Mommy Goes Green

1.  Start early.  Several years ago, I was reading an article about healthy snacks for kids where they mentioned hummus. Comments from parents ranged from “great idea” to “what kid eat hummus?” My first thought was “my kid eats hummus”. I fully attribute this to our early introduction of hummus, along with other foods that kids haven’t traditionally eaten like quinoa, lentils, couscous, and beans. We were just feeding our daughter (and now our son) what our family eats. We didn’t make separate meals for them. And for us, it worked. Both of our kids eat a lot of different healthy foods.

2.  Be the example.  If you aren’t eating veggies, your kids probably won’t either. Put them on the menu for every lunch and dinner. This point was recently proven to me when my daughter was playing house and said “I need a Coke. That’s what mommies drink.” Ugh. If you’ve been reading MGG for long, you know I have a love-hate addiction to Coke. Obviously it’s a bit on the “I love you so much, how do I survive without you?” side right now.

3.  Sneak them in.  When I was making pureed food for our infant, I thought it would be so easy to sneak those pureed fruits and veggies into our meals for added doses of healthiness.  I’m not the genius who came up with this idea, there are plenty of cookbooks that have great suggestions on how to do this like Deceptively Delicious and The Sneaky Chef.

4.  Prepare ahead.  One of my personal goals for 2010 was to eat more veggies myself.  I figured if they were easily available throughout the day, I would snack on them.  So between buying pre-cut veggies and spending time cutting veggies into bite-sized chunks, I put them in glass storage so I would see them every time I opened the refrigerator.  I did begin to eat more of them until I came up with #5 below.

5.  Leave them out.  Because our fruit is stored on the counter, it gets eaten quickly. I figured the same would happen with veggies so I started putting them in pretty glass dishes around the kitchen and living room. This is my current method of extra veggie consumption and it totally works. Both the kids and I are snacking on carrots and tomatoes many times a day.

6.  Grow your own.  With your own backyard garden, kids are bound to be curious.  My daughter (and friends) love to comb the garden to see what they can pick fresh off the vine.  Your garden can be as simple as a tomato plant in a container – that is how I started several years ago.  Each summer, I try to plant something new so we can practice our gardening skills and expand our taste buds.

7.  Get creative.  When I was a child, I would often come home from school to a message on the counter spelling out ‘I Love You’ in chocolate chips.  Of course, we swallowed them as fast as we could.  Although she used chocolate, the theory could apply to veggies, too.  Here are some great ideas resembling Sesame Street characters with veggies like corn, radish, peas, spinach, tomatoes and carrots.

How do YOU sneak more veggies into your family’s diet?

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I really dislike grocery shopping. I do it because it’s a necessity but I get in and I get out as quickly as possible.  I go about 2 times per month and I do 90% of our grocery shopping at one store – Trader Joe’s.  I pick up our bread and bagels at the local bakery outlet once a month and then make the occasional trip to the nearby (super expensive but totally convenient) grocery store for last minute items.   I’m not much of a coupon clipper because a) most of the items I buy do not regularly have coupons and b) I don’t want to go to multiple stores to use their coupons.

But recently I started following a blog that posts the greatest deals on everything from groceries to school supplies to movie tickets to restaurant gift cards. I’m getting some great bargains on group purchasing sites I’ve never heard of (like Eversave and Homerun) and coupons for Target that I never knew existed - and I love me some Target.

But the thing that I’m really getting curious about is grocery coupons.   She posts the available coupons, the tricks of the “coupon trade”, hosts a database with gazillions of coupons and shows pictures of everything she got.  And I’m telling you – she is a bargain shopper.  She gets tons of stuff for pennies on the dollar. 

I’m starting to wonder if it’s worth my time to get in to the coupon thing to save money but then I would have to visit multiple stores.  I’d also have to spend the precious little free time I have searching for coupons.   I’m also not convinced that there are very many things I buy that have coupons.  Plus, Trader Joe’s has already great prices on the organic food we buy.

So moms, how do YOU grocery shop?  Do you visit one or multiple stores?  How often do you go? Are you a coupon queen?  Is it worth the effort?

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I love me some black licorice.  Don’t even waste my time with red licorice, I’ll take black or nothing at all.  My favorite tea is licorice, too.   Just thinking about cold weather and a warm cup of black licorice tea makes me cozy and warm inside.

So when American Licorice Company asked if I’d be interested in testing out their new Natural Vines Licorice line, I did not hesitate to say YES, YES, and yes PLEASE!

Fortunately for me (and them), it did not disappoint.  Since the bite size pieces are only 17 calories apiece, we ate the black licorice in about a day.  It was soft, chewy and delicious.  Since I only like black licorice, the rest of my family scarfed up the strawberry licorice.   De.lic.ious.

The primary ingredient difference between the standard Red Vines Black Licorice and the Natural Vines Black Licorice is that the Natural Vines contains sugar (instead of corn syrup) and natural flavoring.  For those of you that like the traditional Red Vines Original, the difference is greater.  The original contains corn syrup, artificial flavorings and Red 40 (that does NOT sound like a food!).   The Natural Vines Strawberry Licorice has sugar, natural flavoring and beet juice for coloring.

