ChowBaby

you may or may not know this. but there are two federal agencies that
regulate the food industry. the FDA (or Food and Drug Administration)
and the Agriculture Department. one oversees both drugs and anything
to do with meat and/or poultry in the food supply (that's the FDA, of
course) while the other oversees the rest of the food supply (and that
would be the Agriculture Department).
 
why are they split up? you're not the only one wondering that. you
also can't help but wonder if things like melamine in our infant
formula and salmonella in our kids' peanut butter wouldn't be better
avoided with one central agency that institutes strict food safety
guidelines (instead of the "voluntary" ones now in place--whose crazy
idea was that?!) and strict penalties for anyone who breaks the rules.
especially when leading experts assert that federal agencies "don't do
anything until people get sick." uh, hello? can anyone say prevention?
read more about current policies and what obama might
do in this New York Times article.

-m

when i posted my new year resolutions, stacie commented that she wanted me to ditch the pull-up bar and research water filters that remove (among other things) flouride. well, i didn't ditch the pull-up bar (in fact, i'm going to get it today!)—but i did look into some water filters. and, man, is it confusing. so i'm going to try to keep it simple. and here's what i found.
 
first, a little background. as per my new year resolutions blog post, there are lots of reasons why bottled water is really bad for the environment. we all know more and more about about why BPA plastics are bad for our bodies. and stacie already blogged about why many experts think flouride is bad for our kids.

here's where i'm at now. i have one of those poland spring home-delivery water dispensers in my kitchen. the big 5 gallon version. we go through 7 jugs a month at a cost of $53.55 per month. and we do our best to use our klean kanteen bottle (the whole family has them in different sizes) in lieu of buying disposables when we're on the go. starbucks will fill them with everything with water (for free) to tea and coffee (although that isn't the focus of this post). this solution addresses the issue of flouride, but still has less-than-stellar environmental and BPA consequences. so i'm ready for something better.

turns out, there are tons of pitcher, faucet-mount, counter-top, under-the-sink, and whole-house filters that remove various contaminants from silt to heavy metals to pesticides. the quality counter-top and under-the-sink ones seem to run in the $100-$200 range. and it seems that only the reverse-osmosis products also remove flouride. the counter-top versions can be installed in 5 minutes with no plumbing experience. the under-the-counter versions require some plumbing expertise. but not too much—ie, i can do it but i'm not sure about stacie (wink).
 
now let's do the math. because in this economic climate, the bottom line matters more than ever. sure, i try to make the best environmental choices at every turn. but if i can't afford the best environmental option today—even though i know it is the most valuable option for our kids, families, and earth long-term—well, then it just isn't an option. an initial filter investment of about $150 would equal 3 months of my current poland spring delivery. and since the average replacement filter costs about $55 dollars and should be changed every 6 months, i'd need to buy 2 filters this year for a total of about $100. that means that less than 6 months of poland spring equals 12 months of filtered water in the first year. and next year, i only have to buy the filters—at a cost equal to 2 months of poland spring delivery. so now i can save money AND do the best thing for the environment. woohoo!
 
so which should you buy? i wish i tell you, but i haven't even decide which i'm going to buy yet. luckily, there are lots of brands out there. PUR, Brita, Kenmore, Whirlpool, Clear2O.... the list goes on and on. you might want to check out the green guide for tons of great info on the various contaminants in water, product reviews, and the environmental impact. i'm leaning toward this Crystal Quest stainless steel water filter from Pure Water Essentials. mostly because i live in a rental apartment so don't feel like taking the time to do any real plumbing work. plus, i like the way it looks.
 
bottoms up!
 
—m

i almost didn't take pictures while cooking last night. i'd decided to make one of my and mike's favorite dishes, bucatini all'amatriciana (sloppily plated above with a side of swiss chard--pictures really were a last minute decision!). i used to make it all the time. i'd perfected it. even once claimed (while drunk) that mine was better than mario batali's. while not true, i do have a knack for this dish. but with pancetta, hot peppers and a ton of olive oil (none of which i'm willing to skimp on, even for my tyke--sorry, isaac), i've never made this for the three of us. in fact, i haven't made it in 2 years.

when i decided to make amatriciana for me and mike as a new year's eve treat i figured there was no point in posting about a dish that isn't particularly family-friendly. especially as my first post of the new year. but i've changed my mind. i've even come to think that it's the perfect first post of the new year.

michelle and i share our recipes, feeding hacks, and point of view here because we hope to inspire and help parents create healthy, adventurous eaters. but, at the end of the day, reading a blog isn't going to make your children healthy, adventurous eaters. neither is buying particular products or making particular recipes. it's your love and respect for food that will instill your children with their love and respect for food. which brings me to amatriciana. a dish i'm passionate about. a dish that reminds me of why i love food and, even though he's never eaten it, why isaac loves food, too.

so, here's the recipe. you can serve it to your kids or not. with adjustments or not. and if you don't feel like making this, find time to make something else you love. even if you can't feed it to the kids. just keep your passion for food alive. in 2009 and beyond.

