Benefits of Gardening and Fresh Produce
Nothing tastes better than fruits or vegetables or picked fresh from your own garden!! A strawberry or pea pod you pick right from the garden will taste sweeter partly because you know you grew it yourself. In addition, when you grow your own food you have control over what, if any, pesticides or fertilizers are used. Babies and toddlers are especially vulnerable to the possible effects of pesticides as they are less able to detoxify toxic chemical due to their smaller size.
Another reason to grow your own fruits and vegetables is that they will be much fresher, and fresher produce will generally contain more nutrients. According to Lisa Ramirez, Times Herald-Record, “Much of the produce sold at large supermarket chains is grown hundreds of miles away….places such as California, Florida and Mexico. That means days — perhaps even more than a week — have passed since it was picked, packaged and trucked to the store, where it can sit on the shelves even longer. Often, too, produce is picked before it’s ready, preventing it from ever reaching its nutritional potential.”
The organic garden contains no harsh or dangerous chemicals, so most of these fruits and vegetables can be eaten after a quick rinse. Other fruits and vegetables treated with chemicals will need to be thoroughly washed to avoid the dangers associated with them.
Other benefits of gardening include getting physical exercise while doing something you enjoy. It cultivates a nurturing attitude towards nature and the environment when working with the soil and plants. Enjoying the warm weather and summer breezes while listening to the birds is also relaxing. It provides a creative outlet and sense of accomplishment. Gardening also connects you with others when you share the bounty with friends and family. It’s a great activity to do with kids too. Give them a section of the garden all their own….a great learning experience for them!
If the traditional garden is not possible, you might try container gardening. Containers allow you to enjoy fresh vegetables and herbs when your space is limited. More information on container gardening can be found at http://containergardeningtips.com/container-gardening-advantages/.
Other sources for obtaining fresh fruits and vegetables are:
1) Pick your own farms & orchards – Listed by county at http://www.pickyourown.org/MN.htm or by city at http://www.mfma.org/memberdirectory.php.
2) Local farmers’ markets – No matter where you live, there is probably a farmers’ market nearby. Check at http://www3.mda.state.mn.us/mngrown/ to find one located near you.
3) Food cooperatives or co-ops – These are member-owned businesses that provide its members with local organic food at discount prices. They are open to the general public too. Listed alphabetical by city below. http://www.organicconsumers.org/state/greenbiz.cfm?state=MN&type=biz
4) Community Supported Agriculture [CSA] – Each member pays a share of the farm’s expenses and receives a weekly portion of its crops. Check at http://www.landstewardshipproject.org/csa.html to select one near you.
5) Community Gardens – This is any space where plants are grown and maintained by a community to meet the needs of that community. Check at http://www.gardeningmatters.org/ for more information and location.
6) Roadside stands – Fresh, usually picked just hours before being set up.
Locally grown goods taste better, is better for your health as it is tends to be safer, helps reduce global warming due to shorter transportation distances, and it helps the local economy.
So enjoy the bounty of fresh, tasty seasonal fruits and vegetables, whether you grow them yourself or obtain them from other sources! Happy summertime eating to you and your family!
http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/factsheets/kidpesticide.htm
http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080723/HEALTH/807230315/-1/HEALTH05
http://environment.about.com/od/greenlivingdesign/a/locally_grown.htm
Happy Gluten Free Birthday
Just when you think you have your new gluten free (GF) lifestyle figured out, along comes another activity to prepare for and redesign to fit your GF needs. A big one that is a dreaded activity for many parents, GF and gluten eating alike – the Birthday Party!
Perhaps your child is used to an annual visit to a party zone, with coupons for free pizza and a birthday cake provided. Maybe your family does a sleepover for 10, culminating in a breakfast of delicious chocolate chip pancakes for everyone. Whatever your past party plans, GF parties do need to be a little different to be safe for your child, but not so different that any other child attending will know they just had an entirely GF celebration.
The main aspects of a birthday party from a GF planning perspective are location, food, and cake. Obviously, a party in your home allows complete control over the presence of gluten, but that might not work best for your family if your child is used to celebrating elsewhere or your home is not conducive to groups of active kids. If you aren’t hosting the party in your own home, look for a place that will allow you bring in all your own food, such as a local park, pool, or zoo. An old-fashioned bowling alley can be a great choice if there is one in your area; and sometime places like karate studios will offer a birthday party package. A trip to the hair or nail salon is a fun party that doesn’t involve food at all!
