Green and Natural Parenting

Shopping At Farmer’s Markets with Food Stamps

Tiffany — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:17:06 +0000

An article on the NY Daily News caught my eye today about young adults without kids using their food stamps at local farmer's markets to buy farm fresh veggies, local honey, baked goods, and wild caught rabbit meat and salmon. Surprisingly the article did not insinuate that somehow accepting food stamps makes you only deserving of Twinkies and Ramen noodles like I thought it would… of course the comments are a different story.

I liked this article because I think allowing people to use their food stamps at Farmer's markets is a stellar idea. People who are struggling to make ends meet deserve healthy food too. There is no reason why they must be relegated to junk food if they actually WANT to eat healthier. This bit for example might get some people's hair up:

Then there are food stamp users like Gerry Mak, 31, who had very little in terms of a job besides a meager part-time blogging job when he moved to Baltimore last year.

After applying for food stamps and qualifying for $200 a month, he recently prepared roasted rabbit with butter, tarragon and sweet potatoes.

"I’m sort of a foodie, and I’m not going to do the ‘living off ramen’ thing," Mak said, according to Salon.com. "I used to think that you could only get processed food and government cheese on food stamps, but it’s great that you can get anything."

Well, it is unfortunate that many people in this country feel they cannot afford to eat this way I don't begrudge the man a good meal because he is using tax payer dollars to get by. Why? Well, what kind of person would I be if I said that the idea of this guy existing on Twinkies and soda makes me "feel better" somehow? Also, why on earth would we want tax payer dollars to go to supporting big food companies that are already heavily subsidized if there is another way. That money will go to supporting something… so I would prefer Joe the local farmer to ConAgra or Monsanto any day of the week.

It would be a big boon to local economies if food stamp money was going towards local food and farmers. As I mentioned, we already subsidize junk food in the US to make it artificially cheap, which I think is monumentally unfair to small food producers. Giving food stamp users the option to spend money with their neighbors is a step in a better direction.. as indicated by this quote:

Four years ago, just three Greenmarkets took food stamps and total sales were $1,000. Last summer, 28 Greenmarkets accepted food stamps, and sales were more than $200,000.

That is $200,000 being put in the pockets of the people instead of corporate agribusiness!

Would we see a food stamps recipient eating healthier, albeit more expensive, foods and be thinking "Not on my dime!"? Or would we see them load up on Ramen noodles and Velveeta cheese and think of what those dollars are actually supporting and think, "Not on my dime!"? Personally I would like to see all farmer's markets be able to accept food stamps and then maybe we would see a huge boost to local economies and local food availability and perhaps prices would come down. People deserve healthy food not processed garbage and our local farmers should be the ones being supported by our tax dollars, not the mega corporations slowly poisoning us.

What do think about this issue? Care to share your 2 cents?

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Shopping At Farmer’s Markets with Food Stamps

Natural Ingredients for Energy

Tiffany — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 20:23:36 +0000

As parents one thing we all face, is keeping our energy levels up, as we keep up with our children. This month Whole Foods Market current podcast series suggests tips and action steps to support our energy levels naturally and safely. For a great list of energy supporting herbs, and to listen to these podcasts visit the Whole Story blog.

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Natural Ingredients for Energy

I Love Nature But Do I Have to Love Spiders?

Tiffany — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:23:14 +0000

The other day as I was watching my daughter play outside and she started to freak out about a bee. If it wasn't a bee it would have been a bug. She HATES the creepy crawlies and I can't blame her since I was the same way. It was well into my adult years that I started to accept them and not shriek and jump onto the nearest high surface. I wish I could say I had bad experiences that made me that way, and I did get bit by black widow spiders a couple times but overall I have to say that I was just born being afraid of bugs and crawly things. My parents used to joke that they could send me into any room and I would find a bug.. even if it was the size of a flea… I would find one and scream.

