The Future of School Lunch

It time to speak up and we don't have much time, so act fast to make sure your voice is heard!

The Child Nutrition Act (read about it here) – a major piece of federal legislation that helps determine school food policy and resources – will begin reauthorization in 2009. The federal government and the USDA wants your opinion and is accepting public comments on the reauthorization of this act, but you have to comment by October 15, 2008.

So, what do we want? We request the USDA to start to make changes by doing the following:

Increase funding for school meals and provide incentives for schools to offer healthier foods.

Increase access to fresh fruits and vegetables.

Improve nutrition standards for school meals so they align with the most recent dietary guidelines.

Establish standards for food sold in schools outside of the school meals programs such as that sold at snack bars and cafeteria a la carte lines.

Personally, in addition, I want my boys to be able to choose from fresh in-season produce, hormone-free meats and dairy, whole grains and balanced menus. I also want the "fast foods" to disappear from the menu. My middle school aged boys can actually purchase whole pizzas brought in from an outside chain, Bosco brand cheese breadsticks (for a meal?!?!), nachos with fake "oil" cheese, canned fruits in HFCS, lemonade that contains 0% fruit juice, chicken nuggets using processed meats, salad dressings that have a higher fat content than a Big Mac, gatorade and donuts. Sound appetizing? To a 13 year old boy with $5 in his pocket, it's pretty hard to resist.

What can you do??

Well, it's very simple. Simply log on to this site and enter your comments which will be reviewed by the USDA. Has speaking up ever been so simple?? I think not! And, if you're really pressed for time, simply highlight, copy and paste the bolded text above and place it into the comments section.

Please don't delay, you only have until October 15th, 2008. Pass this along, tell your friends, post it at your school, spread the word through your PTA or neighborhood. Your children will thank you!

The Farm of Tomorrow

Does anybody else remember the Tex Avery cartoon, Farm of Tomorrow?

It was a lot funnier in my youth, when the frankenfoods they describe were safely in the realm of comic fantasy. Cross a chicken with a centipede for more drumsticks? Hilarious, in 1978. Now, since GMOs have become reality, it's a lot more creepy.




Tex, you were a visionary.

Eating Local is so much fun this time of year.

During summer and into fall, I don't have much trouble eating local, and I LOVE the journey!!

Every Saturday I go to the farmers market (Royal Oak every other week usually followed by a trip to the Clarkston Market and just Clarkston on the other weeks). I sometimes go by myself, which is pleasurable to stroll along and talk to all my farmer/vendor friends, including Julie (LVL) at Clarkston. Sometimes we take the whole family and my kids love the market. The smells, the sounds, the abundance of beaconing fruits and vegetables in all their glory, the multitude of colors. It is such a sensory and soul soothing experience!!

We belong to a CSA, so we have an abundance of fresh, local, organically-grown vegetables each week, but I can't resist the market experience. I still manage to spend a good amount on things we don't get enough of (or any of) from our CSA or other fun, yummy items that aren't produce but are local.

This past week I bought 2 dozen sweet corn, a watermelon, 2 canteloupe and a quart of organic, local peaches.

For dinner recently we had Nachos with local beef (from East River Organics) made into homemade taco meat (I don't use a spice/packet for the meat, but a recipe from Cook's Illustrated), Simmon's corn chips (from LVL, see my previous post), global warming salsa, locally bought sour cream and Rosewood cheese (which is produced in Ann Arbor area) and Eden refried beans. It was so good and very filling.

Breakfast this morning was Fritattas with local eggs (we get them from our CSA and they are locally produced by several area families for our CSA), veggies from our CSA (onions, garlic, summer squash, green bell pepper and carrots from east river organics, they are so good). Hubby made breakfast. We had the watermelon from the farmers market with the frittata.

