The book “Za otroke kuhajmo zdravo” (Let's Cook Healthily for Children) is something special: because it is the only manual on alimentation of children from their earliest age to adulthood, because it takes into consideration all the principles of healthy and Slovene traditional food, because it also offers a variegated range of menus for schools, kindergartens and for households and because with a book you also get a very useful floppy disc. And there is something even more special about this book - its author Emilija PAVLIČ.

Emilija Pavli~ was head of alimentation at the Semedela kindergarten near Koper for 25 years, where she was taking care of the alimentation of 800 children. Cook by profession, she continued with her education and successfully finished the Catering Industry Management School and obtained the title of Food and Beverage Manager. Two years previous to her retirement, she passed the examination for Master of cooking at the Slovene Chamber of Commerce and Industry. “I started writing the book out of protest,” says Emilija. “I introduced menus without meat years ago, and it caused hue and cry. I proved that meals without meat can be as healthy as those with meat and have even more quality and taste. I based my cooking on old recipes that were kept by our mothers for centuries. I didn’t think it was right that we put so much effort in protecting our land, our language, while we were letting our traditional food slowly disappear. We are increasingly more addicted to foreign literature, to foreign alimentation.”As important as the wish to preserve the typical Slovenian cousine was the wish for children to eat healthily. “I am not an opponent of meat, although I limit its use. I am in favour of a middle way, for modesty in alimentation; a lot of seasonal fruits and vegetables, fish and other seasonal food. Anyway, the message of my book is to respect children in order to be respected by them, but not to spoil them.”

The book is also a kind of monument to cooks, to the artists who do not use instant food, who are strangers even to dry soups, who do not feed children with pates, who do not use baking powder for baking. “Cooks are artists.”
After the conferment of two shiny fair prizes at the Festival of Upbringing and Education in Celje which included also the fair Everything for the Child and Family, she was unable to hide her emotion; “I am very happy to have gathered enough courage and money to come to this fair. I am one of the rare Slovenian women who have exposed their work to evaluation. But if a person stands for her work, her vision, it gives her courage. I was not frightened by criticism and I went for an expensive project of publishing the book by myself. The acknowledgements and many praises confirm what I believed in from the very beginning. It is a wonderful feeling.”

The content of the book is divided into four chapters: directions for the composition of menus, menus according to the seasons, recipes for the meals in the menus and conservation (in this chapter the author listed different kinds of food in groups, used in recipes, which can help a lot in shopping).
The book is nicely designed and equipped (without overdoing) with drawings made by children and pictures in which we can see how to serve the meals to our child, to make the dish appear more interesting in his eyes and to educate him at the same time.

Along with the book, which is, according to the author, a dedication to those mothers and fathers who persist in cooking healthy food for their children, you can find a floppy disk. And not because it is fashionable, but because it is extremely useful – the weekly menu can be printed out and kept at hand, as you can do with single recipes, you can find anything very quickly…
Computers are very familiar to kids nowadays, so that children can learn how to cook by the way…

MILENA B. POKLIČ
From the review at the prize conferment in Celje, published in Večer, April 2001