Nowadays I wouldn't say I love them but I can tolerate them and for the sake of my daughter I try to make bugs seem like a fun part of nature. I want her to see a female who thinks bugs and spiders are cool, not something to be terrified of. Yesterday that meant going outside to check the mud and puddles in the yard for worms. This morning was another worm hunt. I even assisted my toddler in trying to sneak one to school but alas the bus driver caught us and gave me the evil eye. As soon as she heard him say the word "worm" she got ghostly white and almost physically pushed him away to arms length and demanded to know if he had a worm. That is the look I don't want my kids to see.. the look that says that nature and bugs are gross, dirty, nasty, scary, etc. That takes me out of my comfort zone sometimes but the things we do for our children…

Half the battle is won by learning about how beneficial bugs and spiders are. If you take the time to learn, you develop respect and you see why they are important parts of the ecosystem. When you are outside and you see a particular bug or spider see if you can identify it on the Internet and learn about it. Demystifying and naming certain critters is half the battle. Kids are afraid of the unknown and once they "get to know" the local wildlife they will be more comfortable.

Take the Orb-Weavers for instance. They are spiders that weave large, beautiful webs that sometimes look as if they have writing down the middle (hence another name for these yellow-and-black striped beauties: writing spider). These spiders are quite large, and their elaborate webs are lethal to all kinds of flying pests, such as mosquitoes, moths, wasps, hornets, etc. Such webs can be annoying to humans, but there are few things more breath-taking than one of these orb webs covered in dew drops on a sunny morning. They kill the bugs I don't particularly like.. mosquitoes and wasps, and they are gorgeous spiders, even if slightly terrifying looking. I leave them alone and they leave me alone. That is the major lesson I impart to my kids… they have a job to do and we need to leave them to it.

I don't like spiders and bugs in the house so the kids and I talk about what kind of things WE do that makes spiders want to come in the house… aka leaving clutter on the floor for them to hide in, leaving food and crumbs on the floor, poking holes in screens, etc. I find it is an excellent incentive to my kids to clean up after themselves when they think about bugs crawling around in their rooms at night. It is incentive for me too. After finding two huge spiders in the laundry I was piling on the floor, I converted to a system that kept clothes OFF the floor, LOL. For more tips check out my article on how to get rid of spiders naturally. It mostly talks about spiders but also some insects.

Because we want to be left alone in our home we take preventive measures and we have to respect that the outdoors is their domain. To respect existing spiders in our yard we do not spray broad-spectrum insecticides (spiders are not insects, but they will succumb to insect sprays). If we spray anything, it is usually natural and geared towards one problem insect that is eating our crops. We never spray herbicides to kill weeds either. Another thing you can do is spread thick mulch that gives hunting spiders a place to hide and spend the winter. Encourage web-weavers with an outside light that attracts flying insects. Spiders will weave their webs near the light to take advantage of the bugs.

We don't need to love bugs and spiders but certainly we don't need to fear them and we can learn to respect them and co-exist with them.

Some good books to read with your kids about spiders and bugs:

The Looking Book – A very clever book a mom who gives her kids some "lookers" and sends them on an assignment in their backyard. My kids like this one a lot.

Are you a Spider? – Walk a mile in a spiders web.

Aaaarrgghh! Spider! - An adorable book about a spider who wants to be the family pet but she keeps getting swept outside.

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I Love Nature But Do I Have to Love Spiders?

Climbing Trees – It Isn’t Just for Boys!

Tiffany — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 10:00:57 +0000

Yesterday my daughter pulled me out of photo taking doldrums. I have sorely missed using my dear camera and when I discovered my daughter camped out in her favorite tree again, I had a reason to grab it. There just isn't much to inspire me in winter and that is rough on someone who feels like taking pictures is as vital as oxygen. But spring is returning and I am getting a second wind.

Check out my Squidoo lens on Taking Great Pictures of Your Children and my review of the Nikon D60.

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Climbing Trees – It Isn’t Just for Boys!

