Healthy Mum, Happy Baby

So, the whole premise behind Healthy Mum, Happy Baby is to make it easier to cook and eat well when you have a new baby. The team behind Meals for Mums, however, has taken that one step farther. They deliver healthy, home cooked, ready to heat and eat meals right to your door. Their food is great - it really is healthy, but not that kind of “I’m-eating-this-because-I-know-it’s-good-for-me-but-it-tastes-awful” healthy way, but actually yummy healthy.

They offer meals for adults, kids, snacks and light meals. So far our favourite is their Coconut Chicken Bowl - and we want to try lots of new treats from their spring menu.

Their meals are all fresh - which makes it hard to stock your freezer for an upcoming arrival - but many of them can be frozen, and when they deliver once a week, suddenly stocking your freezer is less urgent!

Currently they only deliver in Vancouver, but rumour has it their food will be available to a wider audience soon.

We’re in favour of anything that makes healthy eating easier for mums - we figure a copy of Healthy Mum and a gift certificate to Meals for Mums would be the ultimate shower gift, but then we’re a little biased…

Meals for Mums: www.mealsformums.com

I have been a bad, bad, blogger and ironically there’s a lot I want to blog about, but for now this great article on getting your garden growing and getting your kids keen on their veggies will have to suffice: Crops your children will grow to love

Well, after not posting for ages there’s so much nutrition stuff going on this week that I’m all in a lather.

I heard this on the news last night and wanted to follow up and then I saw it on Treehugger, so wanted to share: Debate Over Seafood and Pregnancy Rages On .

A well-respected coalition of scientists from private groups and federal agencies are saying that  pregnant and breast-feeding women should eat at least 12 oz of fish and seafood weekly for their baby’s optimal brain development.

However, the US government still recommends that pregnant and breastfeeding women eat no more than 12 oz per week as mercury contamination is an issue. Health Canada’s recommendations seem to revolve more around tinned tuna than fish in general, but all in all I’m stumped. Between conflicting info on Vitamin D and Seafoood who’s to know what to do? All I know for sure is I didn’t take enough Vitamin  D or eat enough Seafood (given these new recommendations) while pregnant and nursing, so for those of us past the stage of being able to help our babies develop it’s a bit depressing. Mind you, all you can do is what you know that the time.  I’m going to see if I can track down a dietitian and see if I can get more info…

Here’s more info: www.brainybabieshealthykids.org/press-release-100407/

Well, now the Canadian Paediatric Society is recommending that women who are pregnant and nursing take 2000 IU of Vitamin D daily.  And even that may not be enough to ensure that babies are protected against an increased risk of asthma, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, multiple sclerosis, dental malformation and inflammatory bowel disease - all of which have been linked to Vitamin D deficiencies early in life.

And the Canadian Cancer Society is recommending that adults take 1,000 IU of Vitamin D daily, as it can help lower your risk of several types of cancer including breast, lung and colon.

So let all the preggo & breastfeeding women you know know…

So while I have been following the recommendations from Health Canada I’m starting to wonder. I think I’ll find a nutritionist and do a piece on it for yoyomama (and add all the details here as well of course!)

Vitamin D crops up in health news almost daily right now.

Not only does it cut your cancer risk, but it increases your longevity and it helps prevents osteoporosis. CBC recently has done some indepth coverage of Vitamin D which notes that “The recommended daily allowance of vitamin D in Canada is 200 IU for the general population and 400 IU for people 50 and older. Some health authorities suggest that this amount is too low, saying that as much as 2,000 units a day is safe.” The article concludes “The U.S.-based Institute of Medicine of the National Academies has set 2,000 IU of vitamin D as the daily maximum tolerable amount. Health Canada warns exceeding this limit could lead to an overdose that can cause kidney stones as well as damage to the heart, lungs and blood vessels.”

So obviously Health Canada needs to look at their recommendations, and this month they are, and when they’re updated I’ll update the info here as well.

And while I believe in trying to get most of your nutrients from your diet, I am tempted to start supplementing with Vitamin D and am wondering if the kids should be too. I’ll have to do some research and get back to you.

I’m an avid Epicurious fan. It started when we used to get boxes of organic veggies and I’d be faced with a sunchoke and no idea how to cook it. All I had to do was plug in sunchoke to their search box and something would come up.

Today I found a great section on their site with tons of info on back to school eating. Everything from nutritional lunches to fast dinners: School Days @ Epicurious. It also has healthy snack ideas, nut butter alternatives (which is key for us with M being allergic to nuts) and my personal favourite section - leftovers for lunch, which I espouse in the book. Why prepare two meals when you can prepare one and not bother having to make sandwiches, instead just pop something yummy in the microwave.

Plus Ideal Bite has some good info on why organics are good for little ones, with some organic snacking suggestions: Organic Snacks.

At long last, here’s my follow up to the post on cooking with kids, with a great selection of books from Barbara Jo’s Books to Cooks on cooking for kids:

Whining & Dining: Mealtime Survival for Picky Eaters and the Families Who Love Them by Emma Waverman and Eshun Mott - more than one family I know is starting to rely on this book. We’ve tried the custard (yum), the corn fritters (bland and the kids wouldn’t touch them, which I was surprised by because really it should be hard to go wrong with pancakes and corn, two kid-friendly foods), the pad thai noodles (all but my super-picky preschooler loved them) and the teriyaki salmon (as with pad thai, an almost all the family favourite). There are some good tips on dealing with picky eaters as well, definitely worth looking into if you’ve got some picky eating issues.

