaving a couple of inches of the stem.

2) Toss with olive oil and salt and pepper.

3) Place on a baking sheet and roast until tender, about 40 minutes at 400F, 200C, Gas Mark 6.

I like the idea of Peter eating plenty of fresh carrots, but think what the McGregors must do without if Peter is successful at foraging! Never mind, they ate Peter's father in a pie.

Grated Carrot Salad with Raspberry Vinegar 

 Kids like the sweet fruity taste of the berry vinegar.

1) Buy whole organic carrots, wash, then have an older child shred them on a grater watching out for knuckle scrapes.

2) Mix a salad dressing with a splash of raspberry or blackberry vinegar, oil, salt and pepper to taste.

3) Toss the carrots in the dressing.

Since 1903 the Beatrix Potter stories have unendingly enchanted generations of children and those who read to them. The beloved classics have been translated, made into cartoons, films, and television shows. But none of this would have happened had Beatrix Potter not resorted to self-publishing her charming books following rejection by several publishers. My daughter (and I) particularly love the BBC series with its beautiful music, gorgeous scenery, and true-to-the-drawings animation as well as live action.

There are   a number of delightful edibles throughout the Potter books. And most of them are healthy parent-pleasing vegetables!

Try a crudités platter for kids with many different vegetables. During a trip to your famers’ market have your kids select raw carrots, radishes, sliced cucumbers, cherry or grape tomatoes, green, red, orange, or yellow peppers, celery, Belgian endive spears, romaine lettuce, cauliflower, edamame, lightly steamed or blanched, snow peas, English peas, green beans, and broccoli. Try sliced baby turnips as well. Cut into kid sized pieces as needed. Arrange prettily on a platter, then make this dip.

Dip

1 ripe avocado

1 1/2 cups low fat buttermilk

1 cup chopped herbs; basil, tarragon, chive, parsley or a combination

1 T white or apple vinegar

Salt and pepper

Add all to a food processor and blend until smooth. 

Pour into a small bowl and serve alongside the vegetables.

In honour of Maurice Sendak, who gave us so many wonderful stories and illustrations from A Hole is to Dig to In the Night Kitchen and Where the Wild Things Are, this basic coffee cake is easy for kids to help make.

In The Night Kitchen Coffee Cakes

2 cups flour

1 T baking powder

½ t salt

¾ cup sugar

1 t cinnamon

A pinch nutmeg

2 eggs

1 t vanilla

¾ cup milk

8 T butter melted, more for greasing tins

 Streusal topping:

4 T butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup flour

a pinch of salt

1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

Combine streusal ingredients until crumbly.

Preheat the oven to 375. 

Combine the dry ingredients.

Combine the wet ingredients.

Combine the wet and dry ingredients and fold.

Pour into greased muffin tins or muffin papers until 2/3 full.

Pour streusal on top.

With a butter knife cut through the streusal topping so that some if it is forced into the cake.

Bake for 18 minutes or until a toothpick stuck in the center of one cake comes out clean.  

Uneaten muffins can be reheated or frozen.

I gave my five year old a Mary Poppins birthday party.  Mary herself even blew in to sing Spoonful of Sugar with the little guests.

I served English nursery food for the kids; bread and butter sandwiches, blancmange, shaped jello chock-full of fruit, ginger beer and cambric tea. I gave the adults sausage rolls and ale. I also offered some extremely simple cookies.

Spoonful of Sugar Cookies

Packaged sugar cookie dough (of course you can use your favorite scratch recipe)

Various colored sugars or, in a pinch, cinnamon sugar

1.On a piece of cardboard, draw and cut out the shape of a small spoon. This is tedious, but on most spoon-shaped cookie cutters the handle of the spoon is too thin to hold together well after baking, so make certain your handle is a sturdy width.

2. Roll out the sugar dough to about 1/8 inch.

3. Cut out cookies with a knife around the cardboard spoon.

4. With you finger make a small dent in the “bowl” of the spoon.

5.  Sprinkle the bowl with colored sugars or cinnamon sugar and bake according to instructions on the package.

Voila. Spoonfuls of Sugar Cookies to accompany a viewing of the film.  Or your own Mary Poppins party. 