How to Have a Green Easter Holiday

Tiffany — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:06:07 +0000

I don't know about you but this time of year when I go to the store and see lots of plastic Easter grass, plastic eggs, and huge chocolate bunnies… it makes the environmentalist in me cringe? This is the big green mom conundrum… how to make holidays fun for our kids without leaving a large mark on our planet. Lucky for us though there are numerous ways to make Easter green without festooning our lovely planet with fake grass!

1. Give your children a decorative cloth bag with a set of child's garden tools, seeds, or other gardening supplies instead of an Easter basket. You can put a few eggs in it with seeds and it can even contain "instructions" from the easter bunny asking your child to help plant spring flowers for bunnies and children everywhere to enjoy. Kids will LOVE getting a special assignment.

2. If you still want to go with a traditional basket, choose eco-friendly materials such as cotton, hemp, or jute. Or purchase hand-made, fair trade certified baskets that you can find other uses for after Easter (how about toy storage?). Thrift stores usually have baskets this time of year too (I know mine does)… used is better than new! Also, you can make your own Easter basket from materials around the house, such as hand-decorated bags, totes, wastebaskets, laundry baskets, etc.

3. Fill the Easter baskets with biodegradable, sustainable materials that can be composted, such as natural straw, hay, moss, or simply grass from outside. It is really easy to grow your wheat grass in the house, so start now to have some ready by Easter. You can also shred up the Sunday funnies or colorful scrap paper or shred some of those colorful catalogues and magazines that come in the mail. Kids won't mind.

4. Make your own treats for the basket instead of buying the processed junk – make some raw cookies or brownie balls or dehydrate some fruit.

5. Re-use what you have. This is our secret weapon. We bought Easter stuff a few years ago from yard sales and thrift stores mostly and we keep it all in a box in the garage. This includes everything from plastic and ceramic eggs, baskets, and Easter decor. We even have an Easter egg wreath made using leftover Easter eggs from years past and a Christmas wreath we got at a yard sale. We made it about 4 years ago now and it is still one of my kids favorite Easter decorations. If you already have plastic grass, use it as a base for a centerpiece or a creative springtime scene.

6. Decorate using scrap paper and junk mail – cut out bunny shapes and string them onto colorful yarn, or cut out Easter shapes into a chain. You can also use leftover felt or fabric scraps to make cloth eggs or to make stuffed bunnies. Cloth scraps can be used to make a decorative banner with felt letters thats says "Happy Easter".

7. For your Easter feast eat bunny food. Serve cut vegetables, fruit, and maybe some dandelion greens in a green smoothie.

8. Dye eggs using natural easter egg dyes -mix a tablespoon of white vinegar per cup of boiling water and add onion skins (yellow), red cabbage (light purple), shredded raw beets (deep red), spinach (light green), coffee grounds or tea (brown), etc.

9. Get your eggs from a local farmer or urban chicken-keeper. If the eggs are brown, you can use eco-friendly paints on them instead of dyes. Also try blowing the eggs first so they can be kept for future years. Wooden eggs or knitted eggs are another good option.

10. Fill your children's Easter baskets with enduring sustainable toys (puzzles, cute games), a deck of cards, dominoes, these cute Easter mugs, bunny books, etc. Take your child's personality into consideration rather than just giving the "usual" stuffed bunny and plastic trinkets. Then you can build a basket theme around your child's interests.

All of these ideas will help reduce waste this Easter season while preserving the "fun". What is your best green easter tip?

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How to Have a Green Easter Holiday

Things That Make Happy – Shampoo Bars

Tiffany — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:57:33 +0000

Guess I am easy… the little things make me happy. Little things like this tablecloth with teeny strawberries, and Tea Tree/Lemongrass shampoo bars, and cucumber melon lip balm in a cute metal tin.

All these things remind me that spring is around the corner…

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Things That Make Happy – Shampoo Bars

Potato Leek Soup with Cheddar Cheese and Carrots

Tiffany — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 23:34:34 +0000

This was dinner tonight and it was YUM! Veggies, herbs, no meat, and the kids asked for seconds. A++

Recipe from Epicurious with some added yellow and green onions that were not in the original.

