Generally speaking, I like to make everything from scratch, and I don't eat treats very often. My food life is mostly built around protein, veggies,...
Read MoreReview: Eat Like a Dinosaur (Plus Giveaway)
UPDATE 04/03/12: We have a winner! Congratulations to Karen, who wrote, “White bread and butter–my favorite cheat as a child–my grandmother’s mac-n-cheese souffle and mixing packets of Quaker instant oatmeal, like plain oatmeal and the brown sugar n maple with butter. That was a treat when we went camping.”
It can be very challenging to get my adult self to follow the paleo guidelines sometimes — and I’m experienced enough in life to know that if I take care of my body everything else is much easier to manage. But kids! Kids don’t have that life experience to guide them; they rely on their parents for that. So I’m mightily impressed by families who make the transition to paleo and get their kids involved in food decisions.
Eat Like a Dinosaur is the newest addition to our kickass collection of paleo cookbooks and how-to guides, and it was clearly made with love. The Paleo Parents (be sure to visit their impressive and helpful blog) have transformed themselves. Yes, they lost a lot of weight (200 pounds) following the paleo diet, but they’ve also created a new lifestyle for themselves that goes far beyond weight loss to really living. As they say in the (not at all) “Boring Chapter for Parents,” they wrote their book for “ordinary families who want to start cooking and eating together with their children in a healthful way.”
This book is a handbook for anyone thinking about transitioning their family to a more real food, paleo approach — and it’s ideal for parents dealing with kids’ allergy issues. For your consideration…
5 Cool Things About Eat Like A Dinosaur
1. It’s more than a collection of recipes.
If you’re looking for paleo-compliant recipes and replacements for non-paleo favorites, Eat Like a Dinosaur has got you covered. With more than 100 recipes, there are plenty of ideas to make sure no one complains that eating healthy is boring. But Eat Like a Dinosaur goes beyond that to include helpful tips on two really big challenges: how to transition the family and how to pack kid-pleasing paleo lunches. There’s also a colorfully illustrated children’s story about eating like a dinosaur and my favorite part: a collection of paleo projects that would be fun for kids of any age. Field trip to a farm, anyone?
2. Your kids will love it.
From the friendly illustrations to the bright colors and playful design, this book will draw your kids in. It’s accessible, friendly, and engaging — and does an admirable job of incorporating all the stuff grownups need to know in a kid-friendly package so the little ones can read right along with you. There’s a pterodactyl (for the kids) and a notes field (for the grownsup) on just about every page.
3. It’s coded for safety.
Eat Like a Dinosaur goes beyond the generally-accepted paleo framework to help parents battling childhood allergies. Each recipe is accompanied by a color-coded allergen chart to alert parents to potentially problematic ingredients so kids can quickly identify the best recipes for them.
4. Tons of photos.
Every recipe is accompanied by a color photo, so kids and parents can flip through and pick the recipes that tickle their tastebuds — and the recipe instructions helpfully include tips for where little hands can help in the kitchen. I love that aspect of the book because the kitchen is where my best family memories originate. Teaching kids how to cook and to appreciate real food is one of the best gifts they can receive.
5. Recipes for every occasion.
Each recipe begins with a well-crafted headnote — my favorite part of good cookbooks — and I enjoyed the Paleo Parents stories quite a bit. When you’re reading to start rattling pots and pains, the 100+ recipes have got you covered: main dishes (crispy chicken nuggets, kebabs, unusually delicious salads), sides (ratatouille, zucchini latkes), dips and sauces (mole, black olive tapenade, pineapple sauce) , and a lovely selection of desserts for special occasions. I am madly tempted by the Samoa Cake Balls, but decided to make this instead…
Halupki Casserole
My family is Lebanese and Italian, but I grew up in coal country in eastern Pennsylvania where there were enough eastern European food fairs on summer afternoons to make me a fan of halushki (cabbage, onion, and noodles), pierogies, and the almighty halupki: cabbage rolls stuffed with seasoned meat and rice. I was pretty excited when I saw the Paleo Parents recipe for Halupki Casserole, and it did not disappoint. It delivers all of the flavor of the original, without the fussiness of prepping individual cabbage rolls. Plus, I’m a sucker for any recipe that replaces rice with riced cauliflower. The texture was amazing! Exactly like a halupki. All hail that tricky cauliflower! Take a tasty look:
Win a Copy of Eat Like a Dinosaur
To celebrate the launch of the book, I’m doing a giveaway of a copy of Eat Like a Dinosaur. Just post to the comments and tell us what your favorite (non-paleo) food was as a kid.
Deadline to enter: 11:59 p.m. on Friday, March 30. I’ll announce the winner on Saturday afternoon (March 31).
I’ll start… it’s difficult to choose just one because I loved to eat and play in the kitchen, even back then. I’d have to say it’s a carbtastic four-way tie:
1. Nacho Cheese Doritos
2. Eggo waffles, burnt to a crisp so they were super crunchy and had a few black bits, spread with lots of butter
3. White bread, toasted golden brown, then buried under both butter and peanut butter
4. Popcorn with butter and salt
OK; your turn! Hit the comments and ‘fess up.
Related Links
Buy Eat Like a Dinosaur on Amazon
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Review: Nom Nom Paleo
(Photo from Nom Nom Paleo by Michelle Tam & Henry Fong/Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC 2013) I adore the person and the output that is...
