Short and sweet, please click ***here*** for a video entitled GET REAL FOR KIDS by NourishMD.
Yes, there is sound. Just be patient for a few seconds.
Share the video with your friends, your family, school administrators, HR department employees responsible for vending machines at your workplace… anyone who needs a nudge regarding the importance of real food.
Whole wheat pasta pesto, roasted broccoli (with extra virgin olive oil, orange rind, salt, pepper, garlic), organic strawberries, pomegranate seeds, free-range, organic chicken roasted with fresh herbs and Meyer lemons
Pasta pesto. Just a couple of years ago it was public enemy #1 in our house as far as the kids were concerned. Think “ew, that slimy green stuff!” for starters, followed by a major meltdown complete with gagging and tears just for setting the bowl down on the table. Really. Even in the absence of the words “try a little.”
Flash forward to school Harvest Day, an event that is part of a special DOE School Food / NY State Department of Agriculture and Markets program called “Garden to School Cafe.” Mostly though, it’s executed through the hard work of our school Garden Committee Co-Chairs and the Chair of our Wellness Committee.
In short, Harvest Day affords our students the opportunity to play fun food-related games, explore a food expo featuring fresh veggies and homemade dips, toasted pumpkin seeds, freshly squeezed juices and apples from our region. They also get the opportunity to sample three specially prepared dishes (baba ghanoush, potato salad sans mayonnaise and a winter squash medley, for instance) and vote on a winner.
The hi-lite of the day, though, is having the kids eat their lunch (which contains fresh herbs harvested from the school garden) in the school’s “big yard.” One lunch in particular was herbed chicken and brown rice, fresh green beans and a super tasty salad bar that included pasta pesto (the basil came from the school garden) and a chick pea salad.
I’m not sure if it was the concept of “growing your own” that finally enabled my girls to settle down and try some of the food they had help tend to from seedlings, or if it was simply peer pressure because everyone else was sampling all the food, but pasta pesto has been a hit ever since.
For that reason and countless others, I am a huge fan of school gardens. If you aren’t fortunate enough to have one, I urge you to consider starting one, even if it’s small and you have to use raised beds in the school yard or Aerogardens in the classroom.
For information on the amazing benefits of school gardens, click here. Please take the time to check out the link.
This is *so* easy to pull off, folks, and so delicious. I hope you give it a try!
All you need is your fruit of choice and a high quality dark chocolate bar. Melt the chocolate in a water bath. Don’t know how? No longer a valid excuse:
Now either drizzle the chocolate over your fruit of choice or dip your fruit into the melted chocolate and set on wax paper. Don’t be shy — go ahead and experiment. Dried fruit (such as apricots) is yummy as well, but for Valentine’s Day I’d encourage chocolate covered organic strawberries or pomegranate seeds with a chocolate drizzle.
By the way, Little Ladies Who Lunch is one year old today. I want to send a special thanks to our Tumblr followers. There are just shy of 9,000 of you, and YOU ROCK!
This is a look back at last year’s Valentine’s Day post, when my friend Diane shared with me her family’s tradition of making a non-food Valentine favors for her children’s classmates.
She rightfully says it’s a great way to put old, cracked crayons to use. Bonus: her kids are now old enough to actively participate in the process she first spied in a magazine years ago.
First, gather your broken crayons:
Peel off the paper like Diane’s daughter Francine is doing here, and break the crayons into smaller bits:
Francine is holding the family’s faithful silicon heart-shaped cupcake pan.
Fill molds with broken crayons and bake low and slow, checking on the melting process along the way.
Here is the finished product: attractive & functional heart-shaped tie-dyed Valentines.
Here’s Diane’s son Tommy right before they placed 2-3 of the crayons into bags tied with pretty ribbons and a card.
There will be enough candy in and out of the classroom on Valentine’s Day. Why not go for something unique and fun?
First off, congratulations to our hometown team, the New York Giants!
We had a lovely selection of Superbowl fare despite the fact that we are still not fully operational after our move.
A few examples of our starting finger foods line-up include:
Problem is, we ate the food faster than we could think to photograph it, and I realized it when there was just 1 mini-dog left. Oops.
As my dear friend Nathan said on his Facebook status update, “Giants: Thank you for the unbelievably exciting win tonight. Patriots: Thanks for a fantastic fight. You’re amazing competitors.”
That sums up Superbowl XLVI very nicely!
Friends, we are moving this weekend and I just sealed the boxes carrying the bento equipment.
Please bear with us for a few days while we’re off-line. The blog’s one year anniversary is coming up and so is Valentine’s Day, so we’ll be back to cover those events and more as soon as we are able.
I can’t wait to give you a peak at the new kitchen, and walk you through our organizational process! In the meantime, I don’t think I’ve ever posted a picture of our crew. Their ages are 6, 8, 12 and 16.
I don’t normally post signage on my blog, but this is worth making an exception for.
In regards to children specifically, take a look at most children’s menus at restaurants. Investigate school cafeterias.
Then, volunteer at the pediatric ward of a local hospital and see what the children are being served while they are in recovery.
It’s heartbreaking.
We need more people like http://thehonestpalate.tumblr.com/ to go to med school and help balance things out, and more places like http://www.bareburger.com/ (instead of places like McDonalds). Better yet, we need more people to cook at home.