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Potato Leek Soup with Cheddar Cheese and Carrots

Cancer – Can You Get it From Your Environment?

Tiffany — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:00:32 +0000

Cancer to me was mostly an obscure disease… something people get when they get old or perhaps when they are unlucky enough to have genes that carry a predisposition to cancer. It was something mysterious and I felt it was the luck of the draw if you faced it down or not… it was not, in my mind, something I could prevent if I wanted to and it was not something I could get from my environment or my poor choices, save perhaps cancer from tobacco products.

But then cancer hit home for me all within the span of a few years. My Aunt died in her early forties after years of working in a factory and the man who exterminated our house died suddenly. It made me think about our choices, our environment, and the exposure to deadly chemicals that was all around us. The link to cancer wasn't so mysterious. I was seeing direct links between environment and this deadly disease. These events and the fact that I had almost lost my youngest child to vaccines made be start looking at things with new eyes. Our environment and our choices were making us sick.

This point was of course driven home all the more when I got sick soon after. I thought my third pregnancy was just the gestation period from hell but I would soon be diagnosed with cancer myself. Genetics were ruled out officially by my doctors but I already knew why a 28 year old woman got a type of cancer common to people in their 60s… poor life choices.

Sure I knew that my diet could have adverse effects… like increasing chances for heart disease later, bad skin, diabetes, weight gain, etc. Cancer was never on my radar though. From about age of 19 to age 26 I lay all the groundwork for my own illness. My diet all through those years was deplorable. I worked at a movie theater while I was in college as a projectionist and manager so I had all the free junk food I could want. It was not uncommon for me to go weeks with my meals only consisting of hot dogs, popcorn, and soda. After college I worked 40-60 hours a week in an office and who had time to cook or prepare meals, so my son and I ate exclusively at fast food places.. breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Ironically I turned this around by the time I was diagnosed a couple years later but the damage had been done.

In many ways getting cancer was a blessing because it is a great teacher. I came to see fully just how closely linked our lifestyle and our product and food choices are to bad health and disease. It helped me to see what kind of risks I am taking with my kids when they eat the processed crap that permeates the grocery store. It helped me see everything with new eyes and I wouldn't say I live in fear… I just have a realistic view of the exposure around us. Our environment matters! Our choices matter!

By calling it a blessing I don't want to make cancer sound glam either. It wasn't easy to spend two weeks in the hospital after being cut from groin to belly button. It wasn't easy to have to stop breastfeeding my son at six months old or worry that my kids wouldn't have a mother. It wasn't fun to come home strung out after becoming addicted to the IV pain medicine. It wasn't fun to have a port-a-cath put in my chest or to have it taken back out. It wasn't fun to throw in up my purse. It wasn't fun to get Pancreatitis and need another hospitalization and surgery. And it wasn't easy to tell my doctor I quit Chemo and that I would rather take my chances with cancer than go through one more minute of torture in his office. You know what would have been easy though? Avoiding it in the first place.

There is risk involved in hiring that exterminator, lawn care expert, or pool guy… for us and for them. There is risk involved when selecting shampoo, mattresses, food, and food storage dishes. The risks may seem to be minimal when you look at the products individually but when you add up all the cumulative exposure the risks aren't so small anymore. When natural substances are outweighed by initials… BPA, PVC, PET, PFOA, PFOS… you are doubling down on risk.

We cannot rely on industry to make the necessary changes on their own because money is more important than product safety. We see this clearly with the plastic industry, the tobacco industry, and the pharmaceutical companies. The ultimate battle against cancer can be fought in large part by becoming aware of what constitutes risk and educating yourself about where the dangers are coming from. We can choose to vote with our dollars on products that are safe and for companies that take environmental responsibility seriously. By doing so we reduce our own risk and we send a message loud and clear.

We may not be scientists capable of finding a cure for cancer but we are savvy people capable of reducing our risk and protecting our families when industry will not. Follow along as some other green moms expose the environmental links to cancer via the Green Moms Carnival. Enjoy!

