Start Packing!

School starts in a week. I did the math and the kids have been out of school for nearly 90 days. That’s three complete months. I know I’m ready for them to go back, and for all their caterwauling (I’ve always wanted to use that word), they are ready too. The one thing I’m not looking forward to is making lunches every morning. So this year I’ve decided I’m not going to.

No, I’m not shelling out the money for them to buy lunches laden with too much starch and sugar and questionable proteins. I realize they’d just eat the roll, choose chocolate milk and finish off their lunch with artificially sweetened pudding (Pennsylvania has yet to get on the healthy school lunch plan). No, I’m not making lunches this year because my kids are making their own lunches.

We’ve tried this before, but this time I’m giving it a little more structure and direction. They can’t simply grab what they like and stuff it in their bags. And I’m not buying single serving versions of the junk food they crave. No, this time I’m offering a little lesson in how to put together a balanced meal, countered with the promise of dessert every day. Here’s how it will work:

Each child must place five things in his/her lunch: fruit/veggie, carb, protein, water, and dessert. They can make their lunches as big or small as they want, but they must have at least these five things. I’ve explained that having a healthy lunch will give them the energy and patience to survive the rest of their day. I hope they’ll also realize that just because a lunch is balanced and healthy, doesn’t mean it won’t taste good.

I’m providing plenty of Tupperware snack size containers and colorful Reusie bags for them to fill. No plastic bags or aluminum foil to clog up the planet. They have been strictly directed to bring their containers home. I’m giving them the choice of cloth napkins or planet-safe paper towels (which they must bring back home and compost). To make their lunch, all they have to do is:

Choose at least ONE OR MORE FRUIT OR VEGGIES: banana, apples, blueberries, peaches, oranges, sliced watermelon, strawberries, carrots, celery, or cucumbers. (of course these choices will vary according to season and my shopping whims)

Choose at least ONE OR MORE PROTEIN: peanut butter & jelly sandwich, ham & cheese sandwich, hard boiled egg, garbanzo beans, kidney beans, nuts, bagel with cream cheese, or cheese slices

Choose only ONE carb: pretzels, grain chips, crackers, popcorn, bagel chips

Choose only ONE dessert: cookies, leftover dinner dessert, leftover candy from the last event (Halloween, birthday party, valentine’s, road trip, Mom’s weak moment), homemade pudding, or zucchini bread

Choose ONE OPTIONAL DAIRY: yogurt, cheese stick/slice

Fill your water bottle. Add a clean cloth napkin and any utensils you’ll need.

Done.

Because they are taking over a job I normally have to do, they also receive one mom buck (see our family money system) for each day they pack their lunch with out my involvement (this includes me having to nag them to do it). I’m going to encourage them to consider packing the night before, but leave the decision up to them.

I do realize that this doesn’t get me off the hook completely. It’s still going to be up to me to keep the house stocked with options they’ll like, which may mean more trips to the market. But I’m cool with that. I’ll be thrilled if this plan works. There’s nothing that frustrates me more than unpacking three uneaten lunches to feed the chickens. Lunches I carefully packed just that morning. Hopefully this will mean less for the chickens and more food for the kids. And just maybe, it will imprint upon them how simple it is to eat a balanced, healthy, yummy meal.

Peanut Butter Crisis

Early last week I opened the last jar of peanut butter. Not such a big event, truly. At least not normally. This jar only mattered because although my husband loves me dearly and will do nearly anything for me, asking him to go buy more peanut butter this week was out of the question. See, my husband does our Trader Joe runs. Just the day before he had called cautiously to see what we needed and patiently listened and copied down my long list. He wasn’t thrilled to be sent to the store to buy eight pounds of butter, 2 bags of flax meal, four bottles of kefir, and as many boxes of shredded wheat as his cart could handle, not to mention nitrate free bacon, several cheeses, tortilla chips, rice vinegar, black olives, bourbon vanilla extract, and if you can find it – one of those tiny cans of fire-roasted chilis? He called because he was out of coffee and needed to stop in and grab some. I turned his quick errand in to a search and recover mission (where do you find flax seed meal?).