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Alphabits cereal. My mother wouldn’t buy it for us so I’d have to wait until I spent the night at my cousins to get it.
Peanut butter and cheddar cheese sandwiches. MMM. With a side of doritos nacho cheese of course.
Ooh, great giveaway! My two favorites were spaghettios & meatballs and kraft mac & cheese!
Pizza! It still is my favorite non-Paleo food, in fact. 🙂
I loved chicken nuggets! Now I think they are the grossest thing ever.
My nan’s sugar-crusted fruitcake. I liked it so much it was known as Tricia cake in the family…
Any kind of sugary cereal.
pecan pie!
Ramen noodles. Still love that awful for you stuff.
1.Fry Bread with Strawberry Honeybutter
2.Popcorn with lots of butter and salt
I guess anything with butter
Toastes, butered Thomas’ English muffins with my Mom’s homemade cinnamon/sugar topping.Yum!
Fried chicken. Sadly still a favorite even as an adult.
Kraft macaroni and cheese! Now I think it’s disgusting!!!
Saltine crackers with peanut butter and mini-marshmallows on top. Broiled so it was nice and gooey. Mom called them “Sally’s Surprise” although she doesn’t remember that now.
Mac n Cheese and french bread!
Hi Mel,
Favorite (non-paleo) food as a kid… wow, so hard to pick just one! Probably pretty safe to say I consumed plenty of play-dough, but for “real” food we can go with chicken mcnuggets.
If only my mother had known the ways of Paleo!
I loved crap boxed cereal. My favorite was Golden Grahams and I called it broken glass because that is what it sounded like when it was poured into a bowl.
Chef Boyardee Ravioli
I’m having a hard time narrowing it down to just one! Probably my momma’s peach cobbler. Dang. So good.
Jelly Belly beans…until my mom bought me a quart of them and I made myself sick.
My favorite (and birthday meal request every year) was tacos! Awesome giveaway… Have seen this book recently as we have gone paleo and have just started our almost three year old as well!
Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cereal!!! 🙂
Mmmm…raisin bread toasted and then slathered in butter….AND Bob’s Texas Style Jalapeno Chips (back when they were still made in Texas)…nom nom nom.
OMG – mac and cheese. The Kraft stuff was good, but my mom made a homemade version with these HUGE elbow noodles, cheese and milk, and homemade croutons on top. Total carb-fest/gut-wrecker, but as a kid, it was da bomb. Hurt so good.
peanut butter cap’n crunch. I could devour a box at a time. I was also a big fan of stauffer’s frozen mac and cheese. Ugh.
Pop Tarts (the kind without the frosting)
Rice Krispy Treats are/were my most favorite non-paleo food.
A mix of doritos, flamin hot cheetos, and popcorn, all topped with lots of lemon and louisiana hot sauce. I’ve learned to adjust to life without this snack.
Rigatoni and meatballs!
Marshmallow Creme on toast and fry bread loaded with all the taco fix ‘ens!
I loved Vareniki… kind of like pierogies, only with a fruit filling. And sweet cream sauce.
Also, my mom made a most lovely cake with a fruit layer, and crumbles on top that I would happily have eaten every day.
Nacho cheese Combos, and Little Debbies–though,not together. ;-P
My childhood favorite would have to be… Yohoo that fake chocolate milk…. Ugh!!
Captain Crunch cereal with milk. Without a doubt.
Sugary breakfast cereals! I wasn’t allowed to have them at home, so they were the highlight of sleepovers at friends houses.
Stouffers French bread pizza! My mom would let us eat them on Friday nights on a TV tray while we watched The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family!!
Cinnamon Toast – once there is enough butter (melted by the hot toast) to form little lakes on the surface, start sprinkling on the cinnamon sugar (heavy on the cinnamon) to be sucked into the butter and form a thick buttery-cinnomony coating of heaven. I have eaten this (only once or twice of course) since entering adulthood.
Every day in junior high I would eat a jello pudding pop and a wedge of chocolate cake with chocolate frosting for lunch. As I got more mature, and became a high schooler, I transitioned to rolled tacos with guacamole…….sometimes for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Ahhhhh, the good ol days.
Froot Loops – I think I lived on them for a year at the age of 6. Kraft Dinner. Toasted Eggos with corn syrup dripping all over them. Wow. Makes you wonder how I survived.
Chex mix and sour patch kids, usually eaten at the same time.
mmmmm… Nana’s cheese cake with graham cracker crust and her fried chicken!
Hmmm…either sopaipillas or Dairy Queen hot fudge sundaes. Oh, but wait, I forgot mom’s tuna casserole made with mushroom soup and potato chips instead of noodles. No WONDER I’m on the verge of type 2 diabetes!
As a teenager, I’d come home from school & polish off a large bowl of mum’s home-made toasted muesli topped with plenty of yoghurt. It was amazing!
But my all-time Favourite food group as a child was sugar- if I could eat lollies, I would.
If there were any leftovers from Bridge club the evening prior, my favorite ever would have to be a brownie sundae for breakfast: chocolate fudge brownie, vanilla ice cream, hershey chocolate syrup and salted peanuts.
as a kid i was NOT eating like a dinosaur, all i ever wanted was nachos and doughnuts (gross)!!
…so wish i would have had this book then!! thank you so much for this opportunity now!!
Almost anything my grandma served when we were at her house. For breakfast, powdered mini doughnuts and Quaker instant oatmeal. For dinner, delicious homemade fried chicken. And on Saturday nights while watching The Muppets we always had popcorn, ice cream and cookies (yes, all three).
