One a Day

It has been said that the United States has some of the most expensive urine in the world. Huh? I know, not really appropriate topic for the dinner table. But since we’re not eating, I felt it might get your attention.


In the US, we spend about 23 billion dollars a year on vitamins (rough estimate from several internet sources, it might not be exact, but basically we spend A LOT of money on vitamins). Vitamins are a bit of a catchall for health. We take them “just in case”, kind of like insurance. This money we’re spending might never help us, but then again, it just might. How could we ever know? Truly, the doctor never says, “wow, your bones look great. It must be because you’ve been taking calcium for the last 20 years!”

Vitamins seem like a safe bet. Your body soaks up what you need and eliminates the rest. That strikes me as just a bit wasteful. So I vacillate between taking my vitamins and not taking them. My kids are a different story. Because we eat very little processed food, they miss out on all the “fortified” this and that, so on my worst days I get pretty paranoid and find myself surfing drugstore.com searching for a better vitamin. Until I think about all the veggies and fruit I cram in to their diets, and then I chill out again. But then I read the news and start to worry….my mind pings back and forth on this one.

According to the Mayo Clinic, and a few other sites, clearly I am not alone. No one seems to know for sure. Most say that kids probably get all they need from their diets and the fortified foods available in today’s supermarket. But then they cover their buts by saying a multi vitamin is probably a good idea. An awful lot of “probably” in that prescription. It comes down to this - basically they can’t hurt as long as you select a vitamin with no more than 100% of the RDA and you follow the label instructions.

As a mother I know there is plenty of guilt coming my way down the road when my spawn become parents themselves and realize just how many ways I messed them up. So vitamins seem like a safe gamble and at least I can’t be held accountable if they realize down the road that the diet I served them was missing some crucial vitamin or mineral. What? I gave you a multi-vitamin for that!

There are two supplemental vitamins I give to my kids. I’ve read enough to be convinced that these two are missing from pretty much everyone’s diet, at least in sufficient amounts. The first is Vitamin D. Research comes out almost daily on the need for more Vitamin D. I give it to my kids and take it myself, and occasionally sneak it in to my husband’s coffee.

Omega-3’s are the other vitamin I’m prepared to take a stand on. Most of us don’t get enough unless we eat fatty fish, flaxseed, and nuts daily. I’ve started leaving nuts out on the counter and on the premium shelving in the fridge, in the hopes that my kids will nibble on more nuts – brazil nuts, cashews, walnuts, almonds, pistachios. They’re all stuffed with good nutrients that can protect our health. Omega 3’s are not only good for your heart, their brain food and I’m all about feeding those young minds.

Enough about what I think, what do the experts say? The American Academy of Pediatrics says that children do not need a multi-vitamin when there have been no signs of vitamin deficiency. Still, they haven’t examined my child. How could they know? I’ll give them their point about all the fortified foods these days, but my kids aren’t eating much packaged foods. Except Cheeze-its. Still haven’t managed to get them off cheezeits. I should check if cheeze-its are fortified, because that might save me a lot of money on vitamins. (Addie and I are going to test a “homemade cheezit” recipe this weekend – I’ll let you know how that goes)

What’s a mother to do? Well, this mother gives her children a multi-vitamin that has no artificial colors or sweeteners, a chewable Omega 3 supplement, and 400 IU of Vitamin D (but only during the colder months, October – April). I do believe the big guns, and our septic tank is most likely laced with vitamins, but I’m hedging my bets.

A note on choosing a vitamin. Look for a children’s vitamin that does not contain iron in the form of ferrous sulfate. Many kid’s vitamins are the “gummy” form and this can make them seem like candy. Kids can overdose on ferrous sulfate making them sick, even killing them. So while kids do need the iron (unless they’re big meat and bean eaters), look for carbonyl iron, to be safe.

Another thing to watch in children’s vitamins is the sweetener. Many vitamins, such as Flintstones and Centrum, have the warning PHENYLKETONURICS: CONTAINS PHENYLALANINE, which is a sure sign that they contain aspartame (nutrasweet). Artificial sweeteners and artificial colors kind of counter act the whole point of vitamins. Find a vitamin that doesn’t contain either. It’s a unique child (with a four-star parent) who willingly swallows tasteless vitamins. This makes sugar a necessary evil in children’s vitamins. Look for vitamins with 1 gram of sugar or less. Some have more than others – read the label.

When it comes to vitamins, like so much else about parenting, there’s no clear answer. You do the best you can, with what you know. That’s anyone can ask.

What Does Clean Smell Like?

