Long before diversity was even a concept, before the US was its own country, in 1665 to be exact, a Native American attended Harvard College. His name was Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck and a member of the Wampanoag Tribe in Martha’s Vineyard. Unfortunately little is known about this young man who straddled two worlds, but Geraldine Brooks does a wonderful job of fictionalizing his life in her latest novel, Caleb’s Crossing.

The story’s narrator is Bethia Mayhew, the daughter of a missionary and granddaughter of the island’s governor. Bethia meets Caleb by chance in the woods as a child, and their friendship blossoms over time. They teach each other their respective languages and compare religions, as Caleb shows Bethia the best places to gather berries and clams. Bethia’s life is full of chores, but she is smart and eager to learn like the men in her family. Thanks to Bethia’s help, Caleb learns how to read and speak English, preparing him to leave his tribe and study at Harvard.

Although the story is about Caleb, Bethia’s plight as a woman in the colonies was a significant part of the novel. It was deeply disturbing that the concept of trying to educate Native Americans was far less shocking to the men in 1665 than the thought of teaching a woman Latin or Greek. Bethia is told over and over again that gaining an education will only lead her to frustration and that she should just accept her duties as a woman.

Brooks wrote Caleb’s crossing with old English words and spellings and the strong Protestant beliefs of the colonists are featured throughout the story. Their faith, with their visions of Satan and temptation, come off as pagan as the many deities the Wampanoag worshipped.

Brooks plunges the readers into the rigidly pious New England colonies in a thrilling novel that I could not put down. I would recommend this book for any book club as there are many themes to discuss including religion, the purpose of education, the coming together of different cultures, as well as the role of woman in the home. Caleb’s Crossing would be a wonderful title for a mother-daughter book club for children in middle and high school. Brooks brings history to life and touches on many hot topics that are sure to spark great discussions.

Now that Memorial Day is behind us, we are officially in the home stretch to summer break. My kids have less than a week left of school before being let loose into the freedom of summer, a prospect that fills me with equal parts terror and joy. Well, maybe a little more fear than joy. Although having them around all day long for three months is a little bit terrifying, I do love not being a slave to the clock, and being able to use our time to explore and go on adventures.

My kids love corn dogs and chicken nuggets and wish they were more than a special treat.

Because we travel so much during the summer, both on day trips and longer vacations, we also eat out a lot more. After a while, I decline the kids’ menus and just order healthier options from the adult menu (this does not make me the most popular mom in town). Most kid meal options are fried: chicken fingers, French fries, corn dogs, and leave the kids lethargic and cranky.

At the National Restaurant Association Show a few weeks ago, I learned about a wonderful new program called Kids Live Well that is reforming children’s menus at restaurants around the country. They’re working with large chains like Applebees and IHOP as well local restaurants to ensure that the meals offered to kids are healthy and not fried.

Participating restaurants are listed on the Healthy Dining Finder website as well as on the downloadable iPhone app which helps direct you to nearby restaurants with Kids Live Well menus. The Kids Live Well PR team enlisted my help along with other Chicago bloggers to get the word out about the website and the app. As thanks for this post, I will be compensated and have received a small gift card to try the new children’s menus at a participating restaurant.

To participate in the Kids Live Well program, restaurants receive guidance from dieticians on staff to meet the following criteria on their children’s menus:

• Deep Fried Items are not allowed. (This brings a tear to my eyes and to my kids’ eyes – mine are of joy… theirs not so much)

Full Kids’ Meals (entrée, side option and beverage):

• 600 calories or less
• ?35% of calories from total fat
• ?10% of calories from saturated fat
• <0.5 grams trans fat (artificial trans fat only)
• ?35% of calories from total sugars (added and naturally occurring)
• ?770 mg of sodium
• 2 or more food groups (see below)

Side Items:

• 200 calories or less
• ?35% of calories from total fat
• ?10% of calories from saturated fat
• <0.5 grams artificial trans fat
• ?35% of calories from total sugars (added and naturally occurring)
• ?250 mg of sodium
• 100% fruit, vegetables or juice; and low fat (1%) and skim milks are permitted
• 1 food group (see below)

Fruit, Vegetables, Whole Grains, Lean Protein and Low-Fat Dairy:
Full meals must include two sources, and a la carte sides must include one source of the following:

Fruit:
Fruit (includes 100% juice):
½ cup or more = 1 star

Vegetables:
½ cup or more = 1 star

Whole Grains:
Contains whole grains = 1 star

Lean protein (skinless white meat poultry, fish, seafood, beef, pork, tofu, beans, eggs):
At least 2 ounces meat, 1 egg equivalent, 1 oz nuts/seeds/dry bean/peas = 1 star (lean as defined by FDA)

Dairy:
Lower-fat dairy (1% or skim milk and dairy): ½ cup or more = 1 star (while not considered low-fat, 2% milk is allowed if included in the meal and the meal still fits the full meal criteria)

Frankly, I’m excited about this program. Anything that partners with me to help my kids eat healthily gets my thanks. I wish that juice were not allowed to count towards the fruit requirement, but otherwise the criteria seems solid and clear. I spoke at length to some of the managers of the Kids Live Well program and they’re really committed to using the program to train local restaurants. So take a look at the list, see if any restaurants in your community have joined, and suggest it to them if they’re not on the list.

