At Our House, Broccoli is King!

Oh, the battles that have been waged over the lowly broccoli! The simple pea! The insignificant green bean! But not at our house. At our house Broccoli is King! Broccoli rules! No temper tantrums herald its entrance. No displays of force accompany its place at the dinner table. It always baffles me how so simple an issue raises such heights of passions. I have entertained exasperated and tearful parents' reports of raging battles that have undermined the entire household for months and years on end. They plead with me and beg me to tell them the secret of Broccoli’s long reign at our house. Let me say from the very beginning that as a parent I am responsible for my child's health and welfare. I take this responsibility very seriously, sometimes to the amusement of friends and family. Yes, I have been called an overprotective parent. My oldest son was 1 yr old before he actually came in contact with dirt! However in the area of food, I believe that parents often abdicate this responsibility and feed their children all kinds of processed stuff that hinders their child's health and development. I've been laughed at and told, "Well, we ate it and we're okay." Well, really now, are we actually healthy? North America has some of the highest rates of cancer, diabetes and heart disease in the world. Our children's hospitals are full of children with cancer and other diseases to say nothing of the numbers of children that suffer from rare diseases, asthma, allergies, skin disorders, ADD and ADHD. And I actually wouldn't rate myself as the healthiest person. I have weight issues but my doctor tells me I am as healthy as a horse-not sure if that is a spring colt or a put-out-to-pasture-old-nag! But as a child I didn't eat much processed food. I wouldn't say that my diet was exactly healthy but I did eat vegetables every day. Sugar and pop were rare when I was a kid-juice an occasional treat! But today those foods are consumed in quantity by most children.

With the advent of the internet information is available to us in such incredible abundance and ease of access that we have no excuse. I actually studied for years to learn about nutrition and diet so I could feed my kids well. As well as information the food choices we have today are incredible.

Broccoli was not always king at our house. When I was a child, I didn't know it existed, simply because it wasn't available to the population of small town Ontario in the '60's and '70's. I think I was actually a teenager before I saw my first head of broccoli! It is now one of my favourite veggies! However, I did have access to fresh yellow and green beans, picked straight from the garden, snapped, washed and steamed with a bit of butter and salt and pepper! Yum! My favourite! I was the kid that took the salt shaker to the garden and sat in among the tomato plants, picked them off warm and glowing from the sun, rubbed them on my pants and bit in with the juices running off my chin, salt ready to use in the other hand for the second bite. Asparagus, before it appeared in stores was hunted down in expeditions with my mother and picked wild from patches along the side of the road, brought home, washed and creamed to be served on toast. It was a yearly feast-my mother still doesn't realize that Asparagus is sold in stores! You see, we all know that parents model behaviour for children so if your children will only eat chicken fingers, cheese and pancakes made from a box, what exactly are you eating? My daughter and I have both come to the conclusion that if we were to eat prepared food, taken from the freezer and micro waved everyday for one week, that we would have a sore throat and be feeling tired, drained and suffering a definite lack of energy.

I believe that the first step in good nutrition is breast feeding and we are all well aware of all the benefits associated with the practice for both mother and child. The one area in which breastfeeding relates to feeding children after they are weaned is that flavour of a mother's milk changes with her diet and accustoms the child to different tastes. I also do not feed my babies cereals when they are less than 1 yr. I start them on fruit, then veggies, mostly prepared at home. This gives them adequate nutrition and fibre to start up their tiny digestive tracts. It also allows the infant body time to develop the neccesary enzymes needed to digest starches. After 1 yr, I introduce whole grain cereals and poultry and fish in small amounts. This gets them used to different flavours and textures. You also need a certain amount of discipline. It always amazes me that parents give in so easily to their children. You wouldn't let them play in the street at 2, so why would you allow them to make their own food choices. My children are fed at regular meal times and if they don't try and finish the small portions we give them, then their food is taken away and they are given it at a later time. I've seen parents take their children's unfinished food away, then present them with cookies and juice in return. You have to be firm and don't give in to their crying, begging and pleading. You might wish to die when listening to their complaints but they will surely not die no matter how much of a fuss they make! I've also found that when most children see a new or different vegetable they will turn their nose up at it, but if it is cooked properly and tried, they will like it. My older children have told me that they didn't like squash or some other veggie as a child but they ate a small portion of it then and now they like it. There are also different ways of presenting veggies to children. It's been my experience that they most love raw veggies with dip and if my kids are pigging out on raw veggies, I don't really care if they eat a little high fat dip with it-the vitamins and raw enzymes they are consuming far out way the detriment of the fat. I also let them pick new veggies out at the store to try or make it fun. My children love to help me prepare artichokes and love to eat them-they are unusual, but fun to eat!