So many gross/nostalgic foods already mentioned! I loved cowboy mix (jelly beans, candy corn, burnt peanuts, etc) and doritos. And Red Vines. Ate them alllll the time!
Hmm, as a kid all I wanted to eat was gluteny cheesy enchildas… not very Paleo!
Cheese.Oohey gooey cheese.Grilled cheese,mac and cheese,cheesey pizza.
Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches – with extra peanut butter – on white bread with a glass of cold milk (of course)!
Spaghettios and meatballs with velveeta cheese melted in, and York peppermint patties 🙂
My favorite breakfast was fruit loops (when my mom was willing to buy it) and my standby when I didn’t want what was for dinner was a ketchup sandwich. I can’t believe I would eat that. Then again up until I was 8, I had ketchup on everything! Lol
how to pick one…ugh…would have to be almost anything breakfast-y. My dad made the best breakfasts every Saturday morning…pancakes, biscuts and gravy, hashbrowns. But then I also liked something my mom used to refer to as “dough balls”…plain white bread, with the crust torn off…smashed into a ball…would eat those all the time!
Anything with fake cheese. Mac and cheese. Those cheese and crackers packets with the little plastic spreading stick. Doritos. Cheese balls.
Cookie crisp cereal!!!
A hot, homemade tortilla rolledup with brown sugar and butter inside. Or leftover pie crust rolled up with cinnamon sugar inside, cut into slices and baked liked mini cinnamon rolls.
Savory: (1)perogies stuffed with potatoes and cheese and (2) a slice of white bread toasted in the toaster oven with a fat slice of provolone cheese.
Sweet: (1) brown sugar cinnamon and strawberry pop-tarts and (2) Dairy Queen chocolate cherry blizzards.
Wow, I didn’t realize how far I’ve come!
Frosted flakes with bananas!!!! I would have 2 bowls at a time!!!! The best part was drinking the sugary milk at the end!
Frozen blueberries with sugar and milk!
I was unknowingly a paleo child, but I loved (vegetarian) lasagna.
Oh boy! I had soo many childhood favorites… pizza, dorito’s and CAKE! haha Trying to get my own son to switch it up and try new twists on favorites has been difficult! Looking forward to seeing this cookbook!
It would have to be the chocolate glazed cake donut from Dunkin’ Donuts. I just looked it up on their website, pretty gross ingredients, but it was oh so tasty! What are Polyglycerol Esters of Fatty Acids, L-Cysteine Hydrochloride and Gelatinized Wheat Starch anyway?
thanks for holding this great giveaway! Poptarts immediately came to mind when I saw “nonpaleo”. LOVED them right out of the oven and cold. I think the s’mores and strawberry icing were my favorites.
Oh goodness… I ate some trashy foods. But I might just have to say as a kid my very favorite foods was Jiff Peanut butter. Then a grilled cheese sandwich. Lots and lots of pizza. I ate my body weight in collage in cheeze-its. I really dug those (Oh gosh..) frozen burritos that look like it’s filled with dog food meat lol. Yeah, I didn’t eat so well and it came back to bite me in the butt… or load my butt and thighs. Whichever way you think of it. Now I need to win this book so my sweetie 1.5 year old daughter can be an awesome dinosaur!
Raisin bran with 2% milk… (???)
For some reason, I thought we were only listing breakfast. Okay.
Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream
Buttered Toast and Jam
Cake
Spaghetti with meat sauce
Okay, how about EVERYTHING? I’m not picky. 🙂
CHEEZ WHIZ sandwiches on wonderbread! Eeeewwwww!
I grew up in a very tiny town, so when we went to visit my Grandma I thought it was such a treat to go to McDonald’s. Once, I ate two Big Mac’s!
I know it’s a massive cliche, but mine was totally mac & cheese, the basic powdery stuff in the box. So terrible, but it was my favorite!
Kraft macaroni and cheese!
American Chop Suey. Such comfort food and let’s not forget a good double stuff oreo!!!
Peanut Butter Captain Crunch with lots of milk.
My moms apple crisp right out of the oven with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, YUM!
Oreos, and anything with Cool Whip or Nacho Cheese on top of it. Sometimes both. :-/
That’s a super tough question. I think I have to go with bagels and muffins (yes, that’s two…). Those were pretty much my go-to foods.
My mom was raised in Vietnam, so one of my favorite comfort foods growing up was the Vietnamese Sandwich. French bread, pate, pickled carrots and jicama, and beef and pork. So, so good and such a treat when my grandpa would bring some home for us. Hmmm… I wonder if there is a way to get the flavor without the baguette. Now you’ve got me thinking! :o) Thanks so much for this giveaway!
Homemade Chocolate Chip cookies
Pizza
Spaghetti
Oh, I forgot about nachos loaded with cheese, beans, and jalapenos and Slurpees (both from the 7-11 up the street!)
Quesadillas!! Cheese cheese cheese
Spaghetti noodles with cheese and chocolate chip cookies were my favorites!
pasta with frozen prepackaged turkey meatballs and tomato sauce. This would still be my favorite meal if I wasn’t allergic to pasta and nightshades.
Roast beef poboys, “dressed” with a bag of Zapp’s potato chips. You can take a girl out of New Orleans… 😉
Sesame seed bagel (toasted) with about 1/2″ of cream cheese and salami. Oh, and Tostitos dipped in sour cream.
