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Contents
Posts
Is Your Water Supply Safe?
Saturday, September 12th, 2009It’s sad to read about how many chemicals companies are dumping into the environment… and guess what? They’re ending up in our water supply. Check out the New York Times article about how Pollution Grows With Little Fear of Punishment. This has been a world-wide issue – but it’s becoming more of a concern here in the US. Come on people… go check out your area on the NY times site and see the violations… isn’t it time we all complain to our congressmen and congresswomen and senators? The minimum the government should do is ensure its citizens have safe drinking water!
Parenting the Kid Who Likes to Eat A Lot!
Saturday, September 5th, 2009The New York Times has an interesting article about Parenting and Food. It talks about what to do with the child who wants to eat a lot. The dilemma is that telling your kid not to eat too much can cause eating disorders in the future. Yet, if you don’t help them control their habits, they might just eat everything they want: including lots of junk food!
Here are some possible ways to help your child:
1) Eat right and exercise yourself as an example to your child (most of us could improve our habits!)
2) Have lots of fruit in your house as an alternative to junk food and limit the junk food and soda in your house. (The NY Times article points out that your child will just find the junk food elsewhere. But meanwhile, if s/he’s grazing on healthy snacks presumably your child would be less hungry for other food.)
3) Eat Family Meals together
4) Less Take-in Food
5) Have them Bring Lunch to School (cafeteria lunches leave much to be desired)
6) Find an alternate activity to snacking – like a hobby
7) Have your child help you plan the meals for the family, thus helping them learn how to think about food in a healthy way.
8) Smaller dishes lead to smaller portions. When my friend visited us from France, she was amazed by the huge sizes of our dishes here in the US. If you have smaller dishes and you fill them up, you feel like you’re eating the same amount as a larger dish filled up. Yet your portion is less.
9) Make less carbohydrates. My husband is over 6 feet tall and my 15 year old son is almost 6 feet tall. Sometimes, I find myself making larger and larger amounts of pasta or rice to keep up with them. Lately, I’ve been trying to make less pasta, so we all eat less carbs, rather than making more and having leftovers.
10) We try to take long walks at parks together as a family.
11) We’re considering getting a dog – with the understanding that our kids would have to help walk it. That would be a daily walk for all of us!Please feel free to let us know any advice you might have, in the comments below, for helping children eat healthy food and eat healthy amounts of food, without causing eating disorders down the road.
It’s Berry Wonderful News
Thursday, January 22nd, 2009
If you like berries like I do, you’ll be berry happy to hear yet another report extolling their healthy benefits – especially raspberries, blackberries, strawberries and elderberries. They’re good for you fresh or frozen. So, however you have them, eat those berries and make sure your family gets them too!
Yummy Cole Slaw Recipes made from Cheap, Nutritious Cabbage
Monday, December 8th, 2008Cabbage is a nice, inexpensive vegetable to buy in these difficult economic times. What’s more – it full of nutritious vitamins and antioxidants. It’s one of the cruciferous vegetables that’s been found to be so important for your health.
This past weekend I made my mother’s recipe for Cole Slaw that I grew up with – yum, um! It’s the only Cole Slaw recipe I like. Cole Slaw usually tastes too much like mayonnaise to me. My mother’s version has mayo in it – but it’s seasoned in a way that makes it taste more like a yummy dressing. I used low-fat mayo to make it healthier.
As you can see below, there are two ways to make this recipe. One is the sweet way, with carrots and raisins, and the other is with onions or peppers and less sugar.
The first photo is of the non-sweet version:
The next photo is of the sweet version. We enjoyed both variations when I made them last night. Though, the sweet way with the raisins is the way my mother made it the most – and it makes me think of being a kid!
Cole Slaw Recipe
Shred 3 cups of cabbage
Method 1
Add a ¼ cup chopped green pepper or ¼ minced onion.Method 2
One cup of grated carrot
½ cup raisins (optional)Dressing
1/3 cup mayonnaise
1 Tablespoon cider vinegar
2 teaspoons sugar (I used only 1 t. sugar for the onion version)
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon celery seeds (optional – but recommended)Combine dressing ingredients together until the sugar dissolves. You can add a little olive oil to extend the dressing if needed.
Mix other ingredients with the dressing.
The full flavor of the sweet version came out after it was chilled for a couple of hours.
