Fast Food Fight

I know this post is most likely point-less. But I’m going to say it anyway. Seeing as it is the season of fast food. And maybe I’m a hypocrite because I’ll confess right up front that during the two road trips we have planned for this summer, we will undoubtedly wind up eating at a fast food joint. And yet, I must carry on with this rant.


Please, please, please don’t eat fast food. I understand that when you have children in the car who are pulling your fingernails out one-by-one with their incessant whining while they wither away to nothing with bloated bellies and sunken eyes in the back seat, you have no choice but to pull in to the fastest food possible. You have no other option. But let’s be honest here, folks. Sometimes we choose fast food because it’s easy. It makes the kids happy. And heck, it tastes good.

But you know what else it does? It makes our country fat and unhealthy. It makes our kids develop tastes for foods that are over-salted, drenched in fat, and coated with sugar. It teaches them that eating fast food is an acceptable choice for their meal, rather than a last-ditch, there’s no-where-else-to-eat, it-might-make-us-sick, kind of option. My three kids will never eat at McDonalds without at least feeling bad about it. I’ve driven the knowledge in to them that when they eat fast-food they are eating food that is not so much food as animal by-products, lard-coated pesticide-enriched, GMO potatoes, and chemically created drug-filled sugar water.

It’s every mother’s duty to give their kids some baggage. And this is one of the carry-ons I’m loading on mine. I think it’s a good one. To be sure, you can occasionally find something nutritionally redeeming at a fast food restaurant. But my guess is your kids aren’t choosing the carrot sticks or fruit cup. And if they go for that baked potato, it’s sure to be smothered in artificially-colored cheese food products. A grilled chicken seems harmless until you ask about the chicken’s heritage and discover it was raised amongst millions of other chickens crammed in a dark, closed-in house with horrible ventilation and hopped up on antibiotics to keep it from dying from the bacterial infections that are common in such set-ups. Don’t be fooled by those lovely pictures of chickens sitting on a fence. Those chickens can’t even walk, let alone hop up on a fence because they’ve been bred to have grotesquely large breasts that prevent them from even moving. Egg to deep fryer in about 12 weeks time. If they live any longer, they’ll die from congestive heart failure because their bodies can’t support their breasts (no lie – I know someone personally who didn’t get his chickens butchered in time and this is how they died!).

If my ranting and raving isn’t enough to make you steer past those golden arches and smiling freckled-faces, consider these facts:

“With 250,000 quick-serve restaurants to choose from, Americans fork over more money on burgers, burritos, and bacon-topped sandwiches each year than what we spend on higher education, new cars, and computers combined.” (Hyman, Ultrametabolism, 60)

“The average weight of a ten-year-old boy in 1963 was 74 pounds; by 2002 the average weight was nearly 85 pounds. The average weight of a ten-year-old girl in 1963 was 77 pounds; by 2002 the average weight of a ten-year-old girl was 88 pounds.” (National Center for Health Statistics, October 2004.).

“One Big Mac is equivalent – in terms of grain produced and consumed – to five loaves of bread. But instead of feeding the hungry with grain, a lot of it is going to the waistline of people in wealthy countries – often to their detriment.” (Bittman, Food Matters 2009)

Heart disease is not only the number one killer of adults; frighteningly, it’s also the second leading cause of death for children under 15. http://champsforlife.org/whatishcm.html

A person would need to walk 9 miles (14.5km) to burn off the 923 calories found in Burger King’s Double Whopper with cheese.

So what’s an overloaded, stressed-out mom to do? Here are a few suggestions to get you through:

- If you’re in town, go home to eat. A peanut butter sandwich or a frozen pizza are healthier choices. Besides, they’re just as quick and cost less.

- If you’re traveling – pack food. Stuff a cooler with fruit that travels well like cherries, apples, bananas, and blueberries. Toss in several bags of baby carrots. Wheat crackers, raisins, craisins, apricots, nuts, and cheese sticks are easy too.

- When all else fails, remind yourself and your kids that HUNGER IS NOT AN EMERGENCY. There are very few people starving to death in the US. Your kids can go several hours (at least) between meals. Hunger will pass and many times it’s actually habit and/or boredom that drives us to demand food.

- If you must stop, look for a place that serves fresh food quickly, instead of processed food. Chipotle Grill is one of my favorite stops and it’s quicker than the average fast food. Stopping in a Mom&Pop type place can also be quick, if you tell the server you’re in a hurry and ask what can be prepared quickly.