So many. We usually ate pretty healthy, for non-paleo folks. Not a lot of pre-packaged or fast food. If I had really ‘bad’ stuff, it was usually something I snuck. I do recall loving eggo waffles with a good amount of butter, slathered in peanut butter, and drizzled with molasses. I loved raw cookie dough – so much that I’d go and mix butter & brown sugar on the sly and eat that, too. I got caught stealing chocolate chips more than a few times. I did love oatmeal w/ milk, butter, and brown sugar. Ahh, a walk down insulin lane..
Homemade cherry ripe milkshakes and cinnamon sugar toast!!
Well, I don’t think my favorites were *actually* food: donuts, cake, pie with tons of whipped cream. And more pie. And cookies, brownies. Sweet baked carbs. With ice cold milk.
My favorite treat as a kid was the Hot Fudge Cake from Shoneys
Please don’t gag but… a sandwich made of butter, white bread (of course!), and green olives. I could eat that still…
Definitely chocolate chip pancakes covered with powdered sugar and syrup, but I also loved mustard and potato chip sandwiches – on white bread, of course!
Chicago Oven-Grinder’s Mediterranean flatbread (so good!!) and chocolate peanut butter banana sandwiches!!
My favorite food as a kid was tacos- using a soft shell flour tortilla. It still is my favorite- though now I use a lettuce wrap. 😉
lucky charms–mostly just the marshmallows.
I loved anything pasta! Spaghetti, mac n cheese, lasagne.
Garlic toast, nachoes, garlic cheese biscuits…and twizzlers. Gosh I’ve got to stop! How dare you!! 🙂
Pizza, hands down!
Without a doubt, this was my nightly (giant) bowl of vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup. I had a very detailed ritual for how it should be handled once served to me (thanks Mom!). LOVED it. In fact, I ate so much of it, that ice cream really does not appeal anymore. 🙂
Mustard sandwiches on Wonderbread. I probably got the idea from the commercials. I also used to drink milk & Pepsi because I saw it on Laverne & Shirley.
I’ve never really had a “favourite” food and still don’t. I grew up in a very loving and close family, spending lots of time with grandparents, aunts, uncles etc and there was, and still is one thing that is a huge part of this family time and that is food. My family has always shown love with food (also hugs & kisses, don’t get me wrong), I think because my grandparents were kids during the great depression (in Australia)feeding your family back then was the most important thing you could do, and so it has stuck – you love your family by making sure they have eaten enough and are nourished. Therefore my fondest food memory isn’t a particular food, but of eating food (more like feasting)with those that I love.
Lasagna was always my favorite!
for me it was a tie between Garlic bread and Cocoa krispies
Grilled cheese and milk! Or just bread on its own, or with LOTS of butter. At least I got the butter part right.
I love buttery garlic bread, pizza, oreos and corn flake chicken!!!! The bomb.
Isn’t it funny how most of our favorite foods have to do with comfort/rewards? We would always have cereal while watching cartoons (peanut butter crunch was my favorite!), ice cream after every dance and piano recital, as well as karate matches, and at least once a night we would have “oreo date night” with dad…. No wonder it’s so hard to give this stuff up : / As a teacher, I hope to encourage healthier traditions!
Pizza!!
Pizza, ravioli and ramen noodles with butter and
Crushed up saltines!! I would never feed my kids that!!
Ok pizza is still in the plate 🙂
Definitely pizza but also reheated, rubbery Kraft Mac n cheese!
Life cereal with milk
Cocoa Puffs! Or anything slathered with creamy Jiff. (It HAD to be Jiff.)
Rice Krispie Bars!
Lucky charms!
Ironically, my favorite meals growing up were “juicy steak” (we liked it bleeding) and fried steak.
I still love fresh home made cookies! So absolutely delicious fresh out of the oven! I especially love chocolate chip peanut butter which ate a huge Paleo no-no!
Rice Krispie Bars, hands down.
I loved Count Chocula cereal! Mmmmmmmm!
My mom’s beef stew! I would make up reasons to go into the kitchen and steal chunks of meat and potatoes! And ritz crackers with cheese whiz spread! 😀
Ice cream, pizza, french fries,and mac n’ cheese!!
Spaghetti. With margariney garlic bread, of course! And yes, nacho cheese Doritos. Sadly, I still love them…
ham sandwich with miracle whip on white bread. eww!!
My Granny French’s Chocolate Fudge Pie followed closely by mom’s homemade mac & cheese. mmmmmmmm, delicious. Esp. when dinner included both!
I’m working hard to paleo the pie — i’m getting close!
Entenmann’s chocolate covered doughnuts. Chips Ahoy Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies. Thanks for doing this giveaway!
Pickled onion and cheese sandwiches with French fries!
Chocolate doughnuts!!!
Especially the little ones six in a bag 🙂
Just one? I had so many favorites and in no particular order…..
1. peanut butter dill pickle sandwich on toast
2. Cinnamon Toast
3. Popcorn and pepsi at the drive in
4. I was sick a lot as a kid and my get better food was icecream
5. lucky charms
Melomakarouna: Greek honey/cinnamon/orange/walnut/olive oil biscuits (I still miss them!) but could probably make them with coconut flour 🙂
PIZZA! and mac/cheese.