Let’s make the summer of 2012 a summer of eating healthy when dining out.

Eggs get a bad reputation as a fattening food, but when I started tracking my calorie intake, I realized that they were actually a high protein, low calorie option for lunch. Each large scrambled or omelet egg is only 100 calories! Since that epiphany, I started buying these delicious free range local eggs from my food and vegetable delivery service, and began experimenting with different fillings and toppings. A farm fresh egg with a bright yellow yolk is a meal that’s pretty close to perfection, even before you start topping it with something fun.

Image courtesy of Sargento.

This week, after playing around with Julia Child’s Omelette Roulee recipe, I gave my eggs a Southwestern twist thanks to a recipe from Sargento.com. As part of the Sargento Thin Sliced cheese campaign (for which I am receiving compensation to write two posts), I received coupons to sample the thin sliced cheeses in various flavors and have been playing around with the many recipes on the Sargento website. Cheese is a surprisingly high calorie food, so finding ways to still enjoy the taste while limiting the calories with thinner slicing is a big win

The black beans were a nice twist on my egg lunch, giving me extra protein power to use up on the tennis court.

If you’d like to try the new Sargento thin sliced cheese for yourself, leave a comment on this post. I’ll select one comment at random to win three coupons for free packages of Ultra Thin Sargento Cheese.

GIVEAWAY DETAILS:
To enter to win, please leave me a comment with your favorite cheese to snack on. I’ll select the winner at random in a week on 6/1.

And there’s many ways to earn additional chances to win, just make sure to return here to leave comments for each additional entry. You can:

• Follow @Frenchfoodiemom on Twitter
• Tweet about this contest.
• Like the Chefdruck Musings Facebook Fan Page
• Post about this contest on your Facebook page.
• Post about this contest on your blog.
• Subscribe to the Chefdruck Musings RSS Feed.

Every parent has a fear at the back of their mind. A recurring nightmare. An nagging anxiety that just won’t disappear.

For me, it’s a fear of losing a child. And that fear has grown each time we’ve added to our brood. With four children, you could call it a full blown phobia. It just seems inevitable that at some point in time, I will lose track of someone, abandoning some child on a deserted sports field as dusk settles around them.

Last weekend, that fear came true. It was just for 10 minutes, and not in a scary, rest stop at the side of highway type of place, but we still lost Juju. She wandered around at our community pool, gazing up at adults she didn’t know, searching for her family until my husband realized she wasn’t with her big sister and came back to find her.

She didn’t seem that shaken by the episode, but two nights later, at bedtime, the questions and the tears came.

“Mom? What happens if I lose you on the street? What should I do?”

“Oh cutie, don’t worry, stop crying, we won’t lose you ever again! But if you should ever get separated from us, find a policeman on the street and they’ll help you find us.”

“But MOM, what if there are no policemen around?”

“Well then you walk into a store and ask a person who works there to help you.”

“But what if the stores are all closed?”

“Then you look for a mom, someone with little kids, and she’ll help you, just like I would.”

“But MOM, what if it’s nighttime, and the shops are all closed, and there’s no one around, no moms, no police, no one but VAMPIRES! What do I do then?“

I didn’t manage to convince her that vampires don’t exist beyond the Disney Channel and the CW, but we did start working on memorizing my cell phone number and increasing her confidence of her home address, facts I dangerously assumed she knew. Because she’s exposed to so much by her older siblings, it’s easy to forget that she’s only five, such a little girl.

I wish I could have spared her the anxiety of being lost in a crowd, but if it makes us better prepared should her little hand ever slip out of ours at an airport or subway station, then the fear was worth it. Does your child know their phone and address? Check in with them. You might be surprised that they’ve forgotten.

Long before Ree, Jaden, and Lori, there was Julia. Although she probably would have hated to be included in a crowd of food bloggers, Julia Child can be credited to have started our collective obsession with food both online and at our dinner tables. Thanks to her detailed recipes, complete with illustrations, she empowered every American to cook like the French. On August 15, Julia would have turned 100. To honor her, 100 food bloggers are cooking some of her most iconic recipes this month. I’m honored to be part of the JC100.