I’m not passing judgment on your peanut butter selection (really!), but I hope you choose a natural peanut butter. I know they can be a hassle and finding one that suits your taste can take awhile and be expensive. But traditional peanut butters are crammed full of nasty things like hydrogenated oils, corn syrup, salt, and MSG. Because it’s a staple of most kids’ diets, it’s important to find the healthiest kind you can. Back when we made the switch from regular peanut butter to natural peanut butter is didn’t go so smoothly. We tried lots of brands and nothing cut the mustard (or the peanut butter) until we discovered the Trader Joe Organic Valencia peanut butter. It’s relatively cheap, as far as natural peanut butters go, and I’ve gotten used to the fact that when you buy natural peanut butter you get some serious arm exercise the first time you open it and have to stir and stir (and stir and stir) so that it doesn’t freak out the children when they see all that oil pooled on the top. Plus you have to keep it in the fridge which feels odd after centuries of peanut butter in the cupboard.

We are serious peanut butter addicts. We go through at least one jar a week. With it being summer, that number can move up to two or even three. The kids eat peanut butter and jelly, peanut butter and crackers, peanut butter on bagels, dip apples and grapes in peanut butter, smear it on bananas, and love it in a chocolate-peanut butter smoothie (and when the kids aren’t watching, I love it on ice cream!). So while this may not seem like a real crisis to you, to me – CRISIS. What will they eat? For at least one child eggs and peanut butter are the primary source of protein.

So I did what I always do when faced with a situation like this. I decided to make it myself. I checked out the ingredient list on our last jar – “peanuts, oil, salt.” Simple enough. I used to make my own soy-peanut butter back when I was training for a marathon and needed to pack in some protein and fat before a run. The kids refused to eat it, but they were younger and fussier then and I wasn’t making it with them in mind.

I decided I needed some critical buy-in for this project, so I enlisted my daughter. I told her I wanted to try making peanut butter and needed her help. The winds were blowing my direction that day and she liked the idea. I raced off to buy peanuts in bulk from our natural food store. I bought lightly salted roasted peanuts and also some honey roasted peanuts. I decided to skip the oil and see what happens since peanuts have a natural oil in them. I skipped the salt too since both kinds of peanuts had salt in them.

My daughter got excited when I pulled out the food processor. Normally my youngest gets to push the button on this noisy gadget. She’s getting too old to complain that she wants a turn, so she was happy to have the pulse button to herself. We poured in 1 ½ cups regular peanuts and 1 ½ cups honey roasted, then let it rip. It only took quite a few minutes to produce a silky smooth texture. I put some on a cracker and ceremoniously handed it to her. Then waited anxiously while she chewed and chewed for what seemed like a very long time with various expressions crossing her face that alternately lifted and dashed my hopes. I think she was trying to torture me. Finally she pronounced it, “pretty good”. Coming from her that is high praise. Plus she got the bragging rights of telling the boys that she figured out how to make peanut butter. We filled a clean empty peanut butter jar and placed it in the fridge. Problem solved.

And not only is the problem solved, it’s going to save us serious money. Here we go again with - we can make it better, cheaper, and healthier ourselves! Try it!

Homemade Organic Peanut Butter

3 cups organic peanuts (any combination – salted, unsalted, honey-roasted, whatever you like)
Salt optional
Place ingredients in food processor and process until smooth. Add more peanuts or oil according to your taste/texture preference.
Store in clean air-tight container. Keep refrigerated.

School Lunches and Saving the Planet

One of the selections on last week’s school lunch menu was: Macaroni & Cheese and tater tots. I suppose the side dish of canned peaches swimming in heavy syrup qualified as the fruit/veggie. Two of my children petition regularly to buy these lunches. Their favorite lunch is French toast sticks with hash browns. We have worked out a fragile peace plan allowing them to buy their lunch at least once a week, twice when their argument is compelling or I’m feeling particularly wimpy. So I am overjoyed to hear that Congress is getting ready to upgrade school-wide nutrition standards this year. The first time in 15 years!

President Obama has set aside an extra $1 billion for child-nutrition programs and has challenged the decision makers to get more fresh fruits and vegetables in to the mix - “We’ve got to change how we think about getting local farmers connected to school districts.” Amen is all I have to say to that. Now would be a good time to call your congressman/woman and share your thoughts on the importance of healthy and local food. There is a national farm-to-school program in place that 9000 schools have joined. Pick up the phone and find out if your school is on board.

My daughter, my most challenging child to feed, brought home a paper the other day that had 5 tips for eating smarter. She was very proud to tell me she already knew them all. These tips were taken from a kid’s version of the book The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. I’ll share them with you here.

1) Try not to eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.

Love this one. I’m fairly certain my great-grandmother would not recognize a dinosaur shaped chicken nugget or Dipin’Dots ice cream. We had fun thinking of food that didn’t look like food.