Bon appétit!
Many thanks to my Mom for the recipe!Mama Lisa
To Avoid Current Day Food Dyes Would You Eat a Bug?
Saturday, December 6th, 2008I’m trying to work out ways to dye icing that don’t involve food dye. Some of the dyes today are questionable health-wise, but also, I’d like my kids to see that you can do things the old-fashioned way.
Looking back at old cookbooks, I keep noticing that they used a lot of cochineal powder to dye their icing. It comes out red or pink.
I thought about trying to use that method myself, but when I read more I discovered something that made me reconsider: Cochineal powder is made of bugs!
Actually, it comes from insects that live on cactus plants. They’re found largely in Mexico, Peru and Spain.
They were originally introduced to Europe from Mexico in the 16th century. Cochineal insects were likely used in dyes in Mexico as early as the 11th century by the Aztecs.
I like to be adventurous in my eating, but I don’t know if I’m quite ready for that. I think I’ll try to find alternatives to Cochineal in my search for natural food colorings! I’ll post a link here to my results.
(But here’s the dirty secret – don’t read this, unless you have a strong stomach! We’re already eating the equivalent of Cochineal all the time. It’s called Carmine Dye. It’s considered a natural food coloring and it’s used in many different types of food! It’s also used in makeup, girls – even some Burt Bee’s Lip Balm has Carmine in it…)
-Mama Lisa
Check Out Celeriac – It’s Celery Root – Interesting Veggie, plus a Recipe
Friday, December 5th, 2008Celeriac, or celery root, is a well-known vegetable root in France. It’s called céleri-rave in French.
I got some this week at our vegetable CSA (a club we belong to where we pay in advance and get delicious organic veggies delivered from a farm every week).
One way to eat them is to make a salad out of them. You peel the roots first. Then you shred them. According to Suzanne at our CSA, the French eat them with a mustard dressing. That’s how I prepared them for my husband, my teenage son and me. I’ll post that recipe below.
My 7 year old daughter would never go for a celeriac mustard dressing salad! So I took out some of the shredded celery root. I placed it in a microwave safe bowl. Sprinkled a little bit of water over it. Put a little pat of butter on it and a sprinkling of salt. I covered it and microwaved it for one minute. It was quite good! My daughter ate about half of it – which I would call fairly successful considering that she’s a pretty picky eater.
Here’s the recipe for the salad…
Celery Root Salad with Mustard Dressing
2 Celery Roots
3 ½ T. Olive Oil (I prefer using Extra Virgin)
½ Freshly squeezed Lemon (plus more if desired)
Pinch salt (to taste)
Grinding Black Pepper (to taste)
Pinch Sea Salt (if you have it)
2 T. Mustard (Preferably French – like Grey Poupon – you can use less or more depending on if you like a kick or not)Peel and shred celery roots. I used a food processor for the shredding.
Put olive oil, lemon, salt, sea salt and pepper in bowl and stir well until mixed. Add in mustard. Mix well and adjust to suit your taste. (When my teenage son is eating it with us I put a little less mustard in.)
Add in the shredded celery roots and stir.
Bon appétit!
Many thanks to Suzanne Zoubeck for suggesting the French way of preparing celery root. We really enjoyed it!
-Mama Lisa
Fennel Salad Inspired by Bittman (with a side salad of – now don’t be frightened – mibuna!)
Tuesday, November 25th, 2008I mentioned in my last blog post how we belong to a CSA (Community Sponsored Agriculture). We get less expensive organic vegetables that come from a farm that day. We get whatever vegetables come in each week – there’s a little choice sometimes – but to a large extent – we get whatever’s in season at the time.
Last week we got, among other things, fennel and mibuna. Fennel tastes to me like licorice. I love it plain. But since I’m trying to fit these vegetables into our family meals, I’m often looking for recipes to deal with them. I was happy today to find a recipe that featured fennel by Mark Bittman in the New York Times. His recipe included celery (which I have in the house) and thinly sliced parmesan cheese (which I don’t have in the house – I only have grated parmesan).
Another complication to using Bittman’s recipe exactly as is, is that the fennel from the CSA is so good, that you don’t want to throw any part of it out.
Here’s what I did…
I cut up the fennel. After that, I happened to go over to my daughter to give her a kiss. She told me my breath smelled good. That’s because I was nibbling on the fennel. So I told her to try it. She liked it. So I put some to the side for her to eat plain – like she likes most food.