Bucatini all'Amatriciana
2 tbs organic olive oil
1 large organic red onion, halved & cut into 1/2" slices
2 cloves organic garlic, thinly sliced
1/2 lb pancetta (or guanciale), 1/4" thick, diced
1-3 fresh hot peppers*, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced (or 1/2 - 1 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes)
1 can organic whole peeled tomatoes (28 oz)
1 lb organic bucatini (spaghetti works well, too)
1/2 cup organic pecorino romano cheese, grated (plus extra to top!)
salt and pepper

*the amount of pepper you use and whether you seed the fresh ones depends on how spicy you like your food; i typically use 2 fresh peppers, seeds and all. also, the type of pepper you use will impact the taste of your sauce, so play around. i've used everything from red jalapenos to (fewer) scotch bonnets. 

1. Put a large pot of salted water on medium-high heat (about 6 qts water & 2 tbs salt). Bring to a boil.

2. Heat olive oil in large skillet. Add onions and garlic. Sauté over medium heat until transparent.

3. Create a space in the middle of the skillet by pushing onions and garlic to the edges. Spread the pancetta in the open space and cook until it starts to turn brown.

4. Mix pancetta, onions and garlic together, and add peppers. Keep sautéing until you get a nice golden brown color to everything.

5. Add tomatoes to onion mixture, breaking up each one with your hands. When all of the tomatoes have been added, pour the sauce from the can into the skillet. Add salt and pepper to taste (don't be shy with the salt). Cook for about 15 minutes, until sauce thickens and pulls all the ingredients together. (This is not meant to be a heavy sauce, rather it should give a nice coating to the pasta. the picture below was taken just as the tomato sauce was added to the skillet.)

6. Cook pasta in boiling water until al dente. Drain, saving about a mug's worth of cooking water.

7. Toss pasta in the skillet with sauce over low-medium heat. Add cheese, an extra drizzle of olive oil, and the pasta cooking water. Keep tossing until all of the pasta is coated and heated throughout. Taste and adjust seasoning to get it just right--you may want to add more olive oil, cheese, salt, and/or pepper.

happy eating. all year.

-S

i thought i'd never have to say my son is a picky eater. after all,
food, in all its many splendored varieties, may just be my greatest
pleasure. planting it. growing it. picking it. reading about it.
cooking it. sharing it. and, especially, eating it. no surprise i fell
hard for my husband since he's a (now retired) professional cook. and
even if i'm not the best on-the-fly savory cook, i can follow (and
even tweak) a recipe with the best of them. plus i'm a rocking good
baker.
 
anyway, i was hell-bent on having a kid with a good palate. one who
could go to any restaurant and eat off the menu (and i don't mean the
kids' menu!). one who could travel unencumbered by any special foods
from home. one who proved, once and for all, that if we feed our kids
a varied diet we'll raise kids that will eat just about anything.
 
and that was true for the first 2 years of atticus' life. spicy
curries. dark and bitter leafy greans. fennel olive breads. i admit
it. i was proud. and then, one day, out of nowhere came the cry: i
want plain! plain pasta. plain yogurt. plain chicken. plain bread.
plain rice. i was ready to kill myself. or him. what had gone wrong?
 
i did some digging and found out it's not me. some say it's biology.
evolution, in fact. this article describes that kids get picky between 2-years-old and 4- to
5-years-old because taste buds "shut down" around the time toddlers
start walking to prevent them from putting just anything in their
mouth and eating it. i also learned from one of my favorite baby food resourcs that some say it's a development issue. an opportunity for kids to
flex their independence and experiment with cause and effect (ie, how
funny it is when he says "no, yucky" and i roll my eyes and sigh).
suddenly, i didn't feel so bad.
 