Environmental Links to Cancer

Lisa at Retro Housewife Goes Green examines the link between a local cement plant and cancer.

Marie at Project Earth examines the link to cancer that can be found in our personal care products in Phthalates: It's not Just a Fragrance. It's a Birth Control!

Deanna at The Crunchy Chicken writes about her husband getting leukemia after working in biotechnology for many years.

Jennifer the Smart Mama highlights many common links to cancer found in the home and two books that motivated her to make changes.

Karen at Best of Mother Earth discusses the term carcinogenic and where we can start in making changes.

Kellie at The Green Phone Booth has some good advice to help us avoid becoming overwhelmed about the C-word.

Amber at Strocel.com examines Environmental Toxins, Breast Milk and Cancer.

Sommer at Green and Clean Mom shares her thoughts on empowering ourselves to beat cancer.

Diane at Big Green Purse talks about how we can take precautions with We Don't Wait for Our Child to Get Hit By a Car Before We Tell Her to Look Both Ways When Crossing the Street.

Linda at Citizen Green writes about cancer and sunscreens which is timely since warmer weather is around the corner.

Anna at Green Talk discusses toxic chemicals in furniture and building products.

Jennae at Green and Gorgeous, has a child battling cancer, and she asks the question When it Comes to Cancer, I Say Why Take the Chance?

Micaela at Mindful Mama speaks out about her own cancer wake up call.

Lynn at Organic Mania talks about the Hypocrisy of Cancer.

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Cancer – Can You Get it From Your Environment?

Things That Make Me Happy

Tiffany — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:49:32 +0000

Oh yeeesss… vintage Pyrex. These babies are mine all mine.

It is official. I am my mother.

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Things That Make Me Happy

Addicted to Plastic

Tiffany — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:25:52 +0000

Another evening, another great movie. Two nights ago I was flipping through channels and saw that the movie Addicted to Plastic was airing on the Sundance Channel so hubby and I sat down to watch it together. We both loved it.

It is basically a documentary style film that exposes how the average American is "addicted" to plastic. It also spans 12 countries and 5 continents to find out where plastic comes from, what is made with it, where it goes after its useful life, why it may be poisoning us and our oceans, and what we can do about it. I have to give BullFrog Films big props because it was a VERY interesting film.

Everyone should watch this film to get an idea of how much plastic is in our oceans… it was mind boggling. There were so many scenes that made me so angry about how people are trashing something so beautiful and let me tell you.. this movie might make you reconsider ever eating fish again.

My husband loved the industrial aspects of the show and the innovations in plant based plastics and ways to upcycle plastics. I liked how he got see other people (besides me) talk about the toxic effects of plastic and the leaching of chemicals. It was nice that they specifically mentioned two of the ones I am always telling him about… BPA and Phthalates. There was a really annoying scientist on there talking about how the risks were so tiny that people are blowing things about of proportion and I started arguing with the TV screen, which my husband thought was hilarious of course.

At one point in the movie the narrator wakes up on the floor with only a sheet for a bed, he gets up and walks through an empty house and brushes his teeth with baking soda and a stick. It was quite funny and meant to demonstrate that getting rid of our favorite products is not a good option but I actually liked the house with next to nothing in it… I kept thinking how lovely and easy it would be to maintain. I would want a bed though, LOL.

It was a great movie and impressed upon me even more that we need to do more to reduce the plastic in our life. It also motivated me to buy some of the aluminum garbage grabbers and pair them with resusable bags so that we can collect garbage whenever we visit our local waterways, lakes, rivers, and creeks. If everyone had some clean up gear when they went out for a day at the lake we could do a lot to clean things up. My kids will think it is great fun to spend a portion of the day looking for garbage… heck they already walk around picking up garbage in the gutters of our neighborhood streets. Its hard to tell how much garbage we generate when we have everyone else's garbage in there too!

When you have the time check out Addicted to Plastic. It is airing again on March 7 on Sundance. Hubby has already set it to record because he wants to watch again.

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Addicted to Plastic