My husband came home with a gift for me the other day. Nope, not flowers. Not chocolate. No gift certificate for a massage. It was a…..steam mop! I’m woman enough to know that this is not a comment on my cleaning abilities, but a man who knows how to get me excited. I’d heard of steam mops. But in the interest of keeping my cleaning closet uncluttered (and staying stuck in my own rut, thank you very much), I hadn’t gone in for one. Now before you think my hubby is all that and a stick of gum, here’s the real reason he brought it home. It was free. A coworker is developing the product for their company and wants some feedback. I’m good with feedback. We all know that.

So I put the steam vac through its paces, but not before noting (and maybe whining a little) that it isn’t cordless. In my opinion a newly developed steam mop really oughta be cordless. Heck, it’s not like other companies haven’t already made these babies. But taking my task as a product tester seriously, I assembled it. Without the directions. I figured no sense in acting out of character. Normal people don’t read directions, at least not for a mop, do they? It snapped together nicely and only took a few head scratches to figure out. That’s a plus. I filled it with water to the big giant “fill to here” line and set to work.

The first room I tackled was the kids bathroom. Ew. Figured I should start with the room that needed sanitized the most. Other than wishing it was a vacuum too, I was very happy. To a point. When I was finished, the bathroom looked pretty clean and the mop head looked pretty filthy. But the room didn’t smell clean. It didn’t smell like anything. Tiny disappointment here. The steam mop is great at being green – no chemicals, no phosphate laden detergent, no fumes. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say I missed that fragrance of vinegar or Murphy soap or lemons that tells me the room is clean. I wondered how clean it really was. No way of knowing. It looks clean. But does clean have a smell?

Which led me to put down the steam mop where it lay (actually on the handy little pad that came with it for parking it) and head for the computer. I looked up what gives cleaners that lovely clean smell and discovered something not so lovely. The smell comes from fragrances in the cleaner. And the word “fragrance” on any label could mean anything. In fact, manufacturers don’t even have to tell you anything beyond “fragrance”. The fragrance could be made from all kinds of chemicals and apparently the powers that be are not worried about how those chemicals might affect us. They could be natural chemicals or petrochemicals or synthetic chemicals. Really, they could be anything. So now I’m wondering if the smell of clean isn’t actually – nothing. No smell. If you want more information, check out the blog, econovice. There you’ll find more specifics on what exactly could be in the “fragrance” found on cleaning products, deodorants, air fresheners, and detergents and how they can affect your health.

So I’m all about appreciating my steam mop and have used it on tile, vinyl, and wood, all with wonderful fragrance-free results. Great idea for green cleaning. Glad I thought of it.

I guess he was on a roll, because my husband soon appeared with another eco-friendly, fragrance-free cleaning tool - a squeegee. When he first came home with the giant green window washer thingee just like the one the kids fight over at the gas station, I was skeptical. Really? Wipe down the shower every time? At first I skipped my share of turns, figuring he was already out of the house and he’d never know I didn’t squeegee today. But then curiosity got the best of me and I had to try it out in earnest. You know what? It’s great. Wiping down the walls of the shower, all the way down to the caulk, leaves them clean and only takes a moment. It’s kind of a thrill to be cleaning in the nude. Plus there’s no scrubbing, no smelly cleaners, nothing. The caulk even lost that pink sheen it had been developing.

I’m sure Nick is going to need to go split some wood or watch some football or find some other manly task to take on as soon as he reads this. But for a guy who dodges the cleaning bullet whenever possible and teases me about my green efforts, he sure did score big this week.

Road Trip!

Just found this unposted post I wrote a month ago. Best intentions, you know.




My favorite - headless child on the beach!

 Summer is all about letting things slip like bedtimes, house cleaning, and diets. I know that all of the above have been in free fall for the past month in this family. We just returned from a roadtrip through the south where it was 99 degrees most days and all anyone really wanted to do was sit in the AC with a cold beverage. We still managed to see a few sights and of course sample the local cuisines. I discovered I love shrimp grits, and we were treated to not one, but three different ice cream/yogurt venues. Then there was the movie theater popcorn (another great way to escape the heat) and plenty of adult beverages. There was not a whole lot of organic going on.

So it was comforting to me to reflect on what a wise pediatrician said to me back when one of my little darlings was refusing to eat balanced meals. She told me that it’s not what they eat in a day or even a week. It’s what they eat over a month. So I don’t stress a few fat-laden or even chemical-laden meals. It won’t kill them.