- Find a restaurant with a good salad bar. Don’t forget that many of the newer supermarkets have salad bars. You can even get a pound of shrimp steamed quickly and enjoy a decadent treat instead of a mashed up hamburger that will make you feel ill hours later.

- If you know you’re going to have to stop and you can’t bring yourself to pack food. Remember you have other options beyond fast food. The internet gives you the power to find restaurants on your route that serve healthy fare. And in a pinch, an iphone or GPS usually can give you information on restaurants nearby.

Here’s my bottom line. Fast food won’t kill you, if you eat it once in awhile. (It will kill you if you eat it daily – see the movie Supersized if you don’t believe me!) What’s most important is teaching our children that this is not a healthy way to eat. When we swing through the drive-thru on a regular basis, we are training our kids for a lifetime of unhealthy eating. Every mom I know loves her kids too much to want that for them. I know fast food is easy. I know our children love it (they love candy and potato chips too). But this is one of those things we must do for our children (like driving the speed limit and being nice to rude people). This is the point when we need to stop saying it’s OK even if everyone else is doing it.
Besides the health issues raised by consuming fast food, I’d like to raise another point. When we eat “fast” we are not respecting the place food has in our life. It is our sustenance. When we choke down something in a wrapper while our children duck in and out of the playland between bites of ground up chicken-parts coated in bread and fat, we aren’t paying attention to the food we eat. When we sit down and face one another and eat good food together, it is a form of communion. We need to teach our children to taste their food, to appreciate where it came from, and who prepared it. We need to teach them the power they have in choosing what to put in their bodies and about the power food has to make our bodies healthy or unhealthy. Whatever decisions they make will be apparent at some point in their lives on the bathroom scale or the doctor’s table. Teach them to make healthy, empowering choices for their bodies and their lives.

We only get one shot at raising our children. This is our one and only chance to teach our children about eating healthy and being healthy for a lifetime. It’s more than a meal and much more than fast food.

Parenthood According to Poultry

WARNING: This post is much too long and if you don’t really care much for chickens or mamas, you can skip it. I won’t be offended. Heck, I’ll never know. But if you linger over the nature channel, or struggle with your own ideas of motherhood, this one might be right up your alley.

Lesson one – You can’t stop motherhood.

This spring several of my chickens became mothers. Witnessing their adventures has been a privilege and a lesson. It’s also made it apparent why it’s necessary for chickens to lay an egg nearly every day to ensure the species’ survival.

Way back in February, when I was cursing the cold and fumbling my way through the barn in the near dark trying to find the light switch, my hand fell upon something feathered. Now, all things feathered should have already made it back to the dorm by the dusk curfew so this was unexpected. One of the surprisingly consistent behaviors of chickens is that as soon as the sun begins to set, they will always find their way back to the hen house for the night. So when I come flying up the hill in my pajamas at 10pm, they are all there quietly cooing on their perches only a little indignant that someone forgot to shut the door on the cold night.

I finally managed to locate the light switch and was shocked to see one of my Buff Orpington hens perched in the hay bales. I was even more shocked when I attempted to pick her up to move her to the hen house and she puffed up, bristled her feathers, and started screaming at me like a junkyard dog protecting a bucket of fried chicken. My first reaction was to jump back and put my hands up to show that I was unarmed (or maybe to be certain that I still had my fingers). Then I remembered that I’m the person and this is a small, relatively brainless bird. Plus I was wearing gloves. So I swooped in once more, ignored her protests and her sad attempts to remove my fingers and hauled her to the hen house. I retrieved the eggs she had been protecting and went about my chores.

Everything I’ve read says that the “broodiness” has been bred out of our modern chickens. So I felt fairly confident that this hen was simply confused, until we repeated this little scene every night for a week. To my children’s protests, I simply said, “We don’t need any more chickens unless these are chickens we raise for the dinner table.” That shut them up. And soon the hen quit her attempts at motherhood, or so I thought. A few nights later when I was moving some hay bales, I caught site of my would-be mother hen hiding back between the bales and the walls. This time to remove her I was forced to squeeze myself between the wall of hay and the nasty cob-web covered side of the barn. When I bent down to pick her up, my face was way too close to her fussing beak. I’ve fed this hen for two years, raised her from a peep, but I’m fairly sure she would have taken my eyes out if I’d gotten much closer. I considered moving the hay, but it was stacked six bales high and it was late. So, that’s how “Jules” got to live her dream. Because I’m the chicken.

