Like many aging adults, my 80-year-old mother is becoming a finicky eater in her golden years. Many seniors face a loss of appetite and more than 75 percent of them over the age of 80 experience a loss of taste and smell, according to studies. My mother isn’t having any problems right now with her diet, but my sisters and I want to ensure that she maintains good eating habits and proper nutrition.

Mom isn’t able to cook the way she did when she would easily pull together meals for a family of six, and quite frankly, she doesn’t need to or want to. Plus, she turned away years ago from the unhealthy cooking habits she learned while growing up, and now eats low-fat foods and lots of vegetables and fruits. Her favorite breakfast is oatmeal with fruit; she doesn’t eat much food with refined sugar.

My sister, Barbara, has been cooking up plenty of food on Sundays and delivering enough to our mother to last several days. My mother’s  sister lives two blocks away and drops by every week with a dish or two. My other sisters and I cook when we visit and my mother still prepares some simple meals for herself. But my sisters and I figured my mother also needs food on standby. So, we’re also trying bulk cooking.

On a recent weekend, I took to the kitchen in a flurry of dicing and slicing and sautéing. After I returned from the grocery store, I encouraged my Mom to go relax while I turned up the music and began cooking. By the time I finished, my Mom had become the head chef emeritus and I had to urge her to take it easy.

We prepared vegetable-beef stew. I did all the heavy lifting but my mom wanted to tinker with the seasonings and made the decisions about how long the stew would simmer and the order we added the ingredients. We had a good time.

I’ll be doing more bulk cooking for my mother when I visit during the Christmas holidays. But I’ve learned a lesson: as long as my mother is able, she wants to be involved in helping put together bulk dishes. Cooking in bulk becomes a production and involves kitchen artistry. My mother wants  to be a part of it, even in a limited way.

Related posts:

1. Me & Grandma: Teaching my daughter to cook
2. Me and Grandma: Teaching my daughter to cook
3. Me & Grandma: Teaching my daughter to cook

A little more than six months after starting the Melt the Middle Challenge with fellow blogger Yvonne Shinhoster Lamb, my waistline is still too thick.  My journey to reduce my middle has been a roller coaster adventure, and along the way I’ve learned something about myself: I can’t do this alone.

My intentions are good and I know what to do but it’s too easy to slip and slide. Generally, I have a healthy diet and saw my waistline starting to shrink when I gave up refined sugar. But I was naive. I told myself that I could eat a small piece of cake or a favorite cookie or a bit of ice cream and not get hooked again. I was wrong.  Studies show that refined sugar is addictive and I clearly am one of the folks most susceptible.

I’m not giving up. I’m renewing my effort to melt the middle but this time I’m going to build a stronger support network. I will be talking regularly with friends who have successfully changed their lifestyles and joining Weight Watchers or some other group. I walk about three miles every other day but that isn’t enough exercise to really boost fat-burning. So I’ve joined a Zumba dance fitness program,  a high-energy, fun exercise class that uses Latin and international rhythms.

I’m still on the path to a healthier lifestyle, despite the detours. I hope you are, too. This time, I’ll have a village of supporters. Stay tuned.

Related posts:

1. Trying to melt the middle, again
2. Melting the middle with friends
3. Melting the middle, at last

I expected resistance to the idea. We’re eating too much healthy food, my 15-year-old complained. She already fusses periodically about having to eat brown rice and whole grain bread all the time. And the only reason she doesn’t grumble about eating Raisin Bran and other grain-based cereals is the deal we made some years ago. She gets to eat all the Froot Loops and other sugary cereals she wants during trips but doesn’t get them at home.

In teaching my daughter cook, I’m also trying to help her understand how to make healthier eating choices. Though she’s doesn’t particularly like all the changes over the past few years, I know that with time they’ll become a part of her normal eating habits.

Several months ago I began an effort to teach my teenager to cook, finding time in the rush of everything else she’s doing to spend time in the kitchen. I have been wanting to improve my cooking skills too so I enlisted the aid of  my mother and Martha Stewart. My daughter and I are using “Martha Stewart’s Cooking School” cookbook as a guide.

For our flatbread pizza, my daughter and I picked up low-fat mozzarella and cheddar cheese,  turkey Italian sausage, a tasty tomato sauce and fresh spinach. It was a quick and easy process: She spread all the ingredients on the flatbread and broiled it for a few minutes.

In the end, my daughter liked the flatbread pizza. She said she’ll make it again, using different ingredients. But, she asked, what about regular pizza? My advice: Eat it sparingly and on special occasions.

Related posts:

1. Me & Grandma: Teaching my daughter to cook
2. Me & Grandma: Teaching my daughter to cook
3. Me & Grandma: Teaching my daughter to cook

My 15-year-old daughter hadn’t given this notion much thought before; she ate meat because I began serving it to her as a young child and she liked the taste of it. But during our first at-home cooking class, she was bothered by handling raw chicken. So we talked about protein.

My daughter and I are on a one-year cooking journey. I’m teaching her, with the help of my mother and “Martha Stewart’s Cooking School” cookbook, how to prepare delicious and healthy food. I’ll be honest, I haven’t been an adventurous cook over the years so I’ll be learning some new things, too. My sisters and a couple aunts have promised to spend some time with my daughter in their kitchens, too, so that she’ll learn some other family specialties. One of my aunts makes a fabulous vegetable lasagna!

Our first step in the chat about protein was to look up the government’s recommended food pyramid. We talked about how humans are at the top of the food chain, how most animals eat other animals, how we Americans eat too much animal protein, its high fat and cholesterol content and how I’ve already adjusted our diet to include primarily fish and poultry. She now wants us to eat more plant protein and less meat.

I’ve been heading in that direction over the past few years but I didn’t expect that a major result of my daughter’s first cooking class would be a significant change in what we eat. So we’ll be cutting back on meat and learning tasty recipes without it.

But now, back to her first dinner – pan-roasted chicken breasts with sun-dried tomatoes and grape tomatoes, steamed broccoli, cauliflower and carrots and baked sweet potato. Martha Stewart’s cookbook suggested pan-roasting as an easy and quick first dish.

The pan-roasting required searing the chicken on top of the stove before putting it in the oven for an hour. (We talked about the differences between roasting and baking and the pitfalls to avoid as outlined in Martha’s book.)  My daughter was afraid of being burned by the hot olive oil so I guided her hands and stood with her as she dropped the meat in the cast-iron skillet. She clumsily turned the chicken, too. She’ll get better at it. The veggies and sweet potato were easy.

Along the way, I repeated what my mother always told me: A good cook is a clean cook. I showed her how to wash the counters and dishes while preparing the meal. My daughter didn’t particularly like the idea of washing dishes while cooking; she would have preferred to do it all when she finished. But I’ll continue to insist, just as my mother did.

When we finally sat down for our Sunday dinner, my daughter only ate a tiny piece of the chicken, and only after I urged her to at least taste what she had prepared.

Here are other lessons from our first class.

1. Be extra patient. Our kids are growing up in a texting society where everything is instant so it’s going to take some hand-holding along the way to help them enjoy the experience. Cooking takes time.

2. Be open to changing how the family eats based on input from your budding cook.

Related posts:

1. Me & Grandma: Teaching my daughter to cook
2. Me & Grandma: Teaching my daughter to cook
3. Me & Grandma: Teaching my daughter to cook