Oddly my absolute FAVORITE meal growing up was meatloaf w/homemade tomato sauce, mashed potato and lima beans. Not too shabby for a pre-paleo kid 🙂
Chocolate cake was my favorite food as a child 🙂
Potato chips, long johns, and pepsi. Yum!
raw raman noodles. I’d break them up and dip in the dry sauce.
But I don’t need a free copy.
Mel,
I’m so glad you wrote about the book. I just got my copy this past weekend. I’m going to convert my son. Yes, some may call me a bad parent because he doesn’t eat paleo now and my husband I and do but it is what it is. The important thing is I’m changing that.
His start date is April 7th. I even started my own blog. Ha! Never thought that would happen but maybe it will give encouragement to a future parent.
http://paleowithprayers.blogspot.com/ check it out if you get a chance
🙂
Banana Spice Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting. If I could have had my mom make it every day, I would have.
My other one was Hawaiian Pizza. Nothing like a good Canadian Bacon and Pineapple on a thick crust pizza.
Chocolate fudge pop-tarts or Betty Crocker vanilla frosting eaten straight out of the tub or spread onto strawberry newtons. No, I wasn’t a fat kid; I could definitely eat whatever I wanted back then and not gain weight. I was definitely a sweet-a-holic – I still am, but I definitely don’t eat those two items anymore!
Easy…a hot gooey cheesy pepperoni pizza with garlic dipping sauce for the crust. I would have that at least once a week growing up! Eeek!
If we’re going halfway early childhood, my mother’s spaghetti and meatballs. If we made this a full meal, would either add cookie dough ice cream or homemade chocolate chip cookies, can’t remember which I liked more at that age. Oh, can’t forget the glass of milk to wash it down (2% of course).
AH! I’d love to win this – I could totally use some of these recipes to make healthy snacks for the kids in my classroom! I have several with gluten and/or dairy issues, so I bet I could find something to make for them in here!
My favorite junky food as a kid was Taco Bell – not even kidding, my sister and I used to BEG our mom to take us there, especially when they were selling double decker tacos – a crunchy beef taco that had a flour tortilla around the crunchy shell that was adhered by a layer of liquid cheese and refried beans. Just typing that makes me want to die. Can’t believe I ever let that crap into my body!
Thanks for the chance to win!!
Mmmmm, grilled cheese with ketchup; and popcorn with butter!
Roller Coasters (Chef Boyardee mini lasagne noodles with meatballs) and my favorite “Sunday” meal was City Chicken.
1- White bread Nutella sandwiches with bbq chips in the middle
2- My Italian grandma’s pasta
3- Cheese, all kinds, but especially melted Kraft singles
Eggo waffles with pnb, nutella and bananas!
As a kid, I loved a glass bottle of 7-up and a bowl of chocolate chips, consumed while watching Saturday morning cartoons. In high school I had a Diet Coke and a box of Hot Tamales for lunch every day. UGH!
I loooooved salt n’ vinegar potato chips. My mouth would water just thinking about them!
Definitely ice cream. Although coconut milk ice cream now makes for a GREAT alternative!
I’ll second your eggo: blueberry was my fave. And i’ll have to add on chocolate: any way i could get it. Chocolate chips by the handful, candy bars, cookie dough, cake.. even though i kicked the sugar addiction more than a year ago, i’m still a bit of a chocoholic and enjoy unsweetened baking chocolate every now and then 🙂
1. Swiss Cake Rolls
2. Dr. Pepper
3. Deep fried everything
4. McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets
Pb&j!
Many people have mentioned several of my favorites so I’ll list a couple different ones.
Potato chips with French onion soup mix/sour cream dip.
Every night my Dad and I would crush some saltine crackers into a bowl and pour milk over it. Not so good for a kid born lactose intolerant. No wonder I was always sick.
Cold canned peaches when I had a fever. That’s the one I still eat.
Kraft Mac n’ Cheese and Hostess fruit pies!
Look very attractive
Fave food: Nachos or anything w/ sugar (bad for a hypoglycemic child :P). I loved eating chocolate chip waffles w/ whipped cream and peanut butter for breakfast!
I can’t wait to get my hands on this book!
Oddly enough, my childhood favorite was meat, especially steak. Hmmm…. It was especially difficult because my mother had read all of Jane Brody’s books and was sure that we had to limit our meat (not to the point of being vegetarians, which she also thought was evil, for some reason). So there was never enough meat to satisfy me – she only served the “perfect” 4 oz. portion, or less.
Saltine crackers
Little Debbie snacks
Diet soda – started drinking it at age 12
Chocolate anything
and thanks for the giveaway!
Grandpa would make us white bread toasted with lots of butter and a thick layer of brown sugar.
But Mom’s “garlic” bread was the best. Mayo, French dressing, garlic, Parmesan cheese, and paprika on white french bread.
Spaghetti Bolognese.
Sausages! Back then with tomato ketchup and white bread and butter. Now I go for butcher’s sausages, made without rusk filler, eggs and mushrooms.
Cheerios, no milk. I could (can) eat almost an entire box!
I loved anything that combined peanut butter and chocolate (like those Little Debby peanut butter wafer bars) and buttered popcorn, eaten together with wedges of cheddar cheese and green apples.
I’m so glad I am not the only one confessing to Kraft Mac and cheese.
so many! lucky charms…but i would eat all the cereal and save the marshmallows for last. or good old PBJ on white bread but it had to be the bright purple smucker’s grape jelly! but my all time fav is when my grandma made her irish boxty….like a huge potato pancake….usually with some bangers n eggs! YUMM-O!