I looked up “broodiness” in my chicken-keeping bible (Storeys Guide to Raising Chickens) and discovered that while most domestic chickens no longer have the urge to brood, occasionally a Buff Orpington hen will and sometimes she is even be successful. Huh.

Jules sat on her eggs faithfully as the hay bales slowly receded. Not being sure exactly when she began her sit-fest, I wasn’t sure when the eggs might hatch. It takes 21 days. I didn’t know how many eggs she was sitting on and I didn’t know if she knew what she was doing. It seemed pretty cold for an egg to be sitting on the ground. Plus the barn flooded during that time and I was too distracted with getting everything else to high ground, I forgot about Jules.

When I was pretty sure it had been more than three weeks and enough bales were eaten that I was able to reach her, I donned the gloves and picked her up. Much to my shock she was sitting on over 30 eggs. And I knew they weren’t all her eggs because there were brown, blue, white, and green eggs. Obviously, Jules was ready to raise everybody’s babies. When the other hens were out during the day, they must have been laying them next to Jules and letting her claim them. I didn’t have the heart to tell Jules that most of the eggs lying near the outer edges were ice cold.

That day we moved her to her own private box (the old pack-n-play). I selected six eggs that seemed warm and built her a small nest out of hay and shavings. She settled right in after lecturing me a bit to stay back. I had to admire this little hen’s determination to become a mamma. She was bucking her breeding, ignorance, and my efforts to deter her. And then one day, in addition to Jules nasty warnings, I also heard a little “peep”. A chick was born! There was much celebrating! And of course I posted her picture on Facebook. I’m glad Jules has a bird brain and probably doesn’t realize that this chick is obviously an Arucana chick and not a Buff Orpington, like her. A few days later a nearly identical chick popped out. And that was enough for Jules. She abandoned the remaining eggs and fretted over her two babes.

Lesson Two: Motherhood is contagious.

About two weeks in to the sitting project, another hen set up shop high in the bales. This was another of my Buff Orpington hens, so I knew better than to fight her on this. I barricaded her in with more bales hoping to deter the other hens from dropping their potential off-spring on her but soon discovered it wasn’t working. Her egg pile quickly rose to 15. So my husband and I “candled” her eggs. Candling is when you shine a light through an egg so you can see what’s inside. It’s no ultra-sound, but we were able to tell easily which eggs had a chick-in-progress and which were duds. My roosters are busy boys, but apparently they aren’t servicing each and every hen. So we pulled out the hot eggs and set this hen (“Treat”) up in her own digs just like Jules. Treat hatched her one and only chick about a week after Jules. Even though she sat faithfully, one day the stench of rotting eggs was so bad, I had to ditch all the remaining eggs and convince her that one chick is plenty.

My oldest son named the lone chick “Not-a-Rooster”, never even considering my suggestions of Ranger or Hans (as in Hans solo). He stuck with his choice, reasoning that this way maybe the chick would have better odds of survival since I (being the “meanest mother in the world”) had already declared that we had plenty of roosters and if any of these chicks was a rooster, he was going, one way or another.

When the chicks got a little older we let the two hens and their chicks out and delighted in watching them running around together. The two moms shared mothering duties and some nights when I would go up to the barn to put them away, I’d find all three chicks under one hen and no chicks under the other.

Not long after we began letting the chicks and moms run loose, I found a hen in the chicken pen sitting on eggs in the laying house. I guess seeing the other hens with their chicks was too much for her. I wasn’t too worried because this hen was a Jersey Giant and the book says that Jersey Giants are not good brooders, “rarely able to successfully hatch”. Good news for us. I confidently removed the would-be Mama from her egg box each night and shoved her back in the hen house with the others, apologizing profusely and grateful that she kept her beak in check.

I did this for two weeks straight. And then I began to worry about this hen’s psyche. What if she really, really wanted to be a mama? What if she would never stop sitting on eggs until I finally let her fulfill her destiny? What if she was really a Buff Orpington trapped inside a Jersey Giant? The two mama hens and their brood had moved in to the same pack-n-play, so I had an extra box. And now that we had three chicks, what’s a few more? I’m becoming soft. So now we have another hen sitting on eggs in a pack-n-play in our barn. She’s due on Memorial Day.