We’re kicking off the month of honoring Julia Child’s legacy by beginning with the basics: eggs. If you’ve ever had an omelette in France, you’ll agree that it was vastly different than many of the omelettes served in the States.  Instead of a flat and often dried out layer of cooked eggs surrounding a filling of your choice, French omelettes are airy and souffle-like. Each bite of an omelette roulee melts in your mouth, leaving a subtle eggyness on your tongue.

Eggs are deceptively tough to cook. They’re a meal that can be whipped up in under five minutes, but can be burnt or overcooked even faster than that. Julia’s omelette recipe, excerpted from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, spans a full 8-pages, more detailed than one of Ree’s 50 picture posts, but with her words to guide you, the omelette’s will roll onto your plate as they should: fluffy, puffy and divine.

I stuffed my omelette roulee with bacon, baby bella mushrooms, shallots, and grated muenster. How will you fill yours?

The celebration of Julia Child will continue right up until August 15, with one new recipe featured every week. The recipes were chosen by a panel including Thomas Keller and Amanda Hesser. The goal of the JC100 is to raise one million voices to honor Julia Child.

Next up? We’ll be marrying eggs with chocolate to make chocolate mousse!

Having squeezed my postpartum body into a bathing suit in public last weekend, I am back on my soup diet with a vengeance. Say what you will about breastfeeding, but it’s not melting the pounds off this body. With a big bowl of soup to fill me up at lunch, I spend the rest of the day happily dreaming of my soon to be muffin-top free body. But when the temperature starts to rise, a big bowl of hot soup is the last thing I want, and I shift to chilled soups to diet.

Last summer I went wild with chilled soups: tomato gazpacho, watermelon gazpacho, but there’s only so much tomato soups a girl can handle. This spring, I’m craving something new, something a little sweet, a little savory, a little exciting. Turns out carrots were just the thrill I was looking for.

Watermelon gazpacho from last summer...

Having bought a ginormous bag of carrots at Costco, I roasted a couple of cookie sheets of sliced carrots dusted with cinnamon, ancho chili powder, and shallot pepper. The roasting really brought out their sweetness and made them an even prettier color. It only took another 15 minutes to whip them up into a batch of soup which was yummy warm, but even better chilled with a little lemon juice.

What are you waiting for? Roast and chill your carrots. The last of the winter pounds will melt away and your tastebuds will wake up, ready for spring and summer feasting.

Mom Wars is one of the media’s favorite story lines. The Time Magazine Are you Mom Enough Dare is only the latest chapter pitting stay at home moms vs. working moms, breastfeeding moms vs. formula moms, or babywearing moms vs. Ferber-loving moms. It sells magazines to depict us as dueling, mud-wrestling amazons, but each of those pieces is missing the mark.

How much energy do you spend dueling with moms who don’t share your parenting views?

I just attended a mom blogger event at Coca Cola headquarters last week. (To be clear: Coca Cola flew me down to Atlanta and paid for my hotel room and meals.)  The two day conference included a panel with six of the top female executives at Coca Cola. Our genders seemed to be the only thing we all had in common. They run large divisions at one of the most recognized brands in the world. We work from home, building our personal brands by ourselves. The panel could have been pitched as a reality show: Mom Wars: executives vs. mompreneurs. But as the dialogue began, it soon became clear that we had a lot in common and that these powerful women had inspiring stories that were very relevant to our careers and lives, no matter how different.

My corporate days are long behind me, but these executive women shared advice that resonated within me. These words will fuel my decisions in the years to come, keeping me growing and challenging myself:

• Don’t try to be a man. Our gender’s gift is empathy and it is our secret weapon. Be a woman and you will be successful.
• Always be a little uncomfortable in your jobs because that’s when you’ll learn and grow the most.
• Give your mentors the permission to be honest. Feedback will help you grow.
• Define your own success. Don’t let anyone else’s vision dictate yours.
• The test of courage and the key to success is to walk through the door when opportunity knocks. Learn something and have fun.
• Whatever you are doing, focus on it exclusively. Work while at work. Play at home.
• Let go of trying to be perfect.

During our two days in Atlanta, we toured the World of Coke and met with many other speakers. We heard from Megan Calhoun about building brand pillars. We assembled vision boards. We learned about Coca Cola’s goal to create 5 million female entrepreneurs before 2020 and about their community service outreach programs locally and globally (more on that soon). We spent a great deal of time talking about obesity, fitness, nutrition, and the environment. We even did a little sweating courtesy of Monica Vasquez, Subway official trainer. We got a much greater appreciation for the power to do good of a mega brand.