Then I added some grated parmesan (I recommend decent quality cheese for this purpose), olive oil, freshly squeezed lemon juice, salt, pepper and a little fleur de sel (which you can use if you have it – it’s a very tasty salt from France). I mixed it all together and voila – it’s great!
I also had a little mibuna in the fridge. Mibuna is a green leaf in the mustard family from Japan. It’s not as strong as most mustard greens I’ve tasted – though it has a little kick to it. I put some of the same mixture of olive oil, lemon juice, parmesan, salt, pepper and fleur de sel over it to make another little salad – Yum!
Check out Mark Bittman’s video to see how he made his salad. Yum Um!
A Cheaper Way to Buy Organic Food for Your Family
Tuesday, November 25th, 2008The other day I discussed one way to help decide whether or not to buy organic food for your family – selectively buying organic produce based on which fruits and vegetables have tested high in pesticides.
Another good idea is to see if there are any organic farmer markets, food co-ops or CSA’s in your area. We belong to a CSA – which stands for Community Supported Agriculture. Everyone pays a share in advance and then we all receive a share of organic vegetables each week – that come directly from the farm. The cost is very reasonable when you work it out on a per week basis. We get about 5 to 6 organic vegetables every week for about $15 per week (we live near New York City, where the cost of living is high). We also pay extra to get an herb share.
The food is out of this world! We’ve been eating vegetables we would never have bought in the past – simply because we never heard of them – or never saw them in the food store. Vegetables like Mizuna, Mei Quing Choi, Romano Beans, Tat Soi and Pak Choi – and some I’ve heard of, but have never cooked with, like Tomatilloes, Swiss Chard and Kale. It’s made my cooking more varied. Of course, they do also have standard vegetables like broccoli, cucumbers and tomatoes.
The vegetables we get at the CSA have more taste then what you find in the grocery store too. Our CSA runs from April until December. We’ll miss it when it’s over for the winter.
Here’s a link I found with directories around the US of CSA’s.
-Mama Lisa
Should You Buy Organic for Your Family?
Saturday, November 22nd, 2008Deciding whether or not to buy organic food for your family is a harder question in today’s economic climate, where people are worried about job security.
One answer is to selectively buy organic. Specifically seek out organic produce based on which foods have the highest levels of pesticides on them. The not-for-profit Environmental Working Group did about 43,000 tests on produce between 2000 and 2005.
Here were the 12 worst foods – meaning these you should buy organic:
Peaches (Highest pesticide load)
Apples
Sweet Bell Peppers
Celery
Nectarines
Strawberries
Cherries
Lettuce
Grapes (Imported/Not domestic US)
Pears
Spinach
PotatoesThe 12 best foods, meaning lowest in pesticides:
Eggplant
Broccoli
Cabbage
Bananas
Kiwi
Asparagus
Sweet Peas-Frozen
Mango
Pineapples
Sweet Corn-Frozen
Avocado
Onions (lowest pesticides)You can go to FoodNews to see the full list.
Fun Cooking with Kids: A Monkey on a Stick and a Ladybug Cookie
Thursday, July 17th, 2008My daughter made these great treats at our local library.
It shows what a little imagination and some candy can do! You can adapt these ideas to any theme for a kids party, a unit in the classroom or just for fun at home.
-Mama Lisa
Reevaluating Your New Year’s Resolution – One Month Later – Are You Successful at following it?
Saturday, February 2nd, 2008Have you been following your New Year’s Resolutions successfully? This year, mine concerned taking better care of myself and my family: Trying to fit in more exercise and to improve our diets. Not easy when you have two fussy kids and an even fussier husband!
Well here we are, a month later, so it’s time for a reality check. If you made any resolutions, this might be a good time for you to assess your progress as well. What’s gone well and what hasn’t? Even if you’ve failed to keep your promises to yourself, it’s not too late! You can still put a new plan into action to make the positive changes in your life that you wanted to make last month.
My first resolution was to start an exercise regime. This went pretty well.
One of my challenges was to fit a workout into the busy schedule of a Mom with school age kids. We’re always running to one place or another for different events our children are involved in. All that chauffeuring doesn’t leave much time for physical fitness. So to start, I set the modest goal of working out for a half hour every other day. Even busy moms can generally fit thirty minutes into their crowded schedule every two days.
