Food and Mood

This weekend I attended a cooking demo and lunch called "Eating the Right Food to Stay in a Good Mood" . I thought this might be something just worthwhile, and boy was I right. It was really quite informative and inspiring and the end results were delicious. Wish I had taken a photo of the fabulous lunch that was prepared, cilantro quinoa, radiant radicchio salad with an orange vinaigrette, kale chips, homemade hummus, and yabeba gomen seleta (Ethiopian cauliflower dish). For those of you who may not know, I am an extremely obnoxious picky eater so the fact that I enjoyed the meal speaks volumes. Beyond the lunch demo, I got to make my own mimita (Ethiopian spice mixture) and take it home for future use in the cutest little tin, ask lots of questions, and sit down and enjoy the company of 5 lovely women while enjoying a delicious meal. Thanks to Katya P Baxter, MBA, CNP that was the first step to improving my mood through eating.

We're Ready For a "Food Revolution"

I watched the premiere to Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. It was sad to see what is going on here in the U.S. ...no surprise, but sad. Although it was reaffirming that my family is doing ok, it was a nice reminder how important it is to teach our kids good eating habits. It's so very easy to fall into the trap of fast convenient food when your on the go. Even easier is to fall into this trap and believe you're feeding your kids well, as a result of all the trappings of misleading advertisements and marketing. For the most part, I prepare fresh nutritious meals because I enjoy cooking. However, I do find myself looking for the quick fix every Wednesday, our busiest day of the week, a frozen pizza, hot dogs with mac and cheese etc. etc. When I do this, I find myself justifying it to myself " well it is a kosher dog, tomorrow I'll make a healthy meal" and so forth. If I would just organize myself I could prepare something earlier that day, a casserole of some sort and have it ready to toss in the oven as soon as we get home..that would be just as easy as a frozen pizza.

Although we do struggle with getting the kids to eat veggies, we keep offering them at the table and hope in time that they will follow our example, and start making the right food choices. I see this happening already. Most recently, Miles has begun to eat the carrots, peas, and corn that I've been putting out consistently. So he's 3 1/2 now, it's taken some time, right? But that's ok, as long as the choice is there. Hopefully the others will follow along soon.

So really for me, the poor food choices are as a result of the time factor. I should be able to take care of this with a little organization, planning and prep work. The "food revolution" has gotten me, I'm ready to make the change and make sure my kids eat well everyday including Wednesdays. Are you ready for the "Food Revolution"?

Dad's Owie

So Max finally got his growing lump removed from his forehead. (fyi - he had this fatty tumor that was slowly getting bigger) Once removed, he had to get 4 stitches in it's place. The boys were just stunned by this and couldn't figure out what was wrong with daddy. They kept asking what is that? Do you have an owie? You ok daddy? It was sweet to see they were genuinely concerned albeit a bit scared too.

The Trick's On Us

It's been really busy around here with lots of activity leading up to Halloween. Most recently we had some friends over for pumpkin carving and butternut squash lasagna dinner, mmm one of my favorite meals of the Fall season.

We had an early Halloween celebration at Miles and Liam's day care which included their last day at daycare celebration.


We had dinner with friends, supporting Aidan's school fundraiser, Red Boy pizza with %15 of the proceeds going back to the school.

I did lots of prep work for Aidan's kindergarten Halloween party, made these fun treat bags,


baked these yummy cupcakes

using this yummy recipe from Everyday Food. Was so excited to go to Aidan's Halloween parade and class party but....this is when things took a turn for the worse. Night before the party, Liam is suddenly overcome by a stomach flu. It's been two nights of no sleep, one late afternoon visit to the doctor and multiple clothing and bedding changes. I've lost count of how many loads of laundry we've had to do. And yet worse, we've had to cancel Miles and Liam's birthday party which was scheduled for Nov 1st. Thankfully I was able to cancel the cake order with no cancellation fees. Now we're on the road to recovery. Hoping you all have a Happy Halloween with lots of yummy treats!