so until this phase passes, what is the parent of a picky toddler to
do? don't make a big deal of it. but don't give in to it either. i
don't support, and neither do many experts, the strategy of hiding
veggies in foods your kids like (ie, hiding pureed butternut squash in
macaroni and cheese)--because kids aren't learning to appreciate the
food in question. i do, however, like the idea of continuing to offer
the foods they reject along with the foods they enjoy. and not making
a scene if they don't eat it. it helps that we cook so much at home
since we're invariably making some staples (like rice or pasta or
chicken) that he will eat. so before we plate our meals and let every
food (gasp!) touch the other, we make a special plate (like this fancy schmancy BPA-free and phthalate-free one from Skip Hop) for atticus where the foods he doesn't like remain far from the foods he does. and
sometimes, if we act over-the-top excited about how yummy the yucky
food is (but not so over-the-top that atticus gets suspicious), he'll
ask for a bite. and sometimes, just sometimes, he forgets it's yucky
and eats it all up. yum!
 
--m

 
making homemade playdough is an easy and cheap (albeit a little
messy!) way to while away a wet and windy saturday morning. the
homemade version is just as functional as the storebought variety. but
since your kid is actually making it, there's the added fun of
measuring, counting (one cup...two cups...), mixing, splashing it on
the floor, cleaning it up, mixing some more, wondering why it's so
sticky, realizing that adding more flour makes it not sticky anymore,
and so on.... until poof wallah, you (or rather, the little bean) made
playdough!
 
here are the 2 recipes i use most (plus a resource for a few others).
 
i prefer the texture of the cooked version. but if
your kid is at the independent stage where everything centers on "me
do it!" then the uncooked version works just as well. make sure
you keep the final product in a covered bowl or ziploc in the fridge
so it doesn't go bad when you aren't using it to create pirate ships
and dragons.
 
cooked playdough
1 cup water
1 cups flour
¼ cup salt
½ tablespoon of vegetable oil or olive oil
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
combine all ingredients in a bowl. transfer to a saucepan and heat
over a medium flame while stirring constantly. when the moisture has
been absorbed the playdough is done. allow it to cool (and make sure
it is cool all the way through since i find there are often hot spots
that aren't safe for little hands) and then knead until smooth.
 
uncooked playdough
1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1 tablespoon vegetable oil or olive oil
1/3 cup warm water
mix flour and salt. add oil. add water. stir to combine. once the oil
has been absorbed into the mixture (it takes a minute or two,
depending on how advance a stirrer you have). knead the dough until
the mixture forms a ball. add more flour if the dough is too sticky.
 
-m

as i put isaac down for a nap today, it hit me. i haven't given him a bottle in ages! until several weeks ago, he was getting a bottle before nap and one before bed (before brushing his pearly whites!). for a while i kept filling his bottles up to the 6-8 oz mark. but he drank less and less. by the time i gave him his last bottle, i was only filling them up to 3 or 4 oz, and even that wasn't disappearing down his gullet. in fact, half of the milk would dribble down his face since he really just wanted to play with the bottle.

since i hadn't processed that his two reliable daily sources of dairy intake had fallen out of routine, i hadn't been paying specific attention to whether or not he was getting enough... until now!

i couldn't find anything about daily dairy or milk intake on the site of our favorite online pediatrician, dr. greene. so i hopped on over the the american academy of pediatrics where i found this guideline. pretty general, though it does emphasize the importance of calcium, of which milk (including goat's milk) is a great source. (they also touch on calcium sources for kids who can't or don't drink cow's milk.)

this brings up a great point--it isn't milk, per se, that children need, but calcium and vitamin D which are readily available in milk. both are vitally important to healthy development, and it can be difficult to get them in necessary amounts through other dietary sources. maybe that's why fortified drinks and foods are often recommended in tandem with foods rich in calcium and vitamin D for lactose-intolerant children. if milk (and yogurt and cheese) aren't part of your child's diet, talk to your pediatrician about what you can feed them to ensure they are getting what they need. you can also check out the world's healthiest foods entries on calcium and vitamin d. both provide a list of food sources (eg, eat spinach, mustard greens, turnip greens or collards for calcium,  and salmon, shrimp, cod or eggs for vitamin d).