It is also apparent to me that most picky children have learned the habit at home. I see parents turning their nose up at food and wonder why they don't understand why their kids are so picky! Remember that Broccoli? Well, you still will not see it on my parent’s table because my mom claims that my dad doesn’t like it. However, for some reason he eats it at my house. Hmmmm. Another veggie he did not like was squash, however it did not prevent my mother from cooking it. He always remarked that you should cook it on a plank, feed the squash to the pigs and eat the plank. All my kids love squash!

I have my ways of getting things in there. My mother-in-law was serving spinach that she boiled (to within an inch of its life!) and my children asked her what it was? She was amazed and asked me why I didn’t cook spinach for my kids. I replied that they had been eating it for years but didn’t know it! I layer it in Lasagne and oh, how they love Lasagne! My favourite way to cook Spinach now is to saute chopped garlic in olive oil with halved Grape Tomatoes, Ground Pepper and Basil, then when the tomaoes are softened, I stir in Baby Spinach! Yummy and the smell is amazing! Try it on pasta with White Sauce! For interesting ways to incorporate veggies into your kids food check out Jessica Seinfeld’s book: Deceptively Delicious. She hides things like pureed beets, squash and sweet potatoes in muffins, cookies, brownies and even Mac and Cheese in order to get the veggies into her kids.

The other thing that is so amazing about veggies besides the cool shapes and colours are the names. After all, what more fun names can you think of than Zucchini? Asparagus? Cauliflower? Cucumber? Time to go-off to make some Baked Potatoes with Broccoli and Cheese sauce for supper!

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

1/2 cup soft margarine
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 3/4 cups white sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups grated zucchini (remove pulp and seeds but do not peel)
1/2 cup sour milk
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
4 Tbsp cocoa
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves

Beat margarine, oil, eggs, vanilla and sugar until well blended. Beat in zucchini then add flour (mix dry ingredients together first) and milk alternately until blended. Bake at 350 ' in a greased 9 x 13 pan or bundt pan. Bake 35-45 minutes until done. Ice with Cream Cheese icing.

Taken from: St. Paul's Lutheran Lady's Cookbook

My kid's favourite vegetable!