Here’s a couple ideas for road trips with kids –

1. Pack lots of healthy food. We parked a cooler stuffed with fruits, veggies, cheese sticks, yogurts, and water bottles between the youngest two and let them have at it whenever they wanted. Once we got where we were going, of course they opted for much more colorful packaging, but I at least I knew I got a good first layer in there.

2. Pack lunch whenever possible. It’s just so much easier when you have a carload of kids. Pull over at a rest area or park or even a church cemetery (that makes for a very interesting stop) and enjoy some fresh air. You’ll save time, money, and know your kids got at least one decent meal. Just like the snacks, I think of it as stock-piling some healthy stuff to counter all the not-so-healthy stuff I know will come.

3. Pack extra headphones, batteries, and books. Put an emergency bag somewhere that has –

Benedryl cream (bee stings)
Bandaids
Tylenol
Sweat shirt (in a size that will fit anyone in a pinch)
T-shirt (same as above)
Shorts (elastic waist so it’ll fit most of the kids)
Socks
Flipflops (no shirts, no shoes, no service is a foreign concept to kids)
Towel
Flashlight
Sanitary pads/tampons
Plastic bags (just plain old grocery ones)

I have all of these things stuffed in to the secret compartment in the back and have used all of them at some point or another for my kids or someone elses. Especially the benedryl cream – don’t forget that one. It takes the ow out of a bee sting.

4. Give everybody a map with the route clearly marked. This is easy to do with mapquest or AAA. I like the big paper maps because it provides a little origami opportunity too.

I think the perfect philosophy for summer traveling is relax and enjoy what comes your way. Plan for pitstops and surprises. We like to play the game, “the weirdest thing” where everyone looks out the window and tries to spot the weirdest thing. We saw peacocks in a parking lot, all manner of interesting lawn ornaments, ground hogs in broad daylight, and laughed ourselves silly over the faces people make while driving (and how many of them pick their noses!) It’s a great game because it gets all of us looking out the windows and appreciating all the strangeness this world has to offer.

So enjoy the summer especially if it includes a road trip or two. Don’t stress what your kids are eating (or you for that matter) too much. There will be plenty of time for reading labels and counting calories when fall rolls around. As long as you don’t slip completely off the wagon, or at least you remember where you parked the wagon, it’s all good.

Signs of Life

Signs can point us in many directions. Lately, my oldest son who is pushing 15 has been paying much more attention to signs. I think it has something to do with the fact that driving a car is a possibility in the near, rather than the far, future. At any rate, he takes great delight in reading road signs out loud. Some of the messages make little sense out of context to a young person who’s never read a driver’s manual. But they’ve brought a bit of humor to our daily travels and even inspired a little deep thinking.

Driving to school yesterday (Yes – we missed the bus on the first day! Doesn’t bode well for the new school year.), we passed a farm with a sign that all of my children find hilarious that says – “GOATS, SHEEP, LAMBS, KIDS 4 SALE”. Driving to a friend’s house over the weekend, Brady announced, “WATCH CHILDREN.” Then he stifled a giggle and looked around. “Where?” he asked. When we turned the corner, there was another sign. “WATCH CHILDREN!” he yelled to me as if I hadn’t done it the first time. By now I was laughing too.

Once as we were driving on a particularly narrow and winding road, we came to a sign that said, “DO NOT PASS”. As we passed the sign, Brady yelped, “But you’re not supposed to pass!” Another time driving with my husband through a construction zone, he announced, “BE PREPARED TO STOP,” My husband mused, “That seems like a good way to go about life.” Profound thoughts for an early Sunday morning.

In Australia, instead of saying, “YIELD,” my daughter informs me that the signs say “GIVE WAY” which seems like a much nicer way of putting it. Our house is backwards and requires that all guests drive around to the back of the house (to get to the front of the house). This creates a blind spot of sorts and cars can surprise my children when they are shooting hoops or playing four square in the drive. For years we had a sign posted that said, “DEAR CHILDREN AT PLAY”, just in case the UPS man doubted that our children were important to us as he backed up the driveway at 30 mph.

When I worried that one of our cats might get hit because they frequently play chicken with the cars ascending our hill, my then-six-year-old daughter found a board and painted a picture of a cat on it and carefully lettered, “BE CAREFUL OF CATS”. I think it’s all in how you ask. People always drove slowly up the drive after that (with a smile on their faces).

