Free to Be Mindful Podcast | Helping Professional Moms Find Calm in a Busy World · Vanessa De Jesus Guzman, LPC, NCC

Mindful Kitchen: Teaching Kids Life Skills, Gratitude and Reducing Food Waste

October 6, 2025·28 min·1 clip

Getting kids into the kitchen starts with small steps, not big steps, and the first lesson is usually mess.

1. Free to Be Mindful Podcast centers this episode on Janet Irizarry's My Mindful Kitchen approach to food, mindfulness, and waste reduction. 2. Vanessa interviews Janet Irizarry, founder of My Mindful Kitchen, while Janet names her work at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park and her years in hospitality. 3. The episode asks how families can use food routines to teach children gratitude, planning, and climate-conscious habits. 4. Janet says she lives in upstate New York in the Hudson Valley, surrounded by trees, orchards, and mountains, and that the outdoors shaped her interest in food. 5. She explains that the MMK method is a values-driven approach that turns everyday food routines into moments of learning, laughter, and climate-conscious living. 6. Vanessa describes her own family background, including a father who was a chef on the Marriott Marquis in Times Square, as part of her appreciation for food. 7. Janet says the goal is helping moms and parents enjoy the kitchen more while getting kids involved from the first step. 8. She argues that children can learn life skills, values, and responsibility by joining shopping, planning, and cooking. 9. Janet connects food waste to climate change by explaining that food sent to landfill creates methane gas, which is a greenhouse gas. 10. She says the kitchen can become a place where children ask questions about where food comes from and why wasting it matters. 11. Janet says her own mother took her to farm markets and taught her to smell tomatoes and basil before buying them. 12. She says slowing down changes the experience because food tastes better when people are paying attention to it. 13. Janet tells a story about her older son remembering shopping, planning meals, and looking for special ingredients as the part of cooking he enjoyed most. 14. She says that getting kids off devices works better when adults also step away and engage in something shared. 15. Vanessa describes a mindfulness certification retreat at the Garrison Institute where two and a half of five days were spent in silence. 16. Janet responds with a family story about a blindfolded dinner, a no-talking rule, and a singing dinner that turned sibling conflict into laughter. 17. The tone is conversational, practical, and personal, with examples moving between parenting, food, and environmental awareness. 18. The format is an interview with back-and-forth stories, direct advice, and concrete kitchen examples rather than theory-heavy discussion. 19. Parents who want practical food routines and calmer family meals. 20. Listeners looking for entertainment without parenting or food-waste ideas.

As heard by us

Food becomes a family lesson in planning, curiosity, creativity, and waste reduction.

Janet Irizarry's mindful-kitchen approach treats food as something families can learn from before it reaches the table. The conversation moves through keeping food fresher, planning, shopping, bringing the right mindset, and using kids' involvement as a chance to teach.

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Why you'd press play

Turn grocery runs into a calmer family lesson about food.

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