Oreos in milk for breakfast…..Pork and beans….Spaghetti sandwiches on white bread with margarine…steak ums….bolgona and cheese….cake, chocolate from the box…frosting from the box too with the sprinkles in it….My mothers goulash with elbow noodles, ground meat and canned tomatoes…. pizza, pizza, pizza (OMGOSH) Truthfully, I don’t miss this food, only on a rare occasion! 🙂
Really sticky cinnamon rolls!
But actually, my favorite foods were always somewhat paleo– I grew up in the Philippines, and my favorite was freshly caught and grilled seafood of all kinds, and especially a Filipino version of ceviche, (called kinilaw) which is raw tuna marinated in coconut milk, lime, ginger and lemon grass– AMAZING! I can’t wait to teach my daughter to make it.
Chicken macaroni casserole
Sweet condensed milk. Could eat it by spoonfuls, especially with pancakes.
Oh, man. Too many to choose from. Three way tie: Lucky Charms, soft white bread with butter, any kind of chip.
I loved Mac and Cheese, homemade nachos and toaster strudels.
So excited for this book!
Toast with peanut butter and warm applesauce or good old PBJ. Actually, anything with peanut butter…. I’m so glad I have now discovered sunbutter.
Lucky Charms. Pretty much sugary cereals, in general.
agreed.
OH I HAD MANY! I did LOVE Pop-Tarts!! My favorite being Brown Sugar Cinnamon. Sometimes with the added bonus of smearing MARGERINE on it. Sheesh, looking back at the stuff I used to eat makes me appreciate how I eat now. Go Paleo!
The amount of Cheez-Whiz I consumed as a child continues to astonish and terrify me.
It was primarily spread on saltine crackers, for added horror.
Doughnuts. Moving from “healthy” CA, with all the independent chains of delicious little tires (ironically producing big tires) to the South, I figured I’d be hitting the mother lode. Nope. The wasteland of Dunkin’s and KK’s (w/ a darkened “Hot Doughnuts Now” sign) lead to my eventual cure.
Oreo’s and milk. This is still a bad trigger for me. I refuse to buy them because if they are in the house, I will eat them.
I also loved Lean Cuisine Lasagna. I would wake up and eat it for breakfast every Saturday!
Heehee… We used to drink diet/caffeine-free soda by the truckload. I would also open up the sugar jar in the kitchen and use the big scoop to add probably a cup or so of sugar to my iced tea – I loved sucking the sugar up with a straw and crunching it in my teeth. I’d also love the days when we ran out of 1% milk and I “had” to use evaporated milk on my cereal. Or just opening up a can of condensed milk and sucking away….(I’d still do that one).
Another amusing memory was that my mom used to buy Equal (the fake sugar) at Costco about once every two months; that’s how much we used!!!
Thank goodness it’s been years since my family has pretty much gone Paleo! 🙂
PBJ on white bread put in the freezer for a couple minutes to get it nice and chilled. Or grilled cheese and tomato soup…amazing.
Absolutely positively pierogies!!! (my ukrainian Grandmother’s slightly cheesy and seasoned mashed potatoes in a noodle shell… cooked in butter and onions) My mouth is watering just thinking about these…. yum 🙂
Velveeta mac and cheese, with a little pepper on top. Delish.
Cheesy scalloped potatoes! I could eat the whole bowl! Sometimes I really miss cheese and daydream about it.
My favorite food was Mac and Cheese.
Cereal! Any kind! I still miss my morning fix sometimes…
Jello of course! But only plain – not the yucky kind with fruit pieces inside of it.
French fries and lots of Ketchup
Never said this out loud (or typed it) but I loved to start my pre-teen mornings with either a whopping serving of french toast with extra powdered sugar, or a toaster strudel with extra icing. Yuck!
I was a sucker for peanut butter and powdered sugar mixed. I would come home after school and make it for myself.
Oh man! My favorite childhood food was (….and still is, to tell you the truth) was pizza. Yum yum pizza!
I have been looking at the Amazon page for this book so many times, would love to win this.
My fav was all the deep fried indian snacks. Specially lentil fritter(vadai)!
Grilled cheese with creamy tomato soup! 🙂
Candy because we never kept it in our house. Also Jello and PB&J Sandwiches
White bread and butter–my favorite cheat as a child–my grandmother’s Mac n cheese souffle’ and mixing packets of Quaker instant oatmeal, like plain oatmeal and the brown sugar n maple with butter. That was a treat when we went camping.
Hands down my absolute favorite food was Chocolate Angel Food Cake with 7 Minute Frosting. Five times a year we were lucky enough to have it to celebrate family birthdays. We fought over the batter lickings, the tube pan crumbs & the frosting left on the mixer beaters as well as how large or small our servings were. It’s been years since I’ve been able to eat even a small licking of 7 Minute Frosting — so much sugar it makes me sick!
Growing up Italian I have to say homemade Lasagna with meatballs. I still salivate just thinking of the smell! yuuuuummmmmm
Banana pudding. OMG. Still have dreams of it – but I RESIST.
Oh man, I was always a sweets girl. Ice cream. Chocolate (not dark!). Sour patch kids, those evil pure sugar things. I also loved chips, particularly the crappy tostitos!
Wow, this book looks amazing! If I don’t win it I will be buying! I have four young children and I have switched to Paleo and slowly weaning my children and husband off the dairy and grains.
