Healthy Mum, Happy Baby

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

Last week the Government of Canada launched a new site – Healthy Canadians – and it’s a one stop health shop, combining recall info from Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. Not only can you track all food and children’s product recalls in one place, but there’s info on healthy eating, healthy pregnancy, active kids, family safety, the Children’s Fitness Tax Credit, toy safety tips and more. You can also sign up for info on food recalls and product safety news, or just rely on us to keep you posted. We are a bit worried that there are so many toy and food recalls that they need a site all of their own, but at least it’s an easy and centralized way to find the info.

Healthy Canadians: www.healthycanadians.gc.ca

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!

Did you know that breastfeeding, on top of all it’s other benefits, is sustainable and has no environmental impact? I found a great site today called TreeHugger that’s all about going green, so if that’s up your alley you’ll want to check out their ten tips for How to Green Your Baby, which includes breastfeeding.

It’s the kind of site that’ll entrap you when you start drilling down and jumping from link to link.

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.

So not only did China manufacture each of the 24 kinds of toys recalled for safety reasons in the US so far this year, but the recent pet food scare was over Chinese made pet food and there is more and more in the news about the dangers of food imported from China. Of course since China manufactures about 80% of all the world’s toys it’s hardly surprising…

What’s a mum to do? This is one more persuasive argument for shopping locally - not just for toys but for food too.

I’m toying with the idea of trying the 100-Mile Diet for our family for a few weeks this summer, but first I need to convince my husband and also source some local bread and pasta as I don’t see us surviving on a 100-Mile Diet until they make 100-Mile Annie’s Mac ‘n Cheese.

If any of you out there have tried eating locally with tots I’d love your feedback and ideas on how to make it work.

Gayla of You Grow Girl sent along a few more links for ideas for gardening with kids. She suggested www.kidsgardening.com and a section on her site with realistic jobs for kids in the garden: www.yougrowgirl.com/garden/jobsforkids.php 

She also suggested starting small with “really simple stuff like starting a small herb from plant or seed…giving the kids one plant that is already there is a good start for a really young kid.”