How to Eat Like a Rainbow

About author / Pamela Chester

Mom of two; graduate French Culinary Institute; kids cooking program instructor; Master's degree in food studies. Creates kid friendly foods and loves her slow cooker.

You hear it all the time from the nutrition advocates: for the most healthful diet, eat a rainbow of naturally colorful foods. The foods that contain the deepest hues also happen to have the most nutritional value. If you have young kids, then you can use their innate desire to explore the world of color to your advantage by exploring healthy and vibrantly hued foods together.

The other night, on a spur of the moment whim, I decided to make a dinner in all one color for my kids. It was one of those brilliant parenting magazine ideas I had probably picked up ages ago while at the gym and tucked in the back of my mind.

Somehow, our rainy day batch of pumpkin muffins inspired me to carry through this very cool idea and make a completely orange dinner. We had carrot sticks, orange braised chicken quesadillas, and Clementine segments. We followed up with the much anticipated pumpkin muffins for dessert. Words cannot tell you how pleased my three year old was with this change of pace.

This idea went over especially well because it was fun. But it also involved some of my little guy’s favorite foods. In this house, we love quesadillas for dinner. For this purpose, I made one of my favorite fillings, in which I braised chicken with orange juice and grated orange zest. For an extra fun Halloween treat, you can carve a jack-o-lantern face in one side of your quesadillas.

October, otherwise known as the month of all things pumpkin, is the ideal time to go orange. It’s easy to stir pumpkin puree into so many things, like pancakes, cream cheese dip, soup or chili, and pasta. Other orange veggies like sweet potatoes, butternut squash, and carrots are all perfectly in season and match up to the color of the month’s festivities.

And of course there is the childhood favorite, orange cheddar cheese. One food my endlessly picky one year old son does like is macaroni and cheese, particularly the bright orange variety. So if your kids like mac and cheese, you can add that to the orange menu, stirring in some pureed butternut squash for added nutrition if you like.

Our orange hued dinner was so successful that I decided to come up with a color-based dinner once a week. You don’t have to resort to unnaturally hued ketchup in blue, purple, or green (remember those?) to pull off this mealtime trick in your children’s favorite colors.

Green is another easy one; we’ll have pasta with pesto and green beans, sliced honeydew melon and green grapes. You could also have spinach pasta, rice with chopped parsley, or stuffed green peppers, along with any number of your kids favorite green veggies such as peas, avocado or zucchini. Tortillas come in all kinds of fun colors too, such as spinach green or tomato red. And for dessert, pistachio or mint chip ice cream, anyone?

Yellow meals could include chicken, cornbread, yellow wax beans and yellow squash, or scrambled eggs mixed with cheese. Fun pink foods include shrimp, salmon, or ham, tomato cream sauce, strawberries, and watermelon. For blue, you could do blue corn tortilla chip nachos, with black beans (they have sort of a bluish tinge), Peruvian blue potatoes, and of course blueberries.

Throwing in color as a mealtime twist might be just the ticket to getting your kids to try a new veggie or embrace a new flavor, especially if your kids love color but usually eat bland and beige type foods!

Serves/Makes: 4

• 1 pound boneless, skinless chicken thighs
• salt and pepper, to taste
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 small yellow onion, chopped
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• 1 orange, zested
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• 1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
• 8 flour tortillas

***Optional***

• sour cream
• sliced jalapenos
• salsa