So it isn't hard for me to do local meals this time of year, in fact basically all our meals are local as we try to use up our abundance of veggies. We had grilled pizzas tonight. The crust was homemade with flour from Westwind Mill (I did use a bit of other flour because Westwind is out of the heartier wheat varieties and I needed a bit more protein content in the dough). The dough only has salt, yeast, water, olive oil and flour in it. The sauce was made from homemade roasted tomato sauce (the peach and melon farmer at the Clarkston Farmers market gave us a bag of their imperfect tomatoes when they heard we wanted to make sauce--thats what I love about building relationships with your growers) with onion and garlic from our CSA added and some spices. The toppings were onions (CSA), pepperoni (Markowycz Meats in Detroit) and cheese. We had sweet corn with the pizzas!!

Yum, I will be sad when winter rolls around and the fresh green vegetables and the lucious fruits are gone. We do put up things like tomato sauce, corn (blanced and cut off the cob), berries, and pickles, kim chi and sauerkraut, and jam. We try to do more, but depends on what we can source.

Lisa

The Corn Chips are Amazing!!

I avoided buying the heirloom corn chips from LVL at first as they seemed so pricey to me when I can get organic corn chips at Trader Joe's for MUCH cheaper. However, I tasted them at the Clarkston Farmers Market and they were very good, but I still held out due to the price. Well then I tried them again at our CSA (Rocky Gardens) and my kids really liked them. Still, I abstained from purchasing them. Well this week as I did my LVL order, they beckoned me to get them, don't know what prompted me as we have a couple of bags of other corn chips in the house.

I ordered them and the kids found them in the pantry today (I didn't really hide them, but didn't tell them they were there). They had a wee munch while my mom was here babysitting.

Well dinner tonight was Nachos and I planned to unveil the chips (well was I shocked to see they had already been discovered). We LOVED them.

First, they are very crunchy and have a great flavor. Secondly, they aren't overly salty as many chips can be. Third, Julie mentioned this to me and she is right, they are very filling. I ate a small amount with my nacho toppings and was STUFFED, so was my daughter.

However, as Jay and I were talking about how good they are and the price, we said that we just have to suck it up and make these our staple chip. It is just too good and the fact that we personally know the farmer who grows the corn as well as the fact they are made locally and with Prime ingredients (where else can you get a chip with primo Celtic Sea Salt on them and fried in a decent oil).

So we are sold on these, lock, stock and barrel. We have ended our quest for a great corn chip!!

Lisa

GMO Sugar Beets: Lighting a candle

I'm really really good at cursing the darkness of industrial food and GMOs and stuff, as you may have noticed. I haven't been so good about lighting candles. Sorry about that. But here's a candle that burns pretty brightly, I think.

Julie just warned us about GM sugar beets, and advised us to buy sugar from cane. Unfortunately, sugar cane won't grow around here, which means refined sugar need to come from places like Louisiana. Now, we can argue about whether long-distance, non GM cane is better than local GM beets, and I don't know what the right answer is. If you absolutely need to have refined sugar in your recipe or coffee or wherever, I think non-GM cane sugar the way to go. But if refined white sugar isn't all that important to you, and you want to keep eating locally, consider the following:

I've just been reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, because Melissa is re-reading them, and I never read them as a kid. The Ingalls family used a lot of maple sugar in their cooking. Michigan produces quite a lot of maple syrup. Making sugar from syrup isn't hard. Here's one set of instructions. You can also just use the syrup to sweeten your morning brew. I put maple syrup in my coffee yesterday and in my tea today. Delicious! I figure if it's good enough for Pa Ingalls, it's good enough for me.

Plus, you can get maple syrup from LVL!

A few reviews

I wanted to start by reviewing the No Sugar Added Mixed Berry Jam from Food for Thought. I have been purchasing this through LVL for a while and my kids love it. I ran out and had to use another brand of organic jam. My three year-old cried that he didn't want that jam he wanted the "grape jam". I couldn't figure out what he meant, I have never bought grape jam?? Turns out he meant the Mixed Berry. It is a dark purple color so he called it "grape". Well it really is just a "great" jam!!! It is not too sweet, but just sweet enough that it lets the berries shine through. It spreads great and really I could eat it just off the spoon. I really love this jam and so do my kids!! We make a PBJ sandwich with homemade bread, Naturally nutty butters and this jam and really you think you are eating dessert.