The Official Coming Out of Brand New Consumers

I may have done my children a disservice. Or may not have depending on your view. My 2 oldest sons are now respectively 15 and 14. They are earning their own money and have recently developed an appreciation for style and its fickle devices. As a stay at home mother of seven, my forays into the world of shopping and malls have been negligible. You'd think that having a degree in fashion design would have prevented such a serious state of affairs but it is true; I have sadly neglected my children's' training in the language of mall crawling. That is not to say that my children have ever been poorly dressed; in their early years when I had time to sew (really?), I was guilty of dressing them in hand made outfits designed to mark them out as siblings and guaranteed to make them easy to spot in a crowd at church. Sadly, they harbour serious angst of the memory of such display but at the time it seemed they enjoyed the matching vests made of frog-covered cotton, corduroy pants with suspenders and matching bow ties. I must admit that until last week, my most recent trip to the mall with them for a serious shopping trip occurred when the youngest-now 8- was safely ensconced in a stroller and the older 4 securely fastened to it with dire threats. We paraded through the mall amidst stares and repeated congratulations of bravery, kudos and possibly amazement and stupidity. "What? You are here shopping alone with 5 young children? The week before Christmas? Are you mad?" I must admit though, that I, myself, am a serious shopper. In order to provide food and shelter for such a swarm I know how to spot a deal, wrangle a cheaper price and knock off the tax or get something thrown in for free! Feigning heart failure (I learned that from my Aunt Mary), the ability to turn blue or just nonchalantly walking away can do wonders when purchasing several thousand dollars worth of stuff! Over 29 years of building houses and pricing jobs has bought me some experience.
In recent years, I have found that it has been cheaper to shop at the big 'W', 'Z' (if you are American, think 'bulls eye'-there you have it), outlet stores and second hand stores. However, recently I have realized that now that the oldest are in men's sizes and in possession of their own fistful of dollars, they can provide their own flights of fantasy.
So, enter American Eagle. Literally. Well, first I had to find the place-wow, the mall has changed in the last 5 years! Why do they keep changing the position of the stores? Does it have anything to do with the reason groceries stores do not stock soup in alphabetical order? Do they think that we'll unerringly shop at at new store simply because it occupies the same real estate as one that we shopped at 5 years ago? Of course. We are cattle. Driven to hand over our hard earned dollars with glazed eyes filled with giant sized images of life ecstatic wearing the latest gear. Well, we were guilty. I want my children to be liked and admired just as any other self respecting parent, so I led my son, Jacob, to the slaughter-gift cards and cash gripped in his tight little fist. Yes, Jacob is the saver of the lot; the one who has the largest bank account and the nicest stuff! Eliglible young women take note! However, he is the least talkative of the lot and was overpowered by the quantity of stuff, the selection of sizes and-what!-at least one dozen different styles of jeans! Washes! Cuts! Rise! Ripped! Ripped? Hey, I've been throwing those out! And they are $20 more than their respectable, unfaded, unwashed, unripped neighbour! I thought Jacob was going to disown me when I told the salesperson that we would take the unripped, newest looking, cheaper version and take the belt sander to them in the garage for five minutes! We would have ripped jeans for 30% off and could control our own version of the rips! Sadly, I was almost laughed out of the store, but not before I dropped $60 on the sale rack, mind you! My oldest boy, Levi, needed some AE labelled-low-rise-in an inseam length that is respectable-jeans! After all, he is 6 foot and I even I understand that floods are NOT cool!
So, Jacob paid his dues and is now counted among the fashion conscious sporting the necessary labels. He even survived the embarrassment of shopping with his mother and actually thanked me for it later (such a sweet boy!) I realize that my children are sadly un-savy consumers and am prepared to remedy that by sending them to the mall with their friend, Gracie. She knows all the 'best warehouses' (to quote Jane Austen) and where to find dark, skinny, ripped jeans. And I shall continue my forays into those other 'Big Letter' stores until the younger set realize that they too have been mislead by their mother for all those years!




Matching sailor outfits for my son and daughter of a friend.



At one point in time this was considered cute!



Yes, those are frogs on those vests!



Vested interest. Paternity established!

A Wintery Blast

I love a storm. My windows are blasted with snow and I can hear the wind piling drifts against the back of the house. It's cozy and warm inside. The wood stove (our primary source of heat) is radiating warmth nicely and my lined Ikea curtains on the patio door have been closed against the onslaught! I know that there are people that need to go out in the weather and I should feel guilty but I don't. I feel safe and warm and strangely cocooned. The best thing to do besides curl up on the couch with a really thick novel and a fuzzy throw is to make a steamy pot of soup and some biscuits. An occasional check of the satellite imagery of the offending squall is a prerequisite as are text messages to check accumulations in other necks-of-the-woods. Otherwise the day is complete!

We haven't had any really good storms lately. The last in recent history was an ice storm in 2007-before that we had one in 2003. It lasted 3 days and cancelled my son Adrian's 6th birthday. He was upset, but I consoled him with the promise that in a string of childhood birthdays, this is the one that would go down in history and be remembered as the one in which the candles on the cake were not a tradition but a necessity. The hydro was out for 2 or 3 days and we had limited wood piled ahead in our basement. The most exciting part of that storm was the adventure of diving towards the woodpile for armloads of wood while ice and small tree limbs from a large overhanging Maple exploded on the ground around us.

