Phew! Thought I Killed My Blender!
Oct 29, 2009 Eco Friendly Parenting
It’s still aliiiiiive!
I’ve been working on introducing meats to Selene. Making baby food cubes is a bit harder with meat than with fruits and vegetables. Not only do you have to be very thorough with your cooking, it’s harder on the blender.
Even when it’s just ground beef. Amazing how hard that stuff is to puree.
My first round with it the blender caused it to quit. Now this is a really good blender, a 15 year old (or thereabouts, my husband has had it since well before we married) VitaMix. That thing blends just about anything. But if you make it work too hard it will quit rather than burn out the motor.
I tried it again in the morning. It took some work to get the beef out, as it had become a rather firm, kind of gelatinous mass. Blender couldn’t do a thing with it.
But a bit of heating in the microwave on the stuff I pulled out, plus a good bit of water, and it blended up nicely.
I’m quite relieved to have not killed my blender. It’s a good machine. My husband campaigns for a newer VitaMix here and there, but while this one works I’m not spending the money. It still does everything we need it to do quite well.
Homemade Baby Food and Smoothies?
Oct 27, 2009 Eco Friendly Parenting
I’ve been keeping really busy making homemade baby food. I was thinking of it as something just for the baby, but it’s turning out to be good for the rest of the family too.
My son likes to snack on the frozen cubes of fruit. Can’t complain about that. But I was pretty surprised when my husband started throwing cubes of baby food into smoothies.
But it made sense really quickly. They’re kind of the same thing.
Homemade baby food is a really easy way to add some vegetables into a smoothie. Green beans hardly change the taste of the smoothie at all. We’ve always tended to throw a carrot into smoothies. We’re thinking squash should work well too.
It just nice being able to throw the fruit and some veggies into the blender and come up with something healthy to drink or make into popsicles. Using the baby food means that vegetables are just that much easier to add, since they don’t need more preparation.
Tags: homemade baby food, smoothies
Sugary Cereals are Deceptively Labeled? You’re Kidding!
Oct 26, 2009 Eco Friendly Home
I’m rather pleased to see that the FDA is looking at food labels again. This ABC News article focuses on how cereals such as Froot Loops and other types of food are marketed and labeled to appear healthier than they really are.
The focus is on the Smart Choice label, which is supposed to be on nutritious food choices. While they may be fortified with however many vitamins, Froot Loops and other such cereals that focus on appealing to the sweet tooth scarcely qualify as healthy last time I checked.
Must be some new definition of healthy I’m not familiar with.
Admittedly, many healthier cereals may not be so good for you either once you