*Exhale*
We just spent the past few days nursing a virus that came out of nowhere and seemed to go away within 24 hours, only to morph into a different sort of beast shortly thereafter.
It started with a stomach virus, which basically meant it was difficult to stay hydrated. To help with diarrhea, we turned to the BRAT diet (no longer recommended by the American Association of Pediatrics, but that is likely due to the fact that it is not a nutritionally sound way of eating for any great length of time. Instead, the organization recommends continuing with a normal, age-appropriate diet if you can. My daughter couldn’t).
BRAT is an acronym for bananas, rice, applesauce (or apple slices) and toast. Some people follow the BRATT diet (same as above plus chamomile tea, which is naturally decaffeinated), or the BRATTY diet (adding yogurt).
I’ve always found the BRAT diet to be useful, and I recall my own mother following it when my brother and I were ill.
In addition to the diarrhea, my daughter was vomiting, which made hydration all the more crucial. Along with sips of water, many parents will aid hydration by supplementing with things like Gatorade and Pedialyte pops, which make no sense to me personally due to their food dyes, preservatives and other chemicals. Take a look at what is in your average Pedialyte pop:
Water, Dextrose. Less than 2% of the Following: Citric Acid, Sodium Chloride, Sodium Carboxymethylcellulose, Potassium Citrate, Potassium Sorbate, Sodium Benzoate, Sucralose, Acesulfame Potassium, and Natural & Artificial Fruit Flavors*,†,‡,§.
* Grape also contains Natural and Artificial Grape Flavor, Red 40 and Blue 1.
† Cherry also contains Natural and Artificial Cherry Flavor and Red 40.
‡ Orange also contains Natural and Artificial Orange Flavor, Yellow 6 and Red 40.
§ Blue Raspberry also contains Natural and Artificial Blue Raspberry Flavor and Blue 1.
Thanks, but no thanks. Instead, we made our own silly little (but much appreciated) hydration pops using coconut water (high in potassium and mineral content) and (because she was craving citrus and seemed to be able to handle the acidity just fine), fresh squeezed Tangelo juice (made from, um, real Tangelo oranges currently in season) for a boost of vitamin C.
Here is our homemade dye-free “Pedialyte” Hydration Pop (held by my 12 year old stepson, who approved of the taste along with our 3 other children):
Once the stomach portion of the illness was under control, next we had to deal with an ordinary, run-of-the-mill cold (mixed in with a mild flare of asthma, which has largely been under control since we greatly increased our fruit and vegetable intake 1.5 years ago — fruits and veggies are natural anti-inflammatories). For the cold, it was on to warm bowls of homemade chicken noodle soup.
Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup (with whole wheat noodles):
Said child is back at school today, and (knock on wood) the rest of the house seems healthy as well.
Fingers crossed that the sickies stay away!
Update: the sickies did not stay away. The school called and had me pick up my oldest daughter after she vomited. 2 kids down, 2 to go (and 2 adults during our big moving week — noooooooooo!).
A steaming ladle of humanely raised, antibiotic free turkey bolognese sauce over casarecce whole wheat pasta with fresh Parmesan cheese; organic raw spinach; clementine orange slices; organic red seedless grapes; organic Pink Lady apple slices.
Leftovers are are favorite of mine when it comes to packing a bento. The pasta was boiled fresh this morning, but the sauce was defrosted overnight from a homemade stash we had in the freezer and just heated up on the stove top. From start to finish, today’s bento took 15 minutes to make.
Our turkey bolognese recipe is similar to Emeril’s, though we don’t use any milk and add a little lemon juice.
About the spinach: all four of our kids will only eat it raw and prefer it without any sort of dressing or other accompaniment, except maybe for the addition of more raw vegetables diced as a garnish. *shrugs* Sounds lackluster to me, but they really like it and it’s very good for them, so who am I to squawk?
If your kids traditionally thumb their noses at the thought of sauteed spinach, try it raw and see how it goes. I would highly recommend starting with baby spinach since it’s a lot prettier and texturally more appealing than the regular wrinkled raw spinach pictured above.
Asian pear “fries;” organic green and red seedless grape kebabs; mini whole wheat cheddar roll (fresh from a local bakery); half a clementine orange; organic nitrate/antibiotic-free turkey bacon
We are a family of bacon lovers. Whether it’s “regular” pork bacon, turkey bacon, or even duck bacon (wow, what a treat, especially when making gourmet BLT’s with tarragon and avocado!) — we don’t discriminate as long as it’s good quality meat free of nitrates, antibiotics and other junk.
Today’s post features crispy bacon from humanely raised turkeys. That’s right — turkey bacon can indeed by crispy and mouthwatering delicious when cooked correctly.
Here’s what we do:
If you want to work a little harder, a skillet works just as well, but you’ll have to keep a better eye on it and turn it at some point. I think there is more room for error this way if you’re giving turkey bacon a go for the first time.
So there you have it. Floppy turkey bacon be gone! For the record, I like my bacon a bit crispier than what is photographed in the above bento, but I cooked it according to how the kids like it, so… I left mine on the cookie sheet longer. :0)