You can pick up a bag of Natural Vines at Whole Foods or online at the Candy Cabinet!

Are you a lover of black or red licorice?  Have you tried any of the other natural brands of licorice?  Do they live up to the original?

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We have some yummy strawberry jam stored in the freezer to be used all winter until next June when we can pick those juicy berries again.  That’s the only canning I do but I know people that do it year round.  Just like any food storage products,  you want to make sure you are using BPA-free canning lids.  Last fall, when we found out that canning lids had BPA in them, we could only find one alternative.  Since then, a few more have popped up.  Here’s those that make the list:

Tattler Reusable Canning Lids – You can use these with any standard mason jar and metal screw band.  They carry both regular and wide mouth.  If they wear out, Tattler will replace them for free.  They are plastic, infinitely reusable and dishwasher safe.  Made in the U.S.A.

Weck – Weck is a German company that makes beautiful all glass canning jars and lids.

Ball Plastic Freezer Jars – These are great for freezer jam or sauces.  They are plastic and come in 8 ounce, 16 ounce and 32 ounces. Top-rack dishwasher safe.

Lehman’s Reusable Canning Jar Lids – These plastic lids can be used with any standard metal band in pressure canners, water bath or vacuum sealers. The company states that these leads “do not contain BPA, lead, mercury or phthalates”.

Have you found any other companies that make BPA-free canning lids?  Let us know in the comments!

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When we did a review of organic baby formula, we briefly talked about an ingredient that is generally included called hexane processed DHA/ARA.  Since then, hexane processed DHA/ARA has been banned from organic baby formula (although it doesn’t appear to have been removed from organic formula yet).  The reason?  These DHA and ARA additives are produced using a potential neurotoxin known as hexane.

So once hexane processed DHA/ARA is removed from organic baby formula, should you switch to non-organic formula or is DHA even important?

What is DHA?

DHA is very important for brain development, it’s food for the brain and because 60% of our brain is made up of fats, we need to be feeding it good fats.  According to Dr. Sears, “The body needs two kinds of fat to manufacture healthy brain cells (the message senders) and prostaglandins (the messengers). These are omega 6 fatty acids (found in many oils, such as safflower, sunflower, corn, and sesame oils) and omega 3 fatty acids (found in flax, pumpkin seeds and walnuts, and cold water fish, such as salmon and tuna).  A diet rich in omega 3 fatty acids (such as the LNA from flax oil or the EPA and DHA from fish oils) not only provides the body with healthy fats, but it also lowers the blood level of potentially harmful ones, such as cholesterol and, possibly, even reversing the effects of excess trans fatty acids.”

Dr. Sear’s continues, “In fact, there are two windows of time in which the brain is especially sensitive to nutrition: the first two years of life for a growing baby and the last couple decades of life for a senior citizen.  The most rapid brain growth occurs during the first year of life, with the infant’s brain tripling in size by the first birthday. During this stage of rapid central nervous system growth, the brain uses sixty percent of the total energy consumed by the infant. Fats are a major component of the brain cell membrane and the myelin sheath around each nerve. So, it makes sense that getting enough fat, and the right kinds of fat, can greatly affect brain development and performance. In fact, during the first year, around fifty percent of an infant’s daily calories come from fat. Mother Nature knows how important fat is for babies; fifty percent of the calories in mother’s milk is fat.”

Research has found that:

• Infants who have low amounts of DHA in their diet have reduced brain development and diminished visual acuity.
• The increased intelligence and academic performance of breastfed compared with formula- fed infants has been attributed in part to the increased DHA content of human milk.
• Cultures whose diet is high in omega 3 fatty acids (such as the Eskimos who eat a lot of fish) have a lower incidence of degenerative diseases of the central nervous system, such as multiple sclerosis.
• Experimental animals whose diets are low in DHA have been found to have smaller brains and delayed central nervous system development.
• Some children with poor school performance because of ADD, have been shown to have insufficient essential fatty acids in their diet. (This is a very interesting theory, read more about it here.)

So how can I get DHA in my children’s body?

1.  Breastfeed - The level of DHA in your breast milk is affected by the level you ingest via food or supplements.

2.  Infant formula – Most infant formula on the market today DOES contain DHA and is labeled as such.  Currently, the only organic formula that does NOT have added DHA in it is Nature’s One Baby’s Only.

3. DHA supplements -You can find DHA supplements for your infant, children, teens and adults.  In our home, we use Nordic Naturals, a brand my naturopath recommends – DHA for infants and DHA for children.

4.  DHA food sources – The healthiest source of DHA is seafood. Two 4-ounce servings of omega-3-rich fish per week should yield a sufficient amount of omega-3 fatty acids, especially DHA. Besides fish oils, vegetable oils (primarily flax seed, soy, and canola) are also rich sources of omega 3 fatty acids, with flax seed oil being the best. The two F’s, fish and flax, are the top brain-building foods for growing children, and adults.

I want to plainly state that I’m not encouraging anyone to give up baby formula because it contains hexane processed DHA.  I am a huge believer in DHA and have seen it affect change, particularly in our daughter (I’ll write more on that later).  I just wanted to point out the importance of DHA and that there are multiple ways to get DHA into our bodies.

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