And that’s not the end of the story. About the time that I moved “Monty” to her new digs, “Python”, another black Jersey Giant began a campaign of her own. It’s been a week now of pulling this hen off her eggs every night. I’m torn. I feel the injustice that must tear at this hen’s heart (or it would if she had a brain that worked like that). How can I allow three other hens to realize their dreams of becoming mothers, and deny her? Probably I can’t, but right now there just isn’t an available pack-n-play.

Lesson Three: Some mothers are better than others.

Sad, but true. Some of us are just not cut out to be mothers. That’s what Jules figured out about two weeks in to the shared motherhood with Treat. One night I was late getting up to the barn to put away the mamas and babies. Normally at night they settle down in the old nest Jules built way back when this odyssey started. After dusk, I move them to the pack-n-play and cover it to protect them from any stray foxes or cats that get the wrong idea. But on this night I found only one hen. All the chicks were accounted for, but only one Mama. I looked everywhere, but no Jules. The only answer could be that a fox had gotten her. I imagined her sacrificing her life so that the others could escape. There was a real Lassie feel to my fantasy, but alas, no Lassie had come to the rescue.

In the morning, I sadly told the kids. Being kids (or maybe being my kids), they didn’t believe me. They slapped on their boots and went in search of Jules. Maybe she was trapped somewhere! They held out hope. And in just a few minutes they arrived back at the house triumphant! They’d found Jules! She was in the chicken yard with the other hens. Apparently, this motherhood gig wasn’t for her, so she hopped the fence and rejoined the single life, leaving Treat to deal with her two chicks. Oh, I laughed over that one. And now I remind the kids of Jules’ chicken run when they are pushing me to the brink.

Lesson Number Four: Some mothers will sacrifice all for their babies.

This was the saddest lesson for all of us. This past weekend, my husband and I were away on a rare weekend without kids. My parents had kid rustling duties. I had divvied up the barn duties and the dog duties and the cat duties, and yet it was still my mother who discovered late Saturday night that there were three chicks in the barn, but no Mama Treat. And in the morning, she was still gone.

When we got home I sent my husband to find the body. We both knew what had most likely happened. We have an old dog, a good dog, who is also a foxhound. She can’t help herself. We were fairly sure if the mama was gone and the babies were there, it wasn’t the act of a fox because a fox would have eaten those babies for dessert. No, this had to have been our old dog. And sure enough the evidence was under the deck. I lectured her as best I could, but really, she can’t help herself. Most likely, the babies had wandered in to dog territory and Mama Treat had put herself on the line between danger and safety. I’m certain she stood her ground to that huge, bumbling dog who kills simply for sport. Poor Treat. What a good Mama.

We knew better than to ask Jules to step back in, she’s moved on. So the babies are settled in to the chicken tractor until they are large enough to join the rest of the flock (except for Not-a-Rooster who really is a rooster and will be moving on to greener pastures hopefully at a neighbor’s farm).

I feel more attached to my girls now than ever. We are kindred spirits of sorts. I remember when I gave birth to my first child feeling very primal and at one with nature. As humans we tend to project our own experiences of motherhood on the animals around us. Animals do motherhood in a million ways, but some of their behaviors are very human.

Sadly, it does seem that motherhood is unstoppable and it can be contagious. Some people jump in to motherhood without serious consideration. Societal expectations have been ironed on to their hearts just like animal instincts, or maybe they do it because “everyone else” is doing it. There are others who would do anything to become mothers – suffering all kinds of indignities and hardships.

Motherhood is not for the faint of heart. There are some days I truly do want to fly the coop and rejoin the single life, but deep down I know I would lay down my life if it meant the safety of my babies. So maybe lesson five is: Everybody does motherhood differently. Expectations and comparisons are a dangerous game. We never truly know what we are capable of until we let our children (or our chickens) teach us.

Don't Recycle That Newspaper! I've Got a Better Idea!

Once upon a time I was a purest and I thought store-bought mulch was for sissies who weren’t serious about growing organically. Chipped leaves and sticks from my yard were fine for mulch, but as for the rest – I would stay on top of those weeds. [pause for effect....] Then I had kids.

Like so many other things that changed after children like sleep patterns, the cleanliness of my car, and how much time I spend on my hair, I do things differently now. I love mulch and buy it by the pick-up truck load. And every year we buy more. I know this is a terrible thing to confess as one who claims to garden organically.