The Kid-Friendly Food Allergy Cookbook by Leslie Hammond and Lynne Marie Rominger, with over 150 recipes that are Wheat-Free, Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, Nut Free, Egg Free, and Low in Sugar. If you’re faced with cooking for a child with allergies (like we are - our oldest has a nut allergy, and our youngest a soy sensistivity) then this will be a great resource.

Nora’s Dinners by Nora Sands (the lunch lady on Jamie Oliver’s program on school lunches in the UK) - this British book uses metric weights for most of its measures, but if you’re used to cooking the British way this book purports to inspire seven - 12-year0olds to cook healthy food, and teaches them basic cooking skills with a focus on fun.

If you’d like a cosmopolitan child who’s at home with the varied flavours of the multicultural food, you may want to check out Food Adventures: Introducing Your Child to Flavours from Around the World by Elisabeth Luard and Frances Boswell. Plus you’ll find out what the Greek equivalent of mashed bananas is and get some great ideas.

If you are interested in Socially Conscious Consumption and would like to be part of group I’m hoping to create through Healthy Mum, Happy Baby that looks a socially conscious family eating, email me!

Gastrokid is a blog devoted to kids and eating in a witty, informative way, rather than a “my child loves arugula” way. Their most current post references the chef of one of my most used cookbooks, (see previous post) Mark Bittman with his recipes for quick & easy meals, how can that not be enticing? Check out their recipe for cupcakes using my favourite, Green & Black’s organic chocolate. If you’re into kids and eating you’ll want to cruise around Gastropod or add it to your RSS feed.

As a promised follow up to my post on Grow Your Own, we went right to the source and asked the fine (and knowledgeable) folks at Barbara Jo’s Books to Cooks for their favourite books for cooking with and for kids. I’ll start with cooking with kids and post later on cooking for kids.

Mark Bittman himself (author of one of my most used and recommended cookbooks How to Cook Everything) recommends KIDS COOK 1-2-3: Recipes for Young Chefs Using Only 3 Ingredients, By Rozanne Gold, Illustrated by Sara Pinto. You can read his review of a few different kid’s cookbooks in the New York Times, you’ll need to sign up for an account, but it is free.

Kitchen Garden Cooking with Kids by Stephanie Alexander is definitely in keeping with the whole idea of getting your children interested in their food and where it comes from. Because it’s Australian it uses metric measures and temperatures, but Barbara Jo’s still recommends it because Stephanie Alexander is (and I quote) “wonderful” and the book is chock-a-block with project ideas for getting your kids interested in food, gardening, composting, etc. There’s a great website that goes along with the book that’s definitely worth checking out.

Sam Stern’s Cooking Up a Storm: The Teen Survival Cookbook by Sam and Susan Stern, this is a British book, but all the measurements and temperatures have been converted to North American standards. Now, I’ve yet to start thinking about the teen year issues, my feet are still firmly planted in toddler and preschooler survival mode. Share 14-year-old Sam Stern’s recipes, and try them yourself if you’re a teen cook or cook wannabe.

Barbara Jo’s has also created a list of great books on Socially Conscious Consumption, which includes two of my current favourites, Marion Nestle’s What to Eat and local phenom The 100 Mile Diet. I’m thinking of starting, either in tandem with Barbara Jo’s or as an offshoot of Healthy Mum, Happy Baby and yoyomama a . If that sounds interesting to you it would be great if you could comment on this post or send me an email - I’m thinking books around food and gardening and going green and eating locally that are either aimed at kids or their parents. So let me know a) if you’re interested and b) what you think the focus should be!

We thought it would be colour appropriate to go strawberry picking today. We were tempted by more festive celebrations, but after seeing how mellow (& sleepy) the girls were after we visited the UBC Farm yesterday morning (an aside - we highly recommend the Saturday morning market to all parents, bring a picnic and stake out one of their table, and bring lettuce for the chickens.) we thought another agricultural outing might be more fun, and guarantee good napping.

We met my Dad and the girls went for it. M preferred filling her bucket from strawberries my Dad had already picked over picking her own. Lucy was in her own private strawberry heaven - eating them, squishing them in her fingers, and stomping on them…who knows how much dirt and pesticides she ingested, but I’m hoping the whole picking locally thing will mean they’re not as bad as strawberries from farther afield. Plus M, who’s not previously been a strawberry fan, now says she loves them, which gives credence to the whole theory behind getting your kids involved in growing their own food!

Our berry picking tips for going with the very young include making sure you have a ratio of one adult per child, don’t plan to stay for more than 45 minutes or an hour, make sure everyone has their own basket for picking, bring lots of wet naps, sunscreen, sun hats and refreshing beverages.

If it wasn’t for yoyomama I wouldn’t be tracking all the goings on in town as much as I am, so it’s a great offshoot of the site that we’re exploring our city more than ever.