There's no disputing it. Winnie the Pooh loved honey. And so often do his millions of juvenile readers. For something fancier than toast and honey or a honey stick, but simple enough to kids to help or make themselves, is this Greek treat.

 Visit your farmers' market and have the kids buy honey, nuts, seasonal fruits, and maybe even cream.

Whipped Honey Cream with and Nuts and Fruit

1 cup local honey; blackberry or raspberry are particularly suitable

1/2 pint whipping cream

1 cup nuts of any kind or mixed; walnuts, almonds, pecans, filberts, but no peanuts

Fruit; berries, apples, strawberries, stone fruits, even dried fruit, but not citrus

1) Whip the honey until light, using a firm whisk or a hand held electric mixer.

2) Whip the cream until fairly, stiff by hand or mixer.

3) Break the nuts into less than whole pieces, but not fully chopped. It's fine to skip the nuts if allergic.

4) Fold cream and honey together. They should not be completely blended. You want the cool, bland flavour of the cream to contrast with the sticky, sweet honey.

5) Fold in the nuts.

6) Serve on plates or a platter surrounded by fruit for dipping and scooping. 

Cheating version:

Bottled honey

Already mixed whip cream or milk substitute dessert topping

If you can't get enough Downton Abbey it’s time to rent Brideshead Revisited. Downton is a light lunch compared to Brideshead’s feast of many episodes. If you are unfamiliar with the book by Evelyn Waugh and the film, or series, it chronicles the story of a “middle class” fellow interacting with the aristocratic Flyte family from post World War One to the Second World War. Long and lush, you see the opulent life of the very wealthy brought to you by a substantial television budget from the 1970’s. We’ll never see the like of either again.

I enjoy watching the series but the characters are not terribly likable. Sweet, handsome, alcoholic Sebastian is sort of lovable but he leaves the story and viewers feel as bereft from his loss as his family does.  And I am forced to wonder what does Charles Ryder see in Julia except her aristocratic upbringing?  What does she see in him? What do they do all day? What have they to offer the world? Charles Ryder suffers through every relationship of his life bored to tears with his own family, his wife, his children, his flamboyant Oxford friends; everybody but Sebastian and Julia Flyte (and she, frankly is the most boring of them all).

I have just read a book called Mad World about the real house and families that inspired Brideshead. Oddly, Waugh and his friends, and there were many of them, come across as vastly more fun, kind, and loving than the stiffs in the series.

Now let’s eat. In the book, and briefly in the series (but not in the film) Charles Ryder has a private club dinner with Rex Mottram, the Canadian businessman and politician who will marry Julie Flyte.

" I was there twenty minutes before Rex. If I had to spend an evening with him, it should, at any rate, be in my own way. I remember the evening well-- soup of oseille, a sole quite simply cooked in a white wine sauce, a caneton a la presse, a lemon soufflé. At the last minute, fearing the whole thing was too simple for Rex I added caviare aux blinis. And for the wine I let him give me a bottle of 1916 Montrachet, then at its prime, and with the duck, a Clos de Bere of 1904.”

Since not many or you will have a duck press handy I’ll give you the Lemon Soufflé.  Only many people break out in hives at the thought of creating a soufflé. So I’ll give you a fail proof mousse.

Lemon Mousse

5 eggs

1 cup sugar

1/4-pound sweet butter, melted

1 cup fresh lemon juice

1 tablespoon grated lemon zest

1 ½ to 2 cups heavy cream

Beat the eggs and the sugar until pale.

Slowly pour in the butter while blending.

Add the lemon juice and zest.

Place over a double boiler.

Stir with a wooden spoon until thick, 10 – 15 minutes.

Cover with plastic wrap and cool completely for at least two hours.

Whip the cream to a loose or thick consistency depending on your preference.

Fold the cooled lemon mixture with the whipped cream.

Serve in individual dishes with mint and/or lemon zest garnish.