This summer I’ve taken two road trips which required full days of driving with a car full of kids (and no husband!). I’m happy to say we all survived and have reached a new milestone in maturity. Of course the number of devices plugged in at any given moment nearly drained the battery. But we do what we have to do, don’t we? Besides reading a lot of signs, it also gave me time to think and filled me with ideas for blogs, essays, experiments, and plans. I apologize for the summer of few posts and promise to get back to posting regularly this fall. If there’s a topic you’d like me to explore, please let me know. I’m happy to be given some direction. All I need is a sign.

Top Ten Reasons We Can

I had a hot date with my hubby last night. It got pretty steamy and altogether messy. We canned tomatoes until the wee hours. It’s that time of year. Twenty pints of pizza sauce and nine quarts of tomato sauce. And still the tomatoes keep coming.

We’re taking a break and moving on to peaches today. Bought a huge bushel of seconds peaches ready and ripe. This weekend’s date will involve skinning the luscious beauties and squeezing the pits out of them before we cook them in to peachsauce (just like applesauce only peaches and no sugar!), peach Barbeque sauce, and maybe some peach jam or syrup. It will definitely get sticky.

Canning can be a solitary endeavor, but it’s much more fun with company and music (and some wine). Sometimes when I’m elbow deep in the mess I wonder why we do this. It would be so much easier to buy tomato sauce at the store. And even if the price of organic tomato sauce can be dear, I’m fairly sure my time is worth just as much.

Inspired by my son's excellent blog, How To Kill Your Characters, (It’s all manner of musings on Dungeons and Dragons on the surface, but underneath it’s pretty philosophical and just plain good writing. He puts me to shame.) which is filled with Top Ten Lists, I present:

The Top Ten Reasons why I can each summer:


1 Popping the lid off a jar of tomato sauce in the dead of winter returns summer if only for a meal. All the flavors of five different heirloom tomatoes in one jar is divine. No can from the store, no matter how exclusive and expensive the brand, can compare.


2 My youngest child considers homemade peachsauce such a special treat, he opts for it over all manner of junk food.


3 Instead of empty calories and chemicals in store bought pancake syrup, we slop on homemade blueberry syrup any time of year not just special occasions.


4 Once you grow accustomed to homemade applesauce it’s pretty much impossible to eat that mealy mush they sell at the grocery store.


5  I feel connected to my mother and grandmother and all the women before them as I “put up” healthy, homegrown food for my family.


6 I can’t stand to waste anything. And I can’t stick to one kind of tomato or cucumber. How else could I keep from throwing all the extras on the compost pile?


7 I like cherries, blueberries, and peaches too much to eat them only a few weeks a year and I can’t bring myself to buy (or pay the price for) produce shipped from the other side of the globe in the dead of winter.


8 It may consume my time in the summer, but it saves me time in shopping trips to the store the rest of the year. We always have sauces, fruits, veggies, and jams on hand year round.


9 I get incredible nerdy satisfaction from hearing the jar lids “pop”, writing the contents on the lids, and lining them up neatly on the shelf.


10 It’s one tiny step I can take toward living more self-sufficiently. If I had my way we’d live off the grid on the side of mountain, but thankfully (for my kids at least), I married a man who enjoys the marvels of modern conveniences. Although he makes a damn fine lumberjack, I must say.

I hope you’re inspired to get canning yourself! If you need some tips or ideas check out some previous posts

Canning foibles, canning basics, canning tomatoes, applesauce , more canning ideas

Or locate a copy of the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving – it will tell you everything you need to can anything. Canning isn’t rocket science, I promise. You can do this!

A Fish Story

Standing in front of the fish cooler at the grocery store, I found myself stumped as to what kind of fish would be best for my family’s health and the planet’s. I don’t buy fish that often. I’ll confess that I don’t like fish. I realize it’s the uber-healthy protein, but I physically gag at the smell and can’t bring myself to eat it. I hold my parents partially responsible for this quirk because as a child we spent two weeks each year fishing in Nags Head and the rest of the year fighting over how much of that fish I had to choke down in order to earn dessert or at least be excused from the table. As a parent, I can’t be angry because heaven knows I’m giving my own kids their share of hang ups, but I do wish I could eat fish.


Shellfish are another story entirely. Shrimp is my all-time favorite food, but I rarely get to cook it because my hubby is allergic. Seems like some kind of divine punishment for my fish problem. His allergy developed after I’d already married him, otherwise it might have been a negotiating chip (just kidding honey). We have worked out a compromise since my boys love fish and my daughter is repelled by it. A few times a month we have “fish” for dinner. Nick cooks the fish for the boys and I steam the shrimp for the girls (my daughter won’t eat it any other way).

