Palo student one of 54 kids to cook their way to White House

Eight-year-old Anabel Bradley doesn't wear a white chef hat. She prefers colorful things, though she doesn't have a favorite color. On June 16, when she cooked for a Gazette reporter and photographer, Bradley wore a lavender top, a pink skirt, a blue sock, a purple sock and fingernails lacquered in alternating blue and red polish.

It would only be fitting, then, that when the Palo girl took up the task to create a recipe, the ingredients would span the color wheel as well.

'I was going to do something with pasta before I thought of the cookies and pancakes,” Anabel said. 'I was going to do pasta with all the different colors of the rainbow, but then I decided to do pancakes because I don't really like to make pasta that much.”

It was a good choice. Her Over the Rainbow Veggie Pancakes earned her a trip to Washington, D.C., for the 2014 Kids' State Dinner. First lady Michelle Obama will host the July 18 event. Anabel is one of 54 winners - one from each of the 50 states as well as Washington, D.C., Guam, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands - of the third annual Healthy Lunchtime Challenge, a contest to promote healthy eating through charging children ages 8 to 12 to work with their parents or legal guardians to create nutritious and delicious dishes using food groups represented on the MyPlate healthy meal graphic.

Anabel's recipe was one of more than 1,500 entries to this year's contest. The 54 selected entrees will all appear in a cookbook.

'I chose my two favorite things to make: cookies and pancakes,” said Anabel, who finally settled on the latter when she realized that veggie cookies wouldn't taste good.

Anabel had some help from her mom, Julie Bradley, a teacher at Hiawatha Elementary School, who grew up eating what she calls 'more savory pancakes” with zucchini and potatoes as opposed to the traditional syrup-covered confection that the word 'pancake” often brings to mind.

'It was a good back and forth,” she said about collaborating with her daughter, who just completed third grade at Viola Gibson Elementary School. 'We had to negotiate about what's realistic and what's not realistic.”

Julie Bradley found out about the contest via an email from Let's Move!, first lady Michelle Obama's initiative to eliminate childhood obesity. The mother-daughter team created a recipe that includes carrots, sweet yellow peppers, diced tomatoes and chopped asparagus. Anabel advises diners not to put syrup on these pancakes, but she does serve them with blueberries.

'I like to eat fruits more than I like to eat vegetables,” she said. 'We wanted to find a blue for the rainbow and there aren't any blue vegetables.”

John Bradley, Anabel's dad, said he had his fingers crossed that she'd win.

'They're actually really good,” he said of the pancakes. 'I like them.”

Anabel said she asked her mom to check her email twice a day for contest results.

'I had this feeling all along that she had to win,” said Julie Bradley, who found out in mid-June that Anabel won. 'I was ecstatic that they thought her recipe was as good as we did.”

Winners get to bring a parent or guardian to D.C. for the dinner, which will likely include some of the winning cuisine on the menu, and Anabel will have helped her mom achieve a dream of her own.

'I have had my heart set on this for a while,” said Julie Bradley, who supervises Hiawatha's school garden and has had her students invite the first lady to stop by. 'I so want to meet Michelle Obama. It's all of the good things - I get to meet Michelle Obama, I get to take Anabel, she won the contest - wrapped into one.”

Anabel has never been to the nation's capital and she is excited, namely for a potential cameo from President Barack Obama.

'The last two years they've done (the dinner), the president has made an appearance and we're hoping he'll do it this year,” she said.