We always have heat and we own a generator-albeit a loud one!- so we crank it up in the garage and watch a movie or make a pot of coffee; the drone of the generator competing with the wind and necessitating the turning up of the volume on the TV. Waking in the night to the strange, deadened silence of cessation of wind marks the end of the worst. The sound of my neighbour's tractor backing down the laneway with an 8 ft wide snow blower releasing us to the outside world jolts us back to reality.

When I was a child, we had longer and more deadly storms. One year, in my pre-teen years, we had an ice storm in which the entire area was crippled. There was a huge Willow tree in my backyard that was a close childhood friend. It's large unruly arms were perfect for reading a book in or for hiding from my mother when I was in some kind of trouble. During that storm I lay awake and listened helplessly as it died in the night; ripped literally limb from limb with the brute force of ice and wind. The hydro was out for days and our local town was impassible; trees littered every street and my father and brother went to work with chainsaws releasing hydro lines and trapped cars from the icy grip of fallen trees. My father suffered his only chainsaw accident in that storm (which should allay some of my fears when using one) in all his years of cutting wood when the saw caught on a branch as he was cutting overhead and kicked back, slicing a jagged cut across the back of his hand.

When I was a teenager, we had a blizzard that was so bad, we tied the proverbial rope from the house to pump house to barn so we could find our way back and forth. Livestock always needs to be fed and a sow would invariably decide to litter in the midst of such a storm. That year, the roads were so bad that my dad and I donned snowmobile suits and drove the tractor to town to get supplies-me perched on the hitch for the entire ride-thanking my stars above that I was so bundled that I could not be recognised by my friends! My dad drove snowplow part-time and in that storm a local back-road intersection in a deep gully was blown so full with packed snow that it took several hours for the grader to ram through it to get an ambulance to a sick neighbour. The memories of holding the flashlight while my father fixed frozen water lines with stiff fingers or chopping holes in ice-covered troughs in order to water livestock are buried far deeper than the more nostalgic ones of number of days without school or hydro. I think today, with satellite imagery and better equipment, we are more prepared and can dig out more quickly than in those days. However, the feeling remains the same; some deep, buried instinct causes me to snuggle in and enjoy the warm, cozy feeling of having a roof over my head, solid walls around me and the glowing warmth of my wood stove deep in the heart of my home.

Mother Superior's Best Barley

2 tsp vegetable oil
1 pound boned chicken or turkey breasts, cut into cubes
1-1/2 cups each chopped celery and chopped carrots
1 cup chopped onions
4 cups low-sodium, reduced-fat chicken broth
1 can (28 oz) chopped tomatoes, undrained
1/3 cup pearl barley
3/4 tsp dried majoram
1/2 tsp each ground thyme, sage, salt and black pepper
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add turkey cubes and cook until no longer pink. Add all remaining ingredients. Mix well. Bring soup to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to low. Cover and simmer for 30-35 minutes, until turkey and barley are tender. (don't skip the fresh parsley if you can help it-it makes the soup)
Makes 6 servings.

From: Looneyspoons Cookbook by Janet and Greta Podleski

Whole Wheat Biscuits

1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
4 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp sugar
3/4 tsp salt

4 Tbsp cold butter or margarine

1 cup milk

In mixing bowl put flours. baking powder, sugar and salt.

Add butter. Cut into dry ingredients until mixture is crumbly.

Add milk. Stir with fork until soft dough is formed. Turn out on lightly floured surface. Knead gently 8-10 times. Roll or pat dough 3/4 inch thick. Cut with 2" round cookie cutter (I use a drinking glass). If cut in squares or triangles, no re-rolling is necessary since no dough is left over. Arrange on ungreased baking sheet, close together for soft sides, 1 inch apart for crisp sides. Bake in 450'F oven for 12-15 minutes until browned. Serve with butter. Yield: 10-12 biscuits.

From: Company's Coming: Muffins and More by Jean Pare

Ice storm of 2007

On a Winter's Day!

Powder in my face!