2) Avoid eating packaged foods with more than five ingredients, or with ingredients you don’t recognize.

This one prompted one of my children to pick up the box of Cheezits, hoping to prove to me they were “healthy”. The list was nearly as long as the box itself. No dice.

3) Limit food and drinks that contain a sweetener called high fructose corn syrup. It has been linked to obesity.

Duh, mom. We know this one. I guess I’m a little over the top in my vigilance against the high fructose corn syrup. We all should be – they are dirty words.

4) Try to avoid food that doesn’t eventually rot. A food made to last forever is usually full of chemicals. Food should be alive and that means it should eventually die.

My daughter phrased it more simply, “Don’t eat foods that don’t have an expiration date.”

5) Be your own food detective. Read labels. Pay attention to where your food comes from and how it was grown.

And this really is the key. Give your kids some power over what they eat. Make them responsible for the choices they make. Talk to them about the impact of buying local versus buying global. Grow some foods together. Notice what’s growing in the fields near you and stop at the roadside stands and meet the farmers. Talk about why one food is good for you and another is not – and tell them why it is not.

One of my constant refrains is “Your body wasn’t designed to eat that food, so if you do, it’s very hard for your body to process it and that’s why it makes you feel sick.” I’ve explained to my children that one of the reasons people get sickness and disease is because they are putting things in to their body that there body was not designed to eat. It’s hard on a body to process this kind of food, making it weaker and more susceptible to illness. Just like putting the wrong kind of gas in your car – it may run, but it won’t run well and it certainly won’t run for as long as it was designed to run. Help your children make the connection between what they eat and how they feel.

We all need to talk to our kids about what and why they eat. If we teach this generation to make better choices – for their bodies, their neighbors, and their planets – things could change. In fact, I believe that’s the only way they will change. I grew up on programs like “green circle” and desegregation. My generation is measurably less racist than the previous generation. Granted there is still progress to be made, we wouldn’t be where we are if adults hadn’t started teaching kids about racial equality a generation ago.

The only way to bring about real, lasting change is to teach the children differently. We make decisions not only about what we eat, but how we live, based on the way we were raised. That stuff is hard-wired in there. That’s why it’s so much harder to break the TV, fast food, instant-gratification habits that most of us struggle with – it goes against how we were raised.

You have a chance to change all that. Your children could live differently. They could turn the tide on so many issues. They could literally save the planet. Don’t miss your chance to empower them. It starts at your table.

What to Pack for Lunch

What to pack for lunch? There are so many options. You really could pack anything as long as it:
1. Doesn’t need to be heated up
2. Can be eaten in 15 minutes or less (the average time most kids have to actually eat, rather than socialize. Less, in the case of my yappy daughter)
3. Won’t make your kids’ friends gag (and thus make your kid too embarrassed to eat said food. This works in reverse for my six year old. If it would make his friends gag – he’ll be even more likely to eat it!)

Most kids would rather snack than eat a real meal, so pulling together a collection of healthy snacks works great. Try to think outside the box. A packed lunch doesn’t have to include a sandwich to be healthy. Besides, most kids skip the sandwich anyway. Mix it up and keep them guessing. If you’re the anal creative sort you could write up a menu at the beginning of the week and let your kids choose their lunches. Make lists of acceptable appetizers, entrees, side dishes, and desserts and let them place their order. Saves you from having to think each morning.

Here is an assortment of ideas to get you started:

Bagel with cream cheese and jelly. (I’ve discovered a wonderful bagel recipe – I’ll post it this week. It’ll save you lots of money if your kids are bagel-eaters.)
Cheese and crackers (cheese sticks or “square” cheese in the wrapper or cut up your own. Just be sure if the cheese isn’t wrapped to pack it separate from the crackers or it will make the crackers soggy –ew!)
Nuts (cashews, pistachios, almonds all go over well with my kids. There’s lots of good stuff in nuts and the bonus is you only need a few to get powerful benefits)
Dried fruit (craisins, raisins, dried apricots, dried cherries – like nuts you don’t need many to get some good nutrients.)
Ham and cheese rolled up with a toothpick (put a toothpick through any food and kids will eat it, just to have the toothpick for sword fighting. You can also decorate the roll up with a pickle or an olive.)
Veggies and dip (I just ordered a crinkle cutter so that I can make the veggies look even more appetizing. I’m sure you know by now that kids will eat anything with dip. Just be sure to pack your own healthy dip and avoid the saturated fat laden, heavily processed dressings and dips available in convenient little packs. Don’t sacrifice your kids’ health for convenience! You can buy organic prepared ranch dressing or make your own easily with a mix like Simply Organic and pack them in re-usable extra small plastic containers.)
Yogurt and pretzels. (These can be packed separately or intentionally together to be used as a dip. Stoneyfield farm makes kid size organic yogurts and Trader Joes brand kid yogurt is also delicious. I avoid most other brands because they have so many artificial flavors and colors and tons of preservatives.)
Peanut Butter and apples or grapes or the old standby “ants on a log” (peanut butter on a celery stick with raisins dotting the peanut butter. That one might be hard to keep in good condition by lunchtime. My kids love dipping apples or grapes in peanut butter – tastes like a PB&J minus the bread. Just fill an extra small plastic container with a few tablespoons of peanut butter and send along lots of things to dip in it.)
Wheat crackers with cream cheese (since this is my daughter’s favorite I had to include it. She loves little cracker sandwiches with cream cheese inside.)
Peanut Butter crackers
Peanut Butter and Honey sandwich (just go easy on the honey or it will saturate the bread and ruin the sandwich)
Humus and pita chips (I’m putting this in because I know some people might be able to get their kids to eat this. I don’t pack it because of the killer garlic breath that ensues. I don’t want people avoiding my kid all afternoon)
Cheese or cheese & chicken or cheese & bean Quesadilla (first make sure your kid will eat one cold)
Anything in a wrap (if you wrap anything in a healthy soft tortilla and secure it with a toothpick you have a good shot. Remember the draw of the toothpick. Fill the tortilla with PB&J, ham and cheese, cream cheese and cucumber, be creative)
Powermix (nuts, sunflower seeds, raisins, carob chips, even cereal, add what your child likes and then throw in a few new things)

Adding extras like yogurt, fruit, homemade cookies, and snack crackers can round out your lunch. One thing I’ve discovered about packing the extras is that you need to keep them separate from after school snacks. Make the things that appear in their lunch box special by saving for just that purpose. My kids can’t survive with out Cheezits or Goldfish. Nevermind that there are a plethora of organic cheese cracker brands out there. They tell me that none of them measure up. So, being the wimp that I am, this is one place that I cave. They often get a small snack of cheezits or goldfish in their lunches. But they can’t come home from school and eat the rest of the box.

Bottom line is try to get some protein and fiber and a little fat in to your kids at lunchtime. If you’re doing well you also get in some fruits and vegetables. I know that if I pack lots of snack crackers and a couple big cookies, no matter if those foods are organic or not, my kids won’t eat the rest of their lunch. They’ll leave the good stuff. It takes awhile, but you can figure out what the balance of healthy foods and not-so-healthy foods needs to be to ensure that your kid gets the nutrients he needs to get through the afternoon.

I’d love to hear more ideas for packing lunches. If you’re still reading this, you’re probably thinking, “She didn’t mention……… and my kids love that.” So mention it! I need some new ideas!

To Pack or Not to Pack (Lunch)

To pack or not to pack – isn’t that the big question? My kids have only recently been allowed to buy school lunch (they have the meanest mom in the world). I finally caved because it seemed that if I dug my heels in they would only want to buy lunch more – even stuff like fish sticks and sloppy joes which they have traditionally hated. So I agreed to allow them to purchase lunch one day a week if they want. Funny thing is they almost always choose to pack. The only exception being Breakfast-for-Lunch day. They can’t resist the pancakes and more importantly – the syrup. I cringe at the thought of them fueling up on processed pancake mix, corn syrup mixed with artificial flavors and coloring, and bad fat-laden homefries. There is not a vegetable or even a fruit to be had. But it’s the sacrifice I make to keep the peace and to keep them from resenting our food choices.

School lunch, at least in my experience, is by nature loaded with processed food and artificial ingredients. How else can you feed so many children so cheaply? All I can say is “shame on our government”. I completely understand the budget restrictions and hard choices, but I don’t accept them. Our children deserve better. Rather than climbing up on my soapbox, I’ll just leave it at that.

But what I wanted to write about is packing lunches. First rule – don’t always pack the same stuff. You’d get bored if you had to eat the same thing day after day. I know you have a million other things to do in the morning and believe me I know it’s hard to keep coming up with ideas, but do it. These are your kids we’re talking about. And it’s also an opportunity to get some good things in them if you’re sneaky enough. I know some kids are fussy – but change something up as much as possible. In the next post or two I’m going to give you some ideas.

