Getting Coco on board with eating local food

Making healthier, more local choices when it comes to food hasn't been easy.  Husband and I are starting to get the hang of it.  We are eating more veggies, we get better quality meats and we feel better about it.  Coco, however is having a tougher time with this change. Like other five year olds, he loves KD, granola bars, cheese snacks, crackers.... We basically cut out all is favorites (except for some of Mommy's baked goods and fruit). 

I am trying to find new favorites for him.  We decided to include him in the food preparation process which is helping a lot with the transition.  We made some home made mac and cheese (I wish I had found local pasta... oh well) and pan fried fish.   He loved the fact that we were eating HIS meal.  He was so proud of his hard work that he asked for the same meal the next day!

Coco's lunches are equally difficult to plan without processed things...  I made cereal bars to try and satisfy his corn syrup granola bar craving.

 

1 cup packed organic free trade brown sugar

 

6 tablespoons vegetable oil

 

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

 

2  free range eggs

 

1 cup granola-type cereal (our own, made with local ingredients including oats, honey, maple syrup...)

 

3/4 cup local whole wheat flour

 

1 teaspoon baking powder

 

1/2 teaspoon salt

 

1/2 cup local dried fruit (we used cranberries and blueberries this time)

 

1. Mix sugar, oil and vanilla together; beat until blended. Mix in eggs. Stir in cereal.
2. Combine flour, baking powder, salt and fruit; stir into cereal mixture. 

 

Bake @350 for 20 minutes.

These need to be completely cooled before taking them out of the dish.

They a nice cereal bar, nothing like a granola bar, but still very filling.

Best of all, I know what's in them :)

 

 

Becoming locavores one item at a time

Since the beginning of 2011, Husband and I are making an effort to eat local foods more.  We've found that there is quite a large selection available to us.

There are plenty of farms offering delicious fruits and vegetables.  My plan is to start preserving and freezing produce when it's in season this summer to supply us during the winter months.  We will be starting off easy, canning veggies, making sauces, freezing berries, making jams and fruit preserves and lets not forget Salsa and Tomato soup.  To add to this, we will be attempting a garden in our back yard.


  This will be our third attempt to a garden and hopefully we will get better results this time.  The first year, we didn't put much in our soil except for some peat moss.  Our soil is almost like clay,  practically nothing was harvested.  The second year, we started to enrich our soil.  Then we decided only to plant roma tomatoes, about 50 plants worth.  Well that was a mistake!  The plants produced hundreds of tomatoes each, however because of insane amounts of rain, they rotted before they could be picked. We were able to eat about 10% of what had grown.  So this time, we have composted material and enriched soil so we are going to plant a variety of food.  Thank goodness we have local farmers as a back up.

Here are other things we are doing to reduce our food miles:
-We buy Speerville grain and flour
-We replaced most of our sugar intake with maple syrup and local honey
-We purchase only free range eggs and grass fed meat from a local farmer
-We eat only local cheese and dairy
-We don't eat prepackaged food much to begin with,  but we are cutting that out too.


We didn't stop buying things just because they aren't completely local, we still get chocolate and such but we are substituting our usual brands and products for things that are made or grown closer to home.  For us it's not about the 100 Mile Challenge, or even a Maritime Challenge, it's about changing our food habits for good.

Marathon Crafter = Dilemma

Minding kids can cost you a lot.  Whether it be your money, your time or your patience, they would take it all if they could.  But I never realized how much kids can waste if you don't pay attention.  Coco is ALWAYS making things, he says he invents them but really he just takes arts and crafts to a whole new level.  He gets home from school, grabs a roll of scotch tape, a pair of scissors and a magic marker and he is unstoppable until bedtime.    About 10 "masterpieces" can be created in one afternoon.  He doesn't really seem to care what he uses to create them; Husband left a gas station receipt next to a  highlighter on the table for about five minutes and returned to find  a fluorescent yellow drooling three-headed monster on it. Books, bills, boxes, nothing is safe...

A trip to the office supply store can cost me over 100$ if I don't pay attention just to support his hobby and the daycare kids with craft stuff.  Enough is enough I say!   This week, I started gathering everything I find around the house that Coco and the daycare kids (aged 3, 2 and 20 months) can use to create their artwork.  The craft corner is filling up and the kids aren't complaining that there are no pre-cut foam shapes either!  I found old paper plates in the kitchen that were used to make paper masks and turtles, empty toilet paper rolls and egg cartons also tickled their imagination.

We got a huge bag of empty envelopes and cardboard sheets from a family member that works at a store where they sell greeting cards.  It seems that the card companies take back the unsold cards but tell the stores to dispose of the cardboard labels and envelopes.  I happily filled up the craft corner quite nicely with the brightly colored envelopes and started a scrap paper box so the kids could have paper to draw on.  

Its hard to comprehend just how big a child's imagination actually is.  An old box, some strings and a few buttons keep most kids busy for hours.  As parents we tend to forget that we don't need to buy them every little craft trinket out there; they'll find things around the house that are way cooler to them than anything we could buy in the store.