Update: just as a I thought we were on the mend, Miles is now vomitting :(

Snack Time, Snack Week

Aidan's kindergarten class has each parent sign up to provide snacks for a week. This happens to be my week. I have to provide a snack for 20 kids. They request that it be a healthy snack, preferably organic, with no trans fats or processed sugars, no peanut butter or peanut products, and that you provide 2-3 choices. I shopped for the week and this is what I have planned:

Mon - Barbara's Organic raspberry/fig newtons and organic raisins

Tue - Honey wheat bagels with cream cheese and strawberry spread, organic vanilla soy milk

Wed - string cheese sticks, honey sesame crackers, and dried cranberries, vanilla soy milk

Thurs - blueberries, raspberries, wholegrain cheese crackers and apple juice

Friday - bananas, Colby cheese and honey wheat pretzels and organic lemonade.

Aidan is a picky eater, so I had a difficult time coming up with snacks that were suitable for the class and that my child would eat as well. I kept reverting back to peanut butter and having to remind myself, no peanut products.

The nice thing about getting this week done early in the year is that I won't have to worry about it the rest of the year.

Fish Confusion

These days when I find myself standing in front of the fish market, I find myself overwhelmed with so many questions. What is safe to consume? What wild fish has high levels of mercury? Is farm raised fish really sustainable? If agricultural run off water is used for farm raised fish, do I need to worry about fertilizers and pesticides? What wild fish is over fished? With all these questions plus more, I really struggle with buying fish for consumption. There's so much to think about when it comes to fish, not only our health, but our environment and the politics as well. And now that I think about what I feed my kids as well as myself, these questions seem to weigh on my mind even more.

With all that said, I bought farm raised tilapia for the first time. I bought it with much uncertainty, but the purchase came as a result of elimination. I eliminated the large ocean fish due to mercury and over fishing, eliminated other farm raised fish due to pollutants and political reasons, which left me with no other choice that day but tilapia. I could have walked away from the fish counter all together but for some reason I had a hankering for fish. So I walked away with my tilapia, which by the way, may be potentially worse for you than bacon due to it's high levels of omega-6 fatty acids. That's just great, I'd rather be eating bacon if that's the case. Oh well, I guess you can't win them all.

So what did I make with that tilapia, you ask? I wanted to make something the boys would eat. Of course, it would need to be fried with some yummy bread like crust if they were going to consider it at all. So, I simply coated the fish with cornmeal that I seasoned with garlic powder, paprika, pepper and salt, and just pan fried it in a few tablespoons of olive oil. Served it with black beans and cornbread drizzled with honey. Adults got salsa too. I would have to file it away as a hit since all 3 boys ate it. I'm always happy when I make something everyone eats. If only one eats it's a failure, 2 eats then it was OK, all 3 makes it a real winner! So the tilapia was a winner but I have to admit, I'm still not certain whether to buy it again.

Deception

There are wolves in sheep's clothing all around...

people who act sweet as pie who actually speak lies that are full of deceit
advertisements that bring false promises, promises that never yield
products that aren't what they claim, but are complete falsehood

They're all around us, these frauds and liars that present in all sorts of forms. Wolves in sheep's clothing that need to be exposed. The latest wolf to be unfleeced is SIGG. I'm so disappointed about this news. Not too long ago I wrote a blog entry about the SIGG bottles our family each had and how wonderful I thought they were. I had chosen to use SIGG bottles for two reasons:
1. to help our mother earth, keeping disposable water bottles out of our landfills
2. to help ourselves, by keeping away from BPA toxins leached through plastics

Although it did help us meet reason number 1. With the use of our SIGG bottles, we stopped buying bottled water so that we no longer contributed these to our landfills.
Most disappointing is to find out the liners in these bottles actually contain BPA, a harmful toxin that leaches into our drinks. They had previously advertised their linings had a secret ingredient, what they failed to tell us was that this secret ingredient was actually BPA. Apparently, they have now developed a new liner for their bottles that no longer contain BPA and are offering to exchange your old bottles for these new ones. What I would really like is a refund as I am angered by their deceit. But of course, they are not offering refunds.

From what I've read, the safest bottles to purchase are those that are stainless steel such as, Klean Kanteen. Make the switch for your health and our planet's health. And let's keep exposing those wolves out there, for our personal good, our families well being, and the greater good of humanity.