AS a kid I remember loving cheese whiz… so good! And sometimes I would add peanut butter with that too..
Looking forward to good food times ahead for my family and I!
any kind of ice cream 🙂
Dairy Queen ice cream cake. Loved the fudge and cookie layers.
Fried chicken, every time.
mashed potatoes with gravy—I still miss it.
It was a Sunday morning tradition for me and my mom to go to the bagel bakery for fresh bagels and cream cheese.
banana bread!!!
S’mores poptarts
1. Cheesecake
2. Garlic bread
3. Hot dogs and rice
So gross but so good!
Froot Loops…we only had them once a year on holidays!
Good ol’ PB&J!
Cinnamon Toast -Wonder bread, margarine and lots of cinnamon sugar. Cooked in a toaster oven so the cinnamon sugar would bubble and crisp. My grandma would always make if for me late at night when I was still hungry!
I loved my grandma’s baking (cookies, pies, nanaimo bars, matrimony cake, butter tarts etc). Or dads Saturday morning happy face pancakes. 🙂
I have long been a fan of lasagna!
I loved plain ol’ grilled cheese sandwiches. With extra cheese please. I have read many great things about this book. Would love to win it for my son. We just went paleo about a month a go.
Grilled cheese, hands down. I have a thing for bread this and bread that and cheesy things. Or my mom always said I loved brown sugar or maple syrup on toast with cinnamon and butter. Which I still love but minus the brown sugar and using nut butter for butter on lettuce or swiss chard. Or I would always gobble up my grandma’s rhubarb cake during rhubarb season.
Grilled Peanut butter sandwich and tomato soup.
Homemade mac-n-cheese with Velveeta…or Harvard Beets…or any sugar cereal with milk…or cookies…um, yeah – carbs were my friends 🙂
Just one?? I loved Lucky Charms cereal (those “marshmallows!”) I also really liked waffles with lots of butter and syrup. Hmmm, cookies. Chocolate cake. I have a lot!
Thanks for the giveaway! You rock!!
I was a weird kid – some of my favorite food was black olives (I liked to stick pitted ones on all 10 of my skinny little kid fingers – they don’t fit without splitting anymore) and canned spinach. I wasn’t always paleo though, I used to eat bowls of white rice with nothing on it but soy sauce!
Thanks for this giveaway. My favorite non-paleo food as a kid was Totino’s frozen pizza. Or any kind of pizza, really.
Oh man! Probably Cinnamon Toast Crunch or Macaroni and Cheese… definitely grilled chesse sandwiches are in that list!
My favorite meal as a kid was mashed potatoes and meatloaf.. could eat that all day.. a close second was Twinkies.. Can’t wait to get the book!
No way! Fo real yo!??
Cheese bubblers! White bread smothered with cheez whiz and then broiled, open face, in the oven until the cheese was all melty, bubbled and brown!
I agree with the popcorn popped on the stove in vegetaqble oil. Then slathered with butter and salt. “Homestyle”!!!!!
My favorite food hands-down was spaghetti. I could still eat it every night, but now I make my own sauce and pour it over veggies. Yum!
Well, being the fat kid, I loved everything that was bad for me. But my favorite would have to be CAKE…I know not specific because it didn’t require a specific kind any cake would make me happy! Still trying to get the fat kid in me to stay quiet!
Hmm, so hard to narrow it down! Either gnocchi, chips + queso, frozen Kahlua pie, chocolate chip cookies and just about any kind of candy under the sun!
I always have had a sweet tooth, and my aunt being a baker, well lets just say that I was a chubby kid!
My all time favorites were;
Toaster Strudles
Snickerdoodle Cookies
Fried anything really
Mac and Cheese, with extra cheese..
PASTA!
I have to pick just ONE? Oh that is going to be hard. I would probably have to go with my mom’s chili. She used tomato soup as the base and it was soo hearty and delish. I can create a pretty decent replica, but it’s still missing that mom-touch that all good food has when you’re growing up 🙂
Hohos (oh, what joy to sit in front of our giant tv, watching the Brady Bunch, with an entire box of Hohos in front of me) and Space Food sticks, chocolate variety… and in 3rd place, Tang, straight from the spoon, no water necessary. My insulin levels must have been consistently hitting the roof.
Pizza and milk chocolate!
Oh, wow. So many things, but darkly toasted peanut butter toast (two pieces, cut in half, of course!)
thanks for all you do. I love your blog and Well Fed is the best compilation of recipes EVER.
Ice Cream. My parents tell a story that at 2 years old I would crawl out of bed, walk downstairs and say I couldn’t sleep because the spoons were clanking and making too much noise.
Can you say SUGAR…..yep never met a sweet thing that I didn’t love. My theory was the more the better. Love me some sweets.
CEREAL, CEREAL, CEREAL, CEREAL!!! Lucky Charms, Cookie Crisp, Fruity Pebbles, Trix. Yes, more please!
Captain Crunch with Crunch Berries. When I got my first apartment the first thing I did was buy a box of Captain Crunch with Crunch Berries. I was so excited to have a box that I did not have to share!
Whipped cream with cinnamon and sugar over pasta 🙂 trust me – omg it was good!
cool ranch Doritos!!
Pizza, preferably cold and leftover from the night before.
Oh my, being asked the question makes me realize carbs were the bulk of what I ate and loved! Pancakes with loads of syrup, nachos, cereal, taco flavored Doritos and Swiss cakes…I could go on and on!