A Time cover article recently highlighted the problem of unsustainable fishing. We are catching and eating (or wasting) more than is being replenished and like so many other precious resources on this earth, we are in danger of destroying our fish supply. In response to this threat, a new type of “fishing” has developed in the form of “aquaculture” but for all its promises, much like big agribusiness it creates even bigger problems than it solves.

- It takes two pounds or more of “fish” to make one pound of fish. Fish eat other fish, and when they are raised altogether on "farms" their food must be made by catching other fish. Seems like simple math will tell you this isn’t “sustainable” in the long run.

-          When large numbers of fish are raised in concentrated areas, disease is always a threat. To counter this fish “farmers” treat their fish with antibiotics just like cow and chicken farmers do. The excess antibiotics and other drugs are released into the water and affect aquatic life and water supply.

- Farmed fish are treated with drugs not necessary for wild fish. For example, farmed salmon must be injected with a dye to give them that pretty pink color because unlike their wild cousins, they don’t consume krill to give them a natural pink color. (the dye used for this – canthaxanthin – has been shown to adversely effect sight when consumed in large quantities.)

- Fish farms pollute the oceans. The vast quantities of waste – both from the fish and the uneaten food – fill the ocean floor and affect the life around them. I know it only takes about a week of our little beta fish’s leftover fish food (and poop) to contaminate our tank (the fish farmer is generous with his servings and the cleaning service is intermittent at best), so imagine what hundreds of thousands of salmon are capable of.

- Fish farms endanger the sea life around them. Other creatures get caught in the nets. Farmed fish escape and compete with the native fish for food and also spread disease.

- Did you know that fish can get lice? Fish can get lice just like any large number of living beings crammed in to too small space! Treating this lice introduces pesticides to the water supply and exposes other water life to lice. A few years back we had a lice outbreak amongst our children - the work and poison necessary to eradicate it from two heads nearly leveled me. I can't imagine 100,000 lice infested fish. Ick.

- Farmed fish aren’t as good for you as wild fish (according to FDA studies). Wild salmon have 20% higher protein and 20% lower fat content than farm-raised salmon

- Just like small farmers, small fishing operations are losing their livelihood to larger scale fish farms.

Of course wild-caught fish can have their share of problems.

- Because they must be harvested far and wide, they cost more.

- The availability of any species is inconsistent. If you’ve ever gone fishing, you know this personally.

- The number of fish is diminishing. If we keep fishing like we are, major populations of fish will be extinct by the mid-century.

- Many conventional fisherman harm the ocean inhabitants and the reefs with their nets and boats.

- Lots of fish, called “by-catch”, are inadventently caught and then thrown out because they aren’t the sought-after species (25% of each catch is by-catch).

- Many larger ocean fish are filled with mercury.

So this leads to the question – is there such a thing as sustainable aquaculture? The industry is still so new that lots of mistakes are being made as we figure this out. There are some “organic” fisheries trying to do the right thing, but not everyone knows what the right thing is.

Vegetarian fish are being cultivated. One very sustainable fish hails from Austrailia, the barramundi (nick-named “sustainable sea bass”), are vegetarian and seem to do well growing in fish farms. But most people have never heard of this fish. Marketing will be necessary to convince people that a nice poached barramundi is a gourmet meal. Tilapia is another species that is adaptable to sustainable fish farming and somewhat wider known. So if you’re going to choke down some fish and these issues are nagging at your conscience, look for these two.

You can also get a little guidance from the Marine Stewardship Council, a nonprofit, global organization that certifies seafood as sustainable. Through careful investigation, they determine which suppliers are practicing sustainable aquaculture or fishing and mark their products accordingly (with a bright blue “fish forever” seal from the MSC). MSC has produced a video about sustainable fishing.

As far as the toxins, the only way to avoid them is to steer clear of the long-living, carnivorous ocean-caught fish like salmon, tuna, swordfish, and shark.

There are several guides for making choices about which fish to buy. Monterray Bay Aquarium has an exhaustive guide that is modified for areas all over the US.
Eartheasy.com also has a helpful general guide for choosing sustainable fish. If you buy and eat a lot of fish, you might want to make a copy of their handy little chart to keep in your wallet.

So now you see why I was stumped. When I started to read about all this I was overwhelmed by all the issues that are as deep and wide as the ocean. I still can’t determine if farm-raised or wild-caught shrimp is best. (suppose it depends on how they were farm raised) I’m guessing that as these issues gain traction, the fishing industry will find its footing and educate us all (in the name of profit)– we’ll just have to be sure we understand what they’re talking about before the fish stop biting.