When planning for the food at the birthday party, think about both the timing of the party and the expense. Not all birthday parties need to be centered on a meal. 2:00-4:00 on a Saturday afternoon with snacks and cake is a perfect option for a GF family. GF pretzels and chips, fruit, and cheese sticks may not seem festive, but kids love healthy snacks, and the lack of sugar can keep the craziness to a minimum. If you have to serve lunch, consider GF friendly options other than pizza and hotdogs, like tacos or nachos. Tacos in a bag (using snack size GF corn chips) are really fun! **Make sure your taco seasoning is Gluten Free, Penzey’s Spices offers great choices, or find a recipe to make your own**
The final, and probably biggest, hurdle in hosting a GF birthday party is the cake. Many people are not really bakers, nor do they have a local GF bakery to use. Since most kids only want the frosting anyway, it seems like a lot of money to buy a cake, and ice cream cakes usually have that crunchy stuff in the middle – not gluten free! Luckily, Betty Crocker has come through with the easiest Gluten Free cake mixes ever, which can generally be found in the baking aisle of your local grocery store. Available in chocolate or vanilla, one cakes mix makes 12 cupcakes that taste great, frost easily, and look like regular cake. Your party goers will never know the difference!
It is important to remember that our Gluten Free Kids want to be just like everyone else, especially on their birthdays. A little thoughtful planning and a yummy cake mix can make your child’s party all about them, and not all about the food they eat.
Tips for a Gluten Free Lunch Box
Tips for a Gluten Free Lunch Box
Every day, Gluten Free (GF) kids head off to school each day without having the ability to buy lunch in the cafeteria. Even if you are planning to work with your school district’s nutrition services to determine possible GF options for your child, that will take time and there will probably be quite a few lunches needed before that happens.
Here are some easy ideas for those first few days:
- Cut up fruits and veggies
- GF brands of corn chips with a container of salsa
- Corn tortilla wraps
- Hard boiled eggs – a favorite in our house
And if your child can eat dairy:
- Cheese sticks
- Cottage cheese containers
- Yogurt with some GF granola to mix in
One of the most important Gluten Free lunch box purchases is a small hot thermos – I recommend buying a high quality camping thermos, not a kid’s one. You will want to be sure the food was still hot at lunch time, and we always heat the thermos with some boiling water before putting in the food.
Here are some hot lunch suggestions:
- Rice – plain is fine, but homemade chicken fried rice is even better
- Soup – You can make it from scratch, but there are more and more GF brands available every day
- Mac & cheese – Trader Joe’s makes a good one that is also the cheapest, but there are other brands, too
- Leftovers!
It probably seems like time you won’t have to make a hot lunch while also making breakfast, but kids love to help, and before you know it, they will be heating things up in the microwave and boiling up the mac & cheese noodles themselves.
Your child will probably notice right away that turkey or PBJ sandwiches are no longer showing up in lunches. As most people discover, packaged gluten free breads are prohibitively expensive and don’t taste all that great. There are definitely some good mixes available, but expense and taste are a consideration with those as well.
If you enjoy making yeast breads from scratch, Nicole Hunn’s Gluten Free on a Shoestring is an excellent resource. If you have the time and inclination to bake, this is the place to go for recipes and tips – everything from sandwich bread, tortillas and hamburger buns, to muffins and cookies of all kinds. If you want to splurge on bakery bread and live in the Minneapolis / St Paul metro area, Bittersweet Bakery is a favorite of ours.
In a few more years, maybe our schools will have as many Gluten Free options in the cafeteria as grocery stores and restaurants are starting to have in the real world. In the meantime, lunch from home can have lots of variety and nutrition for our Gluten Free kids. It may take a little extra time and planning, but maybe not as much as you think, and it is totally worth it!
How about some nachos instead?
When you first hear the diagnosis of Celiac disease, and find out that you can no longer have gluten in any form, you feel totally overwhelmed.
We all know that gluten is in everything, and how on earth will we eat now? While people mean well, it is somewhat difficult to be constantly told that “there is so much more available now,” or “I just saw a whole line of great gluten free products.”
I know it is better than it ever was, I know there are more choices, I know people want to be supportive, I get it.
But . . .
Here’s the thing — I don’t want to buy food in a box. I don’t want to drive 30 miles round trip to get bakery cupcakes for my kid’s birthday party. I don’t want to throw a tiny frozen pizza in the oven on a busy weeknight when that pizza cost a fortune and tastes like cardboard. Initially we did that and, while we didn’t starve, I found myself increasingly frustrated by the inability to cook real food for my family.