Tacos and breakfast burritos! Still my fav non paleo foods.
My “go-to” snack as a kid was usually a chocolate cereal, wet or dry, or nacho cheese chips, or sometimes I’d stick a spoon in a can of chocolate frosting!!
Hands down it was lasagna! I requested it every year on my birthday. For breakfast….it was a huge bowl of fruity pebbles. I couldn’t imagine feeding those to my kids for breakfast
Growing up in a family that knew no measuring spoons or cups when it came to baked goods, I would have to say my Grandmother’s homemade breads, cinnamon rolls, and thick pillow-y sugar cookies. Next to that, my ultimate non-Paleo vice are french fries, specifically the golden arches’ fries. When I was a toddler, my mother would treat me to french fries if I was “good” or behaved when she’d take me to work. Even to this day, the skinny, golden, hot and salty morsels still call my name. 🙂
Sad but true…toasted Pop Tarts! Ewww
Spaghetti with lots and lots of meat sauce! But now I just sub zucchini noodles and I’m all set. I thought I’d miss pasta much more when I went cave-lady and I don’t miss it at all. Thanks so much for the giveaway and the kick-a** recipes!
Definitely crusty Italian bread drizzled with Balsamic vinegar and olive oil!! Living close to Boston’s North End isn’t easy 🙂 BUT the paleo lifestyle wins hands down.
Ding Dongs and Tang!
This couldn’t come at a better time. I’m at a loss for packing the kiddo’s lunch lately and he’s become so picky it’s unreal. HELP!
Oh, and my favorite non-paleo food as a kid. . .the all-American pizza pie.
Reading the comments are reminding me of foods I loved as a kid (that I forgot about until now!): Cinnamon Toast Crunch, English muffins with butter and cinnamon sugar, pizza, flour tortillas rolled up with butter and cinnamon sugar. I’m noticing a theme here. 🙂
As a kid it had to be “skettios”!
But even to this day, my all-time favorite non-paleo meal is rice and brown gravy.
I loved burritos!
A dish of baked beans, white bread with plenty of butter! We were kind of poor. Sometimes there was a hamburger patty too, but usually not. It is still a comfort food for me. Sadly hard to convert to Paleo!
I too liked Doritos and any kind of bread (but especially sourdough).
Lucky charms ceral — I’d save all the marshmellows for last!
It was a tie between chicken n dumplings and mac n cheese.
I used to make quesedillas in the microwave and spread margarine on top.
Hands down it has to be Campbell’s Condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup. The original one, not any of these modern gussied-up versions. I could eat that stuff straight out of the can with a spoon. Still could, if I let myself.
My grandma’s warm rubbarb pie with slightly melted vanilla ice cream! Yummy!
Fruit snacks
my favorite food as a kid was probably bread… or ice cream… or chex mix. i was a very unhealthy (though rather slim) child.
fried egg sandwiches with american cheese on white bread. It was great when I figured out you could cook an egg in the microwave (and it would turn out round)–then i did it on english muffins. i think i had one everyday after school for a year!
Pizza and Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Oh and a warm tortilla with butter. – yummmm
1. Licking the inside of the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese envelope
2. Topping Cream of Wheat hot cereal with colored crystal sugars to make pretty swirls
3.Pigs in a Blanket (hot dogs wrapped in Velveeta Cheese and refrigerated roll dough – then baked until golden brown)
4. Anything that came out of my Easy Bake Oven
Thomas’s English Muffins toasted w/ melted peanut butter in every nook & cranny!
the animal crackers covered in white or pink “frosting” with the rainbow sprinkles on them… we’d eat loads of them with chocolate milk – yikes!
Pillsbury orange danish with frosting. Also my son’s favorite while he was going through chemo. It was hard to resist them as an adult.
graham crackers sandwiched with leftover frosting.
I loved pop tarts and deep fried pizza rolls. If I had to pick an all time favorite it would be ‘wiener winks’ a piece of bread folded in a diagonal with a hotdog covered in mustard and melted velveeta cheese. I could them for every meal if was allowed to.
maple bars!!!! Oh man. That smell is so nostalgic.
Pancakes with butter and strawberry jam (no syrup).
I liked to eat Nestle Kwik powdered chocolate drink mix dry — no milk. I’d eat it out of a Tupperware cup with a spoon. It sounds sooo gross to me now, but I remember how much I loved it then!
This is a TOUGH question so many yummy non healthy foods we ate as kids. With both parents working full time to make ends meet there was lots of ready made food in cans or boxes to make ourselves supper. Spaghetti O’s, Kraft Mac & Cheese, Pop Tarts and the list can go on & on. Happy to say don’t miss those foods, but do miss the speed in which we ate.
Wow! I can think of so many things I loved to eat as a kid, but I’ll pick meringue cookies from the local bakers. I’d eat a bunch of these and get a huge sugar rush.
It’s so hard to choose! It’s a 4-way tie between pop tarts drenched with melted butter, fluffer-nutter sandwiches (wonder bread + peanut butter + marshmallow fluff), cinnamon toast and pizza rolls.
Apple fritters. I was a pastry girl!
Pizza! and Doritos from friends at school.
Oatmeal creme pies. Now they look so disgusting to me…
Little Debbie chocolate stars with that waxy coating that stayed in your mouth half the day. Definitely not paleo.