The crunch of snow underfoot. A glitter of frost dancing in the cold air. The rush of wind in your face as you fly down the hill. The unexpected tangle of limbs and sled at the bottom of the hill. If you have lived in Southwestern Ontario in the winter, then you have undoubtedly gone tobogganing as a child. It is a Canadian institution and a staple at our house in the winter; synonymous with skates, shinny and sticking your tongue to a metal post! Every year I make the trek to a local hill called Killer Hill with my kids. We go as often as possible and make the most of every visit-inviting friends and family alike. Our hill is a double hill with the top section being faster and more dangerous than the lower section. It has cow paths angled down the sides and one year my youngest son threw his inflatable into one of the tracks and flew down the path only to collide with an unsuspecting parent enjoying a cup of hot chocolate on the side of the hill. She lifted right off her feet and landed, hot chocolate and all on top of my son. Thankfully, the inflatable and my son cushioned her landing so no one was seriously hurt. At that moment I did not actually acknowledge him as my flesh and blood but perhaps my obvious enjoyment of the scene made it apparent to her who he belonged to. That year we had a larger inflatable that could hold approximately 8 young people and be easily made airborne if a large ramp was provided. Oh, what we would have done for such a conveyance when I was a kid! Only one trip to the hill resulted in injury. One year my second oldest daughter broke her thumb while riding with a friend. Perhaps it was because it was a strange hill and not our usual haunt. I took her to the doctor and watched him return the thumb to its rightful position on her hand. Not a scene I ever care to see again!
When I was a kid we tobaggoned on a hill close to a small country church with as many cousins and aunts and uncles as could be mustered on a Saturday afternoon. Wooden toboggans were the weapon of choice to conquer the hill! Our small black Lab, Daisy May, loved the sport as much as we did. She fought for the best position and sat proudly in the front of the toboggan, ears flapping and eyes squinting against the inevitable spray of powder, then sprang free of the mass of tangled children to grasp the rope in her mouth and drag the toboggan back up the hill. It wasn't that she wanted to be a help-she just wanted to get the thing back to the top of the hill as quickly as possible so she could ride again. In those days we may have had a sleigh with runners and steering or a metal flying saucer like the one that removed the bottom half of my brother's tooth when caught by the wind, but we were far more likely to have a cardboard box or piece of heavy plastic to aid our haphazard flight down the hill! If we could not make it to the local hill, then any slope would do: the bank of the local railroad tracks, a deep ditch that may have ended in a possible cold, wet landing or even the pile of snow pushed to the side of the laneway with the tractor. Was it just my imagination fuelled by a small stature or was there actually more snow when I was a kid? We had no high tech waterproof mittens or snowsuits with velcro wind flaps. Every conceivable winter accessory was made out of materials designed specifically to trap and melt snow and increase numbness, loss of feeling, chapped cheeks and frozen extremities. But we were a hardier lot than today's kids! We braved the cold for longer hours, in deficient outerwear and trekked farther afield in search of higher slopes.
These days we load the van to overflowing with various devices designed to hurtle you down the hill harder and faster. We never take drinks to the hill as drinks fill the bladder and filled bladders need to be emptied! However, we put the kettle on as soon as we return home and produce mugs of steaming hot chocolate with islands of melting marshmallows to scoop out with a spoon. In the old days, hot chocolate didn't come in a single serving package and I prefer to make it for a crowd in the same manner we made it as children-in a pot on the stove with milk, cocoa and sugar, brought to a near boil and whisked to creamy perfection. Something to wrap your tingly fingers around to thaw as you collectively replay the best runs of the day.

Hot Cocoa

Makes one cup.

1 Tbsp cocoa

1 Tbsp sugar

pinch salt

1/3 cup water

2/3 cup milk

Mix cocoa, sugar and salt in a small saucepan. Slowly stir in water. Heat and stir over moderately low heat until mixture boils then boil slowly, stirring constantly, 2 minutes. Add milk and heat to scalding but do not boil. About 190 Calories per serving.

Cocoa for a Crowd

Makes 12 servings.

Mix 3/4 cup cocoa with 3/4 cup sugar and 1/2 tsp salt in a large saucepan. Gradually stir in 1 qt warm water, set over low heat and heat, stirring occasionally, 8-10 minutes. Add 2 qts milk and heat to scalding. Serve in mugs, sprinkled, if you like with cinnamon or nutmeg or topped with marshmallows. About 190 calories per serving not including toppings.

From: The Doubleday Cookbook by Jean Anderson and Elaine Hanna