Kidshealth.org (a site with doctor-approved kids health info by the Nemours Foundation) provides a useful, easy to read chart on what 2- and 3-year-olds should be eating across food groups. it says that they should be getting 2 cups of dairy daily, with 1 cup being equal to a cup of milk or yogurt, 1 1/2 ounces of natural cheese, or 2 ounces of processed cheese. (the one time those two words will ever appear together on this blog! please note that it takes double the amount of processed cheese to get the same benefits as the natural version--enough to skip it?)

as it turns out, isaac is getting what he needs. i've been giving him milk in a cup (we've been drinking mostly cow's milk, though goat's milk shows up from time to time). and he loves yogurt and cheese. and one last note that is more about the bottle than the contents of the bottle: in the US, we encourage parents to wean children from the bottle (and the breast, for that matter) much earlier than elsewhere in the world. i know every kid is different. and i must admit that isaac has naturally grown out of every attachment on his own. but maybe (?) it's because we let him. i definitely felt weird that he was approaching two and still totally attached to a bottle. but instead of projecting that onto him, we put some rules in place (e.g., we didn't carry it around, but made it a part of a routine) and let him have his comfort (the sucking instinct that we all accept and respect in infancy is strong through 24 months). while not every child will let you know when they don't need something anymore as clearly as isaac did, a conversation can be had if you listen to your kids. i hope that sharing our story eases some of anxiety around feeling like there is some fixed milestone your kid has to hit. because there isn't!

-S

damn. this blog post is longer than one of mine. ha!

check it out--thorough, thoughtful, convincing & with some resources at the end:
5 good reasons you should encourage your kids to cook at an early age.

-S

isaac and i recently started a parent-child program at our local waldorf school. isaac's favorite part (well, besides making bread which we eat at snack time) is playing in the bean box. he loves it so much that i made our very own bean box at home. i simply filled a shoebox with one bag of dried black beans and one bag of dried kidney beans, and voila! you can do the same with pasta. or rice, though small stuff like rice, lentils, etc. make clean up a lot harder.

i'd forgotten about this great, totally absorbing, totally cheap and all natural toy from my child development/education days. i'll let my friends at eensies cover the broader educational benefits. for here, i thought that the ingenious use of food would be interesting. though there is more to it than that--there's a real food/education/child development opportunity here. young children learn best by engaging all of their senses, which is why i often let isaac touch, smell, taste (when appropriate), and even listen to ingredients as i prepare a meal. playing in the bean box provides a unique opportunity for kids to get a new sensory perspective on food ingredients.

isaac is totally obsessed with his bean box. he's been waking up from nap time saying, "BEANS!" hope your little ones enjoy this as much as he does. 

-S

the economy is making me more conscious of how i shop, what i buy, and what i cook for my family on a daily basis. we're able to still eat organic by planning meals and shopping lists to avoid impulse buying, making extra to freeze in individual portions so we have lunches to take to work and school, eating less meat to reduce food costs, and making a commitment to eating our leftovers. 
 
i think i figured out how to accomplish everything i'm trying to do with one kitchen essential: the slow cooker! my new favorite tool (take that, stacie's kitchen shears!). a few mornings a week, while i'm packing atticus' lunch and downing enough coffee to cope with his fun new 5:30 am wake-up time (anyone with any advice on that?), i make use of my "magic meal maker." i swear that thing turns everything yummy. by the time i get home from work, dinner is ready, the apartment smells like home, and i can relax around the table with the family. focusing on what really matters. like whether atticus got any time-outs at school or peed his pants.
 
here's the recipe for the stew i made sunday for dinner and ate today for lunch (it's more veggie than beef and even better reheated—and i used all organic ingredients):
 
1 lb inexpensive beef stew meat (like chuck), cut into 1 inch cubes
3 tablespoons flour
1/2 can of tomato paste (about 3 tablespoons)
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup chicken stock
1 lb carrots, washed and peeled, cut into 1 inch cubes
1 lb red potatoes, washed and cut into 1 inch cubes
1 lb onions, peeled and cut into 1 inch cubes
4 cloves garlic, mashed
1 bunch kale, washed and chopped
2 bay leaves
 
place beef in slow cooker. add flour, tomato paste, vinegar, and chicken stock. add carrots, potatoes, onions, and garlic. fill remaining space with kale. place two bay leaves on top. cover. set to low heat for 8 hours (probably about 5 hours on high heat if you're in a hurry). before serving, add salt and pepper for the grown ups and leave it out for the little ones. (and make sure you cool and freeze the extra that night so all the veggies in your reheated leftovers don't make anyone—ahem—gassy.)
 
-m