Here’s our plan. First, we avoid baggies. Baggies are the bane of my existence. Have you ever considered anything so wasteful? I can’t get around them on many occasions, but I do avoid them when packing lunches. We buy the tiny re-usable plastic containers. Now, I know plastic is on the black list these days, but I will use it under these conditions-
1.) Never wash plastic in the dishwasher. I wash the plastic by hand, with warm water and soap – never scalding hot.
2.) Don’t pack anything hot in the plastic.
Following these rules, I’m able to get through the school year on just a few packs of the things. The kids eat their food and put the plastic back in their lunchboxes. There are some accidents occasionally – lost lids and crushed containers – but no one and no system is perfect. This works for us.

This week I’m going to write about what I put in these lunches. I’ll start with dessert because that’s the most important piece. An entire lunch can rise or fall on the quality of the dessert! My kids love chocolate chip cookies. So I bake a huge batch most weekends and freeze them. I take the cookies out each morning and pack them in their little plastic container. By the time the kids eat them they have thawed out and are nice and moist. Freezing them keeps them fresh without me having to bake them frequently. One big batch, hidden well in the freezer will last me two weeks.

The way I make the right size cookies for the extra small Ziplock containers is by using a tiny ice cream scoop I got from Pampered Chef to measure out the dough when baking. I think a melon baler might work great too. The cookies are incredibly uniform and could be mistaken for store bought (which is sometimes a good thing in certain situations).

Here’s my very loosey-goosey recipe. I change up the recipe frequently, so I’m writing in lots of options. Treat this like step aerobics and pick the option that you can handle best.

A Little Bit Healthy Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients:
½ cup butter
½ cup coconut oil (if you don’t have/like coconut oil you can just substitute another ½ cup butter. But coconut oil is good for your immune system and makes the cookies really crispy. You can always start out with ¼ cup coconut oil and ¾ cup butter if that seems less crazy!)
1 cup succanot (or 1 cup white sugar) (Succanot is raw cane sugar. It’s less processed and although no sugar is good for you, I think this is better than white processed sugar)
1 cup brown sugar (or 1 cup rapidura – another raw sugar that is a good sub for brown)
2 teaspoons vanilla (use real extract not imitation – you will taste the difference)
2 eggs
1 cup organic white flour
1 ¼ cup whole wheat pastry flour (be sure to use fresh whole wheat flour – stale flour is awful – especially stale whole wheat flour. Keep it in something other than the bag it came in to prevent this from happening. If you don’t go through it as fast as me, keep it in the freezer and it will stay fresh.)
1/3 cup almond meal (Trader Joes carries this. Many grocery stores carry the Red Mill brand almond meal in the organics section. You can substitute it for part of the flour in any recipe calling for flour. If you’re not in to it, you can leave it out – but it really makes a yummy cookie or pancake or bread or just about anything)
¼ cup ground flax seed (you can add more of this if you mask it with something like Toffee bits – I know they’re processed, but it’s a trade off – flax seed is SOOOOO good for you. You can also leave it out, but this is something that cancels out some of the bad stuff in this cookie because it’s such a powerhouse food. Flax seed adds moisture and can even be substituted for some of the butter in a recipe. Just don’t go overboard or you’ll get caught!)
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt (I use celtic sea salt and increase it to almost 1 teaspoon)
2 cups grain sweetened chocolate chips (or use a good chocolate chip like Ghirardelli’s – cheap chips cheapen the cookie in ways other than price)

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 375. (I warm the pans in the oven while it is preheating. Usually I’m working with a cooking stone, but even if I’m not I do this. I think it makes the cookie crispy on the outside and chewy inside.)
2. Cream butter, oil, and sugars. Add vanilla and eggs. Beat well. (If it’s cool out and I’m using coconut oil it will be kind of hard, so I beat it much longer than if I do when it is warm to ensure that it is evenly spread through the batter.)
3. Mix together flours, almond meal, flax seed, baking soda, and salt with whisk. Add to batter. Beat until mixed well. Add in chocolate chips.
4. Use mini ice cream scoop or melon baler to drop small tablespoons on to pan.
Bake for 8-10 minutes, depending on the size of the cookies and whether you heated the pans. It also depends on your oven, so watch your cookies carefully the first few times.