As my garden has gotten bigger, I’ve learned how to get the most bang for my buck when it comes to mulch. Before any mulch hits the ground, I cover the ground with a layer of newspaper. Our newspaper uses vegetable-based inks, so as it breaks down it won’t harm the soil. And it holds in moisture as well or better than conventional mulch. Here’s the best part about newspaper mulch - it’s free! (well, unless you count the money I spend on my subscription, but I’m a compulsive morning paper person so that would happen even if I didn’t need the paper for mulch!) We stock-pile paper all year long and what isn’t used for starting fires in the fireplace is used for mulch in the spring. We never have enough.

Newspaper alone is a great mulch and if it wouldn’t blow away I’d forget about buying anything else. I’ve heard of hard-core cheap skates who simply weigh down their paper with rocks. I admit to being more than a little vain when it comes to the appearance of my gardens, so that’s just a little too cheesy for me. After the layer of newspaper is thoroughly wetted (sometimes it is necessary to keep a hose handy and sprinkle as you go or the whole process becomes a comedy of errors), I toss out a thin layer of store-bought mulch, just enough to hide the paper and keep it from blowing away.

We do this newspaper/mulch trick around all our fruit trees, blueberry bushes, flower beds, and now our brand new “vineyard” (12 grape vines we’re testing out to see if our south-facing slope will be conducive to grapes). Last year we tested out how well the newspaper/mulch duo worked as compared to the mulch only by papering around half the fruit trees and then (because we had run out of paper) simply mulching around the other half. The paper/mulch half did a better job of keeping the weeds down. The mulch circles around the trees without paper seemed to shrink each week surrendering more and more of their ground to the encroaching grass (thus making it difficult to drive the mower around them without decapitating yourself).

I still don’t do much mulch around the “real” vegetable garden. I’m too worried about what might or might not be in the conventional mulch from the local hardware place. But this year I am going to try the red plastic mulch around my tomatoes. The last two years we were struck with the early blight and then the late blight. So, in the interest of getting no blight, we’re going to mulch our tomatoes. I’m curious to know if the theory that red plastic mulch will make your tomatoes ripen faster is true. Reading a few garden-nerd websites on line, there are a wide varieties of opinions on that, so I’ll have to see for myself. Look for a red-plastic report late this summer. (I know, I know, it’ll be hard to contain yourself!)

Meanwhile, happy mulch season. Maybe it’s time to subscribe.

Note: My husband knew I was musing on mulch and sent me the following article, pointing out that even if we aren't buying it for our gardnes, most of us are eating plenty of mulch!
In case people don’t know it, when they eat low fat foods they are getting their share of mulch…

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703834804576300991196803916.html?mod=WSJ_hps_editorsPicks_2

A Tale of Too Much Protein

This month my daughter is a vegetarian. It’s hard for me to write that with a straight face because she has never really eaten much meat, unless you count hot dogs. And even hot dogs are mostly just a spoon with which to eat ketchup. Impressed by her Catholic friends who were giving up something for lent, she announced at the beginning of the month that she was giving up meat for the month of April. (“Not for lent Mom, for April!”) I bit my tongue and did not say what I was really thinking which was “how convenient – giving up something you already don’t want to eat! And why does April demand this kind of sacrifice?” I didn’t launch in to a lecture on the meaning of Lenten sacrifice. I just said, “Hmm,” which caused her to glare at me and march out of the kitchen.


As the month progressed, she sat smugly at dinner passing the steak, chicken, or pork and reminding us, “remember, I don’t eat meat.” We stressed to her that she still needed to take in enough protein and worried that her sullen mood was caused not by her impending hormones, but by her lack of protein.

Somewhere along the line I’ve become as brainwashed as the rest of America in to believing that meat = protein. The meat industry has worked hard to hammer home that thought. In fact, bring up the American Meat Institute’s nutrition site and the first words that greet you (surrounded by pictures of happy, healthy people and deliciously luscious meats) are: “Protein. Fuel for the body and mind.” Which doesn’t come close to the “Beef. It’s what’s for dinner.” But I’m sure it’ll grow on us.

As Mark Bittman points out in his book Food Matters (great book – informative, entertaining, and even has 75 recipes!), “per calorie, cooked spinach has more than twice as much protein as a cheeseburger.” Meat is not the only, or necessarily the best, form of protein. He goes on to say, what quickly becomes apparent when you read the stats on protein (see below) that Americans eat way more meat than they need. “If the American high protein diet were the ideal, you might expect us to live longer than countries where meat consumption is more moderate. We’re the second-to-last in longevity among industrialized nations.”