I grew up in a household where we ate real food all the time. My parents had a large garden at our house, and rented another garden plot at a nearby arboretum. They visited several farmer’s markets to buy produce to freeze and can throughout the summer. My mother made every dessert from scratch and made 8 loaves of sandwich bread every weekend – this while working full time. We sat down – as a family — to a home-cooked, balanced meal every night. While my early years as a parent were not spent at as pristine a dinner table as the one I sat at growing up, I made a real effort to cook well for my family. The diagnosis of celiac was truly devastating for me as the chef and food provider in my home.
In the first two years of this new reality, I struggled. I converted recipes to GF with some success, but often with great failure. I wasted countless dollars worth of GF flour blends and I made more than one birthday cake a second time, late at night, after an initial disaster. I sat at my dining room table and watched as my family gamely tried the latest creation – but didn’t ask for seconds. Finally, about a year ago, I found a cookbook that helped me learn how to make GF yeast breads from scratch, with success! Since then, I have been able to make all of our breads – sandwich bread, burger buns, french bread, tortillas – not always on the first try, but eventually I manage to get it. For me, while I am spending much more time in the kitchen, I am also spending much less money at the grocery store, and that has been incredibly freeing.
Gluten free cooking and eating is still frustrating and expensive, but the excitement of the challenge has taken over my thinking, putting the overwhelming aspect of the job in the back seat most of the time. I find myself trying to work around the days I have no bread made by coming up with a different idea, instead of tossing up my hands in defeat. I have even gotten the family on board. Just this week, I was planning sandwiches for lunch, when I realized the day’s loaf of bread would not be ready in time. My husband, after looking at the exorbitant price of four GF bagels in the grocery store, looked at me and suggested that perhaps he could make us a batch of chicken nachos instead. I liked that idea – it meant he was on board with the plan, and I didn’t have to cook!
-Anneke
5 Ways to Be More Organized in the New Year
1-Get Clutter Free
- Go online and search this keyword phrase: junk mail opt out. Ridding yourself of the junk mail piles you end up recycling is worth your time.
- Spend ten minutes with each child in their closet…create piles for donation, handing down or mending.
- Go through your refrigerator and eliminate expired food.
- Dive into your own closet. If you haven’t worn it or thought about it in a year, time to move on.
- Use baskets. They are a great way to organize clutter, toys, remotes, mittens and hats or whatever needs to be out but simultaneously in hiding.
2-Take a Look at Your Pantry
- Take everything out and remove food with expired dates.
- Empty the four bags of opened raisins into one container with a tight sealing lid.
- Empty your torn and taped bag of flour into a large see through jar…see where we’re going with this?
- Prepare your pantry for shopping in bulk for the New Year. It will save you time and money.
- Paint the inside door of your pantry with chalkboard paint. Tie a piece of chalk to yarn and tie the yarn to a small screw so you always have an instant note pad for what pantry staples need replacing.
3-Delegate and Automate
- Think of what you can pass on to others as a favor or as a paid service. Most likely you will save time and money in your ability to focus on your work or your family instead of trimming your own trees or repainting your basement.
- Do your grocery shopping online. With most services your food will be delivered and with your local food co-op, you pay online and go pick up your food.
- What responsibilities can your babysitter take on while overseeing homework? Can he/she clean up the kitchen, chop veggies for dinner or fold a load of laundry?
- Think about your day digitally…do you have automatic backup plugged in for your hard drive? Are there any manual updates you make that you can automate?
4-Donate
- We are a society of Stuff. We have too much of it and need support going through it. Call your mom or best friend…she’d be happy to tell you what you don’t need anymore.
- Go online and search Do Good Donor. This will lead you to a list of charitable organizations you can choose to donate your items to.
- Make a monthly note on your calendar to take a walk through your home, setting aside items no longer in use or that would be better off in a new home. Call or email to choose a pick up date and set your items outside. It’s as easy as that.
5-Calendar
- When your life gets put on a calendar, the universe conspires to make things happen for you.
- Color code your children, spouse, family and work activities to keep things straight.
- Be sure to add timely reminders for: oil changes, changing furnace filters, outdoor window washing, renewing license tabs, etc. These are things that happen on a regular basis where you can put them in the calendar for the whole year during the first week of the New Year.
- Other things to pay attention to that benefit from getting space on the calendar:
- Be mindful of how quickly your pets go through their food. Always have an extra bag on hand or plug into your calendar to pick up more dog food a week before Rufus runs out.
- Library materials and when they are due.
- When deposits and tuition are due for children’s activities.
- Choosing a day and time for bill paying.
- Book club nights or your spouse’s volleyball league times.