Summer is here and this is a holiday weekend in the US, thousands and thousands of grills will be fired up, tons of charcoal and lighter fluid will be used and the number of resources consumed will be staggering.
uGO has a product that can help green your grilling, the FlameDisk. Read the rest of this entry »
My family loves to cook together; we all love to pretend do be chefs and put on “cooking shows.” If you drive by my house at any given time don’t be surprised to see us lying in the grass, flipping through recipe magazines or reading a cookbook. The girls have been asking me to make “Nutty Jumbles” for a while. We eat a lot of nuts in our home for snack time and this is a fun way to spice up the same-old, same-old snack. I am careful with the amount of sugar we eat as a family but I figure if I’m lucky enough to have two little kids that will eat so many healthy things, they deserve some sugar… “just an itty bit,” as my daughter would say.
For almost two years we’ve been eating vegetarian or vegan twice a week and seafood twice a week. I guess you could consider us part-time vegetarians. Eating this way keeps us from overloading our diets with too much meat or dairy and cuts down on our grocery bill. It forces us to eat more fresh produce and to shop locally so the produce actually has flavor.
It is extremely eco-friendly to eat vegetarian twice a week; eating meat takes a toll on the environment big time. The beef, poultry and pork industrial farms notoriously contribute to water pollution, use large amounts of fossil fuels and generate prodigious amounts of greenhouse gases. The United Nations has actually issued a call for citizens of the world to go vegetarian one day a week to curb global warming.
My girls love fresh veggies and fruit on their own, but I also like to puree it and add it to other meals. I’m not trying to hide it but it’s another great way to add more essential vitamins to their diet. When my girls were babies I made their baby food and always used organic ingredients. Their teeth came in quickly and they moved onto solids sooner than later, so both times I ended up with extra bags of frozen cubed baby food. I started adding the pureed butternut squash into their grilled cheese for lunch and whole grain pancakes for breakfast. During that time two cookbooks were released dedicated to adding pureed fruits and veggies to favorite recipes!
A health organization is criticizing celebrity mothers who come out weeks after baby is born looking fabulous. Such dramatic weight loss is unrealistic and even unnecessary, said the Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care. The German group is warning new moms not to hold themselves to these hot-bod standards.
Very strenuous exercise programmes soon after childbirth did not lead to extra weight loss. This means that women do not need to have a bad conscience if they take it easy in the busy weeks after giving birth.
Of course, he also stresses the point that women should not “eat for two” during pregnancy.
But here’s the problem with the images in the media: Read the rest of this entry »
This post was originally posted at Nature’s Child, the site for sassy & sage natural parenting advice. And don’t forget to enter the Summer Essentials Contest while you’re there!
We all know someone who was thrilled when they learned they were pregnant. Yes, because they were bringing life into this world. But also because they could finally “eat for two” and let their diet go.
All of us with sense know that this is a pregnancy myth. You can’t actually eat for two and expect to lose the baby weight anytime in the next decade.
The eating “extra” may not be the best choice for every pregnant woman.
Pregnancy is not a time to eat twice as much, but twice as well.
Women who are already obese when they become pregnant may not need to gain “baby weight” as long as they and their care provider focus on a healthy diet.
Read the rest of this entry »
My girls and I love our Sigg water bottles. They are reusable, made without BPA, promote reuse, and are just darn cute. But the latest Sigg bottle goes even farther.
Sigg has partnered with with The Jane Goodall Institute to create the limited edition Drop of Hope SIGG bottle. Under the umbrella of One Percent
For the Planet, of which SIGG is a proud member, SIGG and The Jane Goodall
Institute are cultivating awareness of the global water crisis one bottle at
a time.
Read the rest of this entry »
Think a romantic meal of beef tenderloin with a side of potatoes sounds delicious? Maybe with a nice Bordeaux? Perhaps it does (especially if it’s grass-fed beef!), but it may decrease your chances of conception.
A new study shows that men who want to be fathers should increase their intake of fruits and veggies and decrease their consumption of fatty foods like red meat and creamy dishes.
Men who ate healthy diets not only had faster sperm, they had more sperm in their semen. It was both a quality and quantity effect.
Dr. Jaime Mendiola of the University of Murcia, Spain said of his research:
In this study, we have found that people who consume more fruits and vegetables are ingesting more anti-oxidants and this is the important point.
We saw that, among the couples with fertility problems coming to the clinic, the men with good semen quality ate more vegetables and fruit than those men with low seminal quality.
There are obviously many factors that influence fertility, and this is only one.
Organic popsicles…yes, I said it…that are bright colors, easy to make and full of ooey, gooey yumminess!
Ready for the super specific recipe? Here goes!
Eco-Artware is full of fun and functionally “green” products. Most of their items are handcrafted from recycled materials but these handy little bamboo eating utensils are made from all new bamboo and perfect for parents or anyone that often eats on the go. Read the rest of this entry »
I thought I would be one of those mothers who would lovingly home make all the baby food. I sniffed at the idea of baby food in the jar. Why would I ever want to feed my baby THAT? I got a copy of Super Baby Food, read through it and smugly declared that I would never resort to feeding my baby those unhealthy commercialized baby products… Organic or not. Of course, reality set in once I became a mom. Days when just doing one more thing was an impossible task, I begrudgingly reached for those Organic baby food jars at our local grocery store with a heavy guilty conscious. On my defense, I did try to make homemade baby food, but Layla turned her head and longingly looked at the baby food jars. So even she agreed that my calling was not to be a home cooking mom.
Well there’s a healthy compromise with the HAPPYBABY frozen baby meals. Aptly tag-lined, “Think Outside the Jar” It’s a great alternative to busy, very tired, or cooking challenged moms. Instead of processed jar food, you get fresh but frozen food that is delicious as well as nutritious. All the ingredients are Organic. There are vegan and vegetarian option as well as organic meat for carnivores {which we are}. “HAPPYBABY was born when we saw the need for nutritious and convenient alternatives to highly processed baby food. We believe baby’s first meals should taste and look delicious—and nourish baby’s body”. Should I mention that it is endorsed by Doctor Sears {who is my go to person on parenting}.
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