The Buddha Bowl: A Healthy and Fun Family Meal You Can Make Together

It is no secret, the better we eat the better we feel.  However, sometimes it is hard to find healthy meals that are also delicious and easy to make. Additionally, finding healthy meals our kids will love is even more difficult. Enter the Buddha Bowl.

I love the Buddha Bowl because you are free to use your creativity, specific tastes, and preferences to create a custom meal. You can pick as many ingredients as you would like. For instance, quick weeknight meals you can opt for just a few ingredients or whatever you have on hand. If short on time, you can also utilize pre-cut and peeled vegetables from the grocery store for example.

Cooking is a wonderful outlet for creativity, and equally a fantastic opportunity for kids to work on fine motor skills. Giving children age-appropriate tasks in the kitchen is important because it creates a fun activity for the whole family.

With the Buddha Bowl, you are doing a good amount of chopping, slicing, and tossing.  Therefore, investing in a set of child-safe knives is a great way to expand the duties they can help with. You can find them on Amazon here:

Tip: Pick colorful veggies and you will end up with a work of art that is as beautiful as it is delicious and healthy.

Why the Buddha Bowl Is So Great

1. It is healthy: Consisting of roasted, sautéd, or raw vegetables, and your choice of grains, you end up with a meal packed with vitamins and nutrition.
2.  Family-friendly:  The kids can join in on the preparation. For example, with the use of child-safe plastic knives, they are free to cut, slice and chop veggies without the worry of getting hurt.
3. It is colorful: Pick the most colorful vegetables you can find to fill up your bowl. Make it a work of art.
4. A little taste of different foods: Getting a little taste of a lot of different foods is fun. Also, you get a variety of different vitamins and nutrition in one meal.
5. Creativity: You can use your creativity to come up with any combination of your favorites.
6. Easy to make: Once you have selected and prepared your veggies, simply toss them in your choice of oil (avocado or olive oil work great) sprinkle with sea salt, roast, sauté, or serve raw. Add in your choice of grain such as brown rice, lentils, or quinoa, and you have yourself a full meal.
7. Kids will love it: Being able to customize the vegetables your kids like is a plus. Kids also tend to try new things when they are colorful. Whenever possible, opt for veggies such as purple carrots, tri-color green beans, rainbow Swiss chard, beets, etc.

The Buddha Bowl has its place in all seasons. In the warmer months, fresh vegetables will be readily available and in abundance, making it a great choice to utilize home or locally grown produce. Pictured below is a typical weekly harvest from our garden in the Summer. However, this is obviously not the case during the cold harsh winters of the Northeast.

Unfortunately, in the colder months, it becomes a little more difficult to have vegetables readily available. We, therefore, tend to forget to incorporate vitamin-packed vegetables into our diets. However, you can still get all the products you need at grocery stores and markets with a little bit of effort. By adding the Buddha Bowl to your meal rotation in the colder months, you ensure that you are eating well year-round.

To give you an idea of where to start, here is what I used in my latest Buddha Bowl.

Roasted:

• Beets
• Brussels Sprouts
• Broccoli
• Red Peppers
• Rainbow Swiss Chard
• Seasoned Chick Peas (Garbanzo Beans) tossed in avocado oil and sprinkled with chili powder

Raw:

• Avocado
• Cucumber

The vegetables were then arranged in the bowl along with a whole grain blend of brown rice, quinoa, and lentils. You can choose to top with any type of dressing, such as balsamic, or tahini. I found that it did not need anything additional. Actually, I totally forgot to top it off with the lemon tahini sauce I had bought, but that is neither here nor there. I guess it didn’t even need it!

No matter what you decide, simply have fun creating this delicious and healthy meal in an all-encompassing cooking activity for you and your family.

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