So is my daughter getting enough protein? Here’s the math on the body’s protein requirement for children (and the rest of us):

Ages 1-3: 0.55 grams of protein per pound of body weight

Ages 4-6: 0.5 grams of protein per pound of body weight

Ages 7-14: 0.45 grams of protein per pound of body weight


Boys ages 15-18: 0.4 grams of protein per pound of body weight

Girls over 15 and boys over 18: 0.36 grams of protein per pound of body weight.

How does that play out for my daughter? She is 11 years old and weighs about 75 pounds (soaking wet), so she needs somewhere in the neighborhood of 34 grams of protein a day. She can get that from any of the following non-meat sources:
1 oz cheese = 7 grams protein

1 cup milk = 8 grams protein

1 egg = 6 grams protein

2T peanut butter = 8 grams of protein

Throw in some whole grain breads and cereals (2-4 grams) and a few veggies (1-3grams) and there’s every reason to believe that my daughter is doing just fine on her protein intake despite her meat protest.

And what about the rest of us? I need about 55 grams of protein. Am I getting enough or too much? Well, the typical 8 oz steak serving has 50 grams of protein and the yogurt I eat each morning for breakfast has about 18 grams. Throw in the ridiculous amount of vegetable matter I consume and my fondness for cheese and I’d say I’m getting more than my fair share most days.

And what happens when you eat too much protein? According to protein expert, Gail Butterfield, PHd, RD, and nutrition lecturer at Stanford University, too much protein can lead to a build up of ketones in your system which will put your kidneys in to overdrive trying to flush them. This not only stresses out your kidneys, it can also lead to dehydration, bad breath, and weakness. Lovely. I would guess it can also lead to weight gain and cholesterol issues. Apparently excess protein can’t be stored so we either break it down and burn it as energy or we store it as fat. I like to run, but even my long runs couldn’t possibly require the amount of protein I’m taking in. Other researchers believe that eating too much protein can lead to calcium loss and to the immune malfunction that causes food allergies.

So what’s a person or a parent to do? Pay attention. Reduce the portion sizes of the meat you eat which will save you money and calories. Plan more meat free meals. Try to break the strangle hold that meat has on our understanding of a healthy meal. We don’t need to eat it every meal, let alone every day. Just reducing your family’s meat intake slightly will have a substantial impact on your health and your budget. And teach your children that protein can be found in many other sources beyond meat.

Even Janet Riley, Senior Vice President of Public Affairs for the American Meat Institute, agrees in her response to the new 2010 dietary guidelines for Americans, “I think we can all agree that Americans need to increase their fruit and vegetable consumption, but they can continue to eat meat and poultry at the same rate they’re eating it – 5-7oz a day…” I guess she’s assuming you won’t eat any other protein sources because 7 oz of meat a day is just about the protein limit for most of us.

My daughter does plan to go back to eating meat in May. I’m not really sure what that means. I’m guessing it means she’ll go back to eating hot dogs and nibbling around the edges of a small piece of chicken on occasion. Like I said, giving up meat wasn’t a huge sacrifice. I’m glad she did it though; it gave me a chance to educate myself about our need for protein. I’m convinced we don’t need to eat meat at every meal – our bodies don’t need it. But growing up an American, it will take some re-wiring to change my habits. How about yours?

Corks and Caps and Kids

We have a currency of corks and caps in our house. When someone treads dangerously close to the line of bad behavior, my husband or I caution, “That’s your warning. Do it again and it’s a bottle cap.” And sometimes when we see stellar behavior, as in when one sibling actually helps another, you’ll hear us say, “Aww, that was great. You get a cork for that.”

This system is the latest evolution of discipline in our long line of creative solutions to the age old problem of how-do-you-make-your-kids-act-right. It’s very simple really. Each of the kids has a large mason jar in a basket on the piano. Whenever we catch our children doing something good we put a cork in their jar. And whenever we catch our children doing something bad (or neglecting to do something good when the option is there to do, say, their assigned kitchen chore), we put a bottle cap in the jar.

Let me explain about the corks and caps. For this new system we needed something small that we already had lying around. As I’ve explained before I have difficulty throwing out things that can’t be recycled and could one day prove useful. Hence, the caps and corks. The colorful plastic caps from bottles were collected for sorting games for my toddlers, but once they outgrew the thrill of hundreds of small bright plastic disks, I couldn’t give up the compulsion to stock pile them. Lucky for me, the art teacher at the elementary school loves caps and puts them to use in beautiful mosaics. The corks have been collecting since I first attached myself to the man I call my husband. We used to write the occasion and date on the corks, but now we just toss them in a drawer. I have plans to make something useful out of them someday, but that day hasn’t arrived. So corks and caps we have in great abundance. Perfect for the latest parenting endeavor.