I chose to use exercise videos since it eliminated all of the extra time spent getting to and from a gym. Also, working out indoors got rid of bad weather being a deterrent to exercising. I bought Leslie Sansone’s Walk Away the Pounds – 5-Day Fit Walk on DVD. It has 5 different workouts which adds variety to the exercise week. (I got the DVD at my local Target store for about $15.00.)
I’ve been pretty good about keeping up with it, but I haven’t been perfect. A couple of times, I let 2 days go in between workouts, but I decided I wouldn’t let that small failure stop the regime and I went right back to it. The most important thing is to keep exercising throughout the year.
It’s also important not to let yourself get bored. I can already tell that I will have to invest in more DVD’s to keep my interest up.
My second resolution was to cook healthier meals for my family and my third was to try to lose weight. Of course, these are closely related.
The good news is, I’ve successfully lost 5 pounds! Once again, with weight loss, the important point was to stick with it.
Rick Gallop, who created the Glycemic Index Diet, says that it’s not realistic to expect to stay on your diet more than 90% of the time. This philosophy helps you be more human about the whole process. Everyone will have events they go to where they can’t totally control the food they eat. Or it may just be a special occasion where you want to treat yourself. If you allow yourself to go off your regime 10% of the time, it makes it easier to stay on the diet the other 90%.
Also, if you fall off the wagon for a couple of days in a row, don’t crucify yourself for it. Just decide that the past is the past and go back to where you left off.
There are tricks to losing weight. One is that you have to find something that works for you. If you’re really not liking the diet you’re on, try another one. What I like about the diet I’m on, the Glycemic Index Diet, is that you don’t have to starve yourself. So it’s realistic to fit into real life. Starvation diets never work long-term. The focus of the Glycemic Index Diet is to change the way you eat for life.
I’d like to address the subject of cooking healthy food for your family in a separate post – as I have many ideas to float around and this fits in nicely with the topic of preparing healthy foods for kids while they’re at school – which I’d like to address too.
I hope that all of you who made New Year’s Resolutions are having success with them! Feel free to share your experiences with us, if you’d like, in the comments below.
-Mama Lisa
The Party’s Over – It’s New Years Resolution Time!
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008It’s the first week of January, so it’s not too late to start, or even to make, a New Year’s Resolution. I’m trying to make ones that are realistic and that I can stick to. I recommend built in checks over time to make sure you’re sticking to it.
My first resolution is to restart an exercise regime. I’d rather not go to a gym that’s costly and takes up extra time getting there and back. So I’m giving myself one month to get a home work-out routine going with DVD’s. If by February 1st I’m not sticking to the schedule, then I’ll have to join a gym. This way there’s a built in check and motivation – I’d rather not go to a gym!
My second resolution is to cook healthier meals for my family. An important part of parenting is to make sure your kids eat right. The idea is to really change the way we eat. I’d like to consistently choose multigrain products over processed foods. A good step to improve our diets would be eliminating the high-sugared cereals that my kids con me into buying every other week. Cutting red meat consumption down to small portions only once or twice a week is also important. Increasing fruit and vegetable consumption is key. Finding ways to make these changes part of the family menu will improve our health as a group.
My third resolution is to lose some weight. With this goal in mind, I’ve been reading a book that my doctor recommended that’s called The Glycemic Index Diet by Rick Gallop. He lays out in simple terms issues like what types of fats are good for you (which is also helping me with my 2nd resolution). Gallop discusses the virtues of choosing foods that your body takes a longer time to break down – like multigrains. He recommends, for weight-loss, that half of each meal be vegetables or fruits, a quarter be protein like meat or fish (though I’ll focus on beans in that category) and the other quarter be grains. This is what I’m going to try to follow for myself to lose some weight.
If you’ve made a New Year’s Resolution, you may want to consider how you can put it into effect in practical ways to be able to achieve it. Build in a check system to make sure you’re following through. Checking back on February 1st is a good start.
Good luck with your Resolution! If you have other ideas for sticking to your plans, feel free to let us know about it in the comments below.
Lisa
UPDATE: Come read about what’s happening 1 month later – some tips to sticking with your New Year’s Resolution – I’m happy to report that I lost 5 pounds in a month!
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