This leads to my second review. The naturally nutty butters are divine. I haven't tried one I don't like yet. Our hands down favorite is the Honey Roasted Cinnamon. However, the Vanilla Almond is amazing too. The Vanilla Almond smells like a sugar cookie. It is really a treat and I could just eat it plain right out of the jar, but paired with some yummy jam it makes a terrific sandwich.

The La Vida Local Thermal Mug. I saw this at the LVL booth at the Clarkston Farmer's Market and was really impressed. I went back this week and bought one. Now my husband wants one and so does my daughter. The carry case is mighty handy, it is so easy to drink from and does not leak. I used it just for ice water so far, but it kept it wonderfully cold. I love the tea strainer and the extra screw cap to make sure their are no leaks when traveling! I put ice water in it about 5:45 pm last night and we were outside at my in-laws pool. I brought it home and left it on the counter (I wanted to test how cold it would be). At 1:30 pm my daughter took a drink and said, "oh, it is really cold". I opened it to see if there was any ice left. The ice was gone, but the water was ice cold!! This is the best hot/cold mug I have ever seen!! Can't wait to try the hot in it.

Lisa

Product Review - Pet Soap!

Let me start out by saying I have two doggies, one of which is a little too old and a little too hairy to groom ourselves - she is part lab - part husky and all FUR. She is also 11 years old and loves her groomer, so we leave that to the experts.

On the other hand, our puppy Tahoe, is mostly Dalmatian with a little of something else mixed in which leaves him with very short and manageable fur. We are not sure of the "something else" it's a mystery, the shelter had no idea and even the vet is stumped. So, he looks like a Dalmatian, but stunted and stocky. Strange.

He loves to roll in the clover and daisies which leaves him smelling distinctly of "farm" and since this happens on a regular basis, taking him to the groomer is out, it would cost us a fortune. We have used the traditional pet shampoos for awhile, but as the humans in our family switched to bar soaps a long time ago it was time to switch the puppy! We ordered the Creation Farm Pet Shampoo Bar a few weeks back and now have used it twice with excellent luck. My husband washed him outdoors in the grass without fear that chemicals would kill the grass, the dog smelled great and felt squeaky clean. The next time we bathed him, we decided just to use our regular bathroom tub because the shampoo bar didn't smell like nasty dog shampoo. Good luck again! Dog was clean, bathroom didn't smell like the grooming salon. We hate the smell of wet dog, it makes me gag, so this is a big plus!

I don't know about the flea repellent part of the soap, we don't have a flea problem, our dogs are indoors for 23.5 hours a day it seems. They potty and come right back in unless it's WALK time, they hate to be away from their humans. So I can't vouch for the fleas, I can only recommend the CLEAN!

Overall, I rate it a TWO PAWS UP!!

Product Review - Steel Cut Oats!

I ordered the Westwind steel cut oats from LVL a long, long time ago. Like two months ago. They have been sitting in my pantry, not because I don't like them, I LOVE oatmeal, but because it takes 40 minute to cook them!

For my One Local Summer meal last week I decided to try to beat the system, making a double batch and storing it in the fridge in a resealable container. The last few mornings I have been scooping a single serving into a cereal bowl, microwaving them topped with a homemade blueberry sauce using berries my boys picked from a local U-Pick. Fast, delicious and healthy!

My double batch recipe is two cups of oats to 8 cups of water brought to a boil and simmered for 35-40 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes or so. This makes thicker oats, we prefer them that way, but if you like thinner oats use 9 cups of water. Cool for 10-15 minutes stirring a few times. Transfer to a resealable container and store in the refrigerator to enjoy this healthy breakfast all week long - and it will only take a few second to prepare!

You can read the whole post about eating a healthy breakfast and doing it locally here.