When any child accrues 8 corks, he or she may trade them in for a prize (see below). The corks continue to accumulate until they reach 15 corks and then the prizes get even better (see below). After that, the corks get dumped back in to the cork drawer. The bottle caps work a little differently. If a child manages to garner 5 bottle caps, he or she loses all screen privileges (ALL screens) for the following weekend. They may give up 2 corks to remove 1 bottle cap but only until they reach 4, but on that 5th cap there is no escape. (This was a technicality quickly developed by my youngest and wiliest child.) Each Sunday night all caps magically disappear and Monday morning begins with a cap-free jar.

Maybe this seems like a little too much effort, but it sure beats yelling and threatening and then trying to remember what you threatened. It helps us reward the good stuff like running up to shut the chicken coop in the dark when it’s raining, helping your brother with his homework, carrying in the groceries, or doing something thoughtful without being asked. My daughter recently spent an evening helping her little brother (the very same child who that morning she proclaimed she would hate FOREVER!) to master the hand brakes on his bike – 2 corks for that one!

Amazingly, no one has yet earned 5 caps. In fact, the mere threat of a cap usually causes the offender to turn the other cheek. Even I didn’t think this system would work so well. We are six weeks in and all I’ve had to give up is a couple sleepovers and a cherry cheesecake. Mostly they choose the extra time on the computer.

Just in case you’d like to adopt this system for yourself, here are the details on ours. We think it's only fair to spell out exactly what earns you a cap or cork. I’m sure yours might be different, but this’ll get you started.

Expectations - Consequences
1 Treat each other with respect and kindness. Consequences: One Cap  (One warning)

2 Do not hit, kick, or in any way physically harm each other or the pets. Consequences: One Cap (no warnings)

3 No Back-talk or deliberate lying. Consequences:Two Caps (no warnings)

4 No Hurtful Words: “freak”, “idiot”, “shut up”, “hate” or others TBD. Consequences: One Cap (One warning)

5 Get yourself ready for school (fix breakfast, pack lunch, pack up back pack, take vitamins, brush teeth, and remember the things you need to have for the day like sneakers, instrument, etc.)  Consequences: One Cap (One reminder)

6 Do your kitchen chore each weeknight. Consequences: one Cap (one reminder)
7 Take care of your pet (Raisin, Hans, Cody). Consequences: One cap  (one reminder)

8 Put your dirty clothes in the laundry room sorted by color in to the separate bags by Monday morning.
consequences: no clean clothes  (one reminder)

9 Put away your clean clothes the same day they are returned to you. Consequences: No Clean Laundry (one reminder)

10 Do your weekend chore each weekend. Consequences: Two Caps (one reminder)

11 Keep your room reasonably clean and vacuum it once a month. Consequences: No Friends In/out (one reminder)

Five caps in one week: Lose all screens for the following weekend.

Corks

1. Doing something nice for someone else.

2. Cleaning something you don’t have to clean.

3. Good grade on a test/project. (eventually clarified to A+ as we were bleeding corks on this one)

4. Feeding dogs

5. Taking care of Kernel [our blind chicken] -clean cage & change water or walk her

6. Helping with barn chores

7. Cleaning up yard

8. Unloading the dishwasher

9. Anytime mommy or daddy thinks you’ve done something deserving of a bonus

10. Writing a letter to a relative (real letter, not e-mail)

When you earn 8 corks, you can choose from the following rewards (keep adding corks to get to 15)

1. pick the movie night movie

2. decide the menu for one dinner that week

3. choose a special dessert or snack for one time that week

4. earn an extra ½ hour on the computer

5. propose a reward for approval

When you have 15 corks, you can choose from the following rewards:

1. sleepover

2. date night – movie, dinner out with parent or friend

3. new book from Amazon or Scholastic

4. watch an extra movie that you pick

5. earn an extra hour on the computer

Don't Know Nothing 'Bout History....

History was never my strong suit. I think the turning point was the overly enthusiastic teacher I had in 7th grade who scared me so much. I struggled with the requirement in college, garnering my only C. Whenever I find myself at a historic battlefield or museum, the sight of all those plaques makes my eyes glaze over. But in the interest of making up for lost time and setting a good example for my children I do try to drum up some enthusiasm.