But having taken the weekend to digest the trip and all the information, the most powerful presentation was definitely the panel with Coca Cola’s female executives. Rather than spending time focusing on our differences, applying their lessons to my life, no matter how different, has me walking a little bolder, a little more proud to be a woman and a mom.

Eating healthy by increasing the amount of whole foods in our diets is a goal many of us have. We make little changes, join CSAs, go to the farmer’s market, but it’s a long journey, filled with scary doomsday predictions, and higher food bills. It’s a journey that our family has been on for a while, learning more about our food supply, finding better places to shop, different foods to try, testing the boundaries of how far we want to go. So when my friend Tricia told me that she was going to build a section of her site for a year to Getting Real with Whole Foods, I was excited to guest post.

After some back and forth, we decided that I would write about meat, specifically beef. My post on getting real with beef was to inspire people to take a baby step towards finding local meat buying options and to explain the different ways of raising cattle. Through our different moves the last few years, we’ve tried a variety of different sources to get grass fed or organic meat, beyond just shopping at Whole Foods. We joined a meat buying club in Columbus. We befriended local farmers at the Oak Park farmer’s market. And now we get a weekly delivery of grass fed organic beef from TCF Organics, a local or organic food delivery service that delivers year round to our house. We also grind our own blend of beef to make a killer burger.

Ever tried grinding your own meat? It's the secret to our burgers.

At some point, I’d like to get a large chest freezer to really be able to work with local beef and pig farmers by buying larger quantities at a time. It’s what I tried in Columbus, but without a large freezer, it was just too hard to store it all, and we wasted more than I would have liked. So for now, I’m comfortable with having switched our ground beef but continuing to buy the rest of my meat at supermarkets. As we move along in our journey to whole foods, our buying habits will change and evolve. And that’s okay. It’s not all or nothing.

On a warm summer night, the smell of a grilling steak is heaven.

Take a minute to see all the voices Tricia has gathered in the Get Real section of Once a Month Mom. You’ll find great advice on canning, grains, vegetables, as well as meat; definitely food for thought to get you started on your journey towards whole foods.

When I became pregnant with Sophie, I had been out of baby mode for a long time. My crib had fallen apart. My stroller had an unfortunate run in with the back of my minivan (thankfully with no child in it!). And my bulky high chair had been given away joyfully. I had to buy a lot of baby gear all over again, something I didn’t really mind doing because so much, from strollers to diaper bags, had improved in 5 years.

Love any gear that helps me relax on a beach... and maybe even nap!

But there was one item that I’d held onto, one item that was convenient to store and that I knew would come in handy with visiting friends: my Graco Pack and Play. Somehow that was the one baby gear item I felt most attached to, probably because it came with us on so many trips to so many fun place and let my kids nap while I relaxed. Anything that gives me a minute’s peace is something I get warm and fuzzy about.

Pack 'n Play in Soho Square Pattern

So today I am so excited to help Graco celebrate their 25th anniversary by hosting a giveaway for a Graco Pack ‘n Play, a new an improved version of my trusty Pack ‘n Play with a Reversible Napper & Changer. Ellen recently gave the same model away to everyone in her audience, so this brings us just a little closer to her in a Kevin Bacon sort of way.

For Mother’s Day this year, I asked for deep cleansing breaths of fresh air, for uninterrupted skies of blue, and for a day of walking wild.

We live in an amazing suburb of Chicago, one I just wrote about for the May issue of Chicago Parent. The public schools are top notch. We’re close to public transportation. I walk to the supermarket, and we can get in to the city on a good day in 20 minutes. But we’re far from nature.

Oh sure, we have a little zoo, a little walking path around a little lake. If you drive 15 minutes, you can get to a beautiful but very expensive Arboretum. But you can still hear the highway. You can still hear the planes. It doesn’t have that peaceful, deep down healing feeling of a quiet walk in the still woods.

So for Mother’s Day. I asked for the great outdoors.

We piled into the minivan and drove 2 hours to Starved Rock State Park where we climbed trees, got muddy, waded through streams, and filled our eyes with the great blue sky. I let the kids yell as loud as they could and then dared them to yell louder. No one complained. Their voices echoed against the striped sandstone cliffs, and it sounded like music, meshed with the whispering breeze through the towering trees around us. It was nature. It was glorious. And it was all I wanted for mother’s day.

I hope your mother’s day was also glorious, wild, and joyful. I have a feeling I’ll be declaring a mother’s day bolt back to nature much sooner than next May. It may even need to become a monthly escape.