I recently spent five days in Williamsburg, Virginia. I will admit up front that it wasn’t my idea and I went there for reasons having nothing to do with history. The trip was a Christmas gift from my husband. He (and a bunch of other incredibly thoughtful hubbies) gave me (and four other women from my book club) five days on a beautiful plantation. So, being honest, I went there to eat, drink and be merry with friends. Oh, and of course we read a book. One of the husbands (shout out to Mark, here) picked the book, “Dark Enough to See the Stars in a Jamestown Sky” for us to read and discuss (we really did!). Despite the verbose title and somewhat dry writing, the book brought history to life. It was the journal of a woman named Joan who journeyed across the Atlantic to settle in the first Jamestown settlement, survived the “starving time” and hostile Indians, and lived to tell.

Joan’s story raised a lot of issues about self-reliance, food preservation, and just how easy we have it these days. Most of us have never been truly hungry and we’ve certainly never been in danger of starving. Reading about the struggle for sustenance and the possibility of death on a daily basis was a foreign concept for me. But it is a very present reality for many on our planet. The desperation that rearranged priorities and perspectives was clear. The plight of a mother unable to adequately feed her child was heart-wrenching. I was glad I could close the cover. While it was a lesson in history, it made the present real.

What will history say about us? The house where we stayed was built in the 1700’s - the first time. It had only resided at its current location for 30 years. The owner had painstakingly moved it, piece by piece in his Ford Pinto. (Yes, really!) It was restored beautifully and we delighted in the details we discovered – dishes, carpentry, art work, weaponry, books. The grounds were gorgeous. The whole place looked like it had been plucked right from the center of Williamsburg and placed there in the forest across the river.

In between the revelry (no kids!! no where to be!! No one will ever know!!), I managed a few trail runs. Some of the trees I passed were enormous and I wondered if they had been there while Joan was across the river starving in Jamestown. Knowing the settlers had survived by eating acorns, I had new respect for the tiny nuts as they crunched under my feet. Maybe it was my hangover, but I really felt those woods were hallowed.

Which makes me wonder – what kind of history are we making? There have been huge changes in my lifetime. The world has become a different place. I’m not sure that all of it is for the better. But what kind of history am I making here in my family? I know so little about my own grandparents, and even less about my great-grandparents. I don’t know what their lives were like, what they held as important, or what kind of dreams they had. That’s only two generations removed. What will my own grandchildren know about me?

Because I write so much, I’m guessing my grandchildren might know more than they want to know about me. I trust that my journals will prove much too boring for any of my children to ever wade through. But I hope they will know something of me. How will you be remembered? Have you given the idea any thought? Will it be for the beautiful collection of art or stamps or books? Have you preserved your stories in scrapbooks or journals? Will you leave jewelry or furniture that has been infused with your spirit? I realize that the “stuff” we leave behind isn’t as important as our impact on the lives of the people we leave behind, but being in that historic house and wondering about the stuff that was left behind made me wonder about the people who left it. It made me want to know who they were.

Most of us don’t stay long enough in one place to allow our gardens to be our legacy. Our first house was 150 years old. The garden in the foundation of the old carriage house was probably at least 75 years old. I loved to work in that garden and wonder if the peonies (there were hundreds) were descended from peonies planted by someone who gardened at the turn of the century. We found a collection of old tobacco cans in the crawl space and my husband and I laughed at the idea that someone used to hunker down in the pump room for their daily fix. What are we leaving behind?

I do believe we will leave some kind of history, however sketchy. If we don’t want our legacy to be the hours we spent watching reality TV or reading profiles on Facebook, it would behoove us to consider what we will pass down. I hope my grandchildren get a few of my freckles, but I also hope they use my bone china and mismatched pottery. I hope they read this blog. I hope the tomatoes I grow this summer will pass along their seeds in to the next century. Imagine.

Like the settlers at Jamestown, we need to prepare. Maybe we don’t have to crush acorns for flour, but we do need to think carefully about what we teach our children. What we arrange our lives around. We are living history. As I read the story of Jamestown, it wasn’t so much the survival of Joan, but the thousands that didn’t survive that haunted me. So many people traveled so far, only to perish. We know nothing about them but a name on a roll, and sometimes we don’t even have that since many women and children tagged along unaccounted.

Make sure someone remembers your name. Think about the legacy you will leave behind, including the “stuff”. This is the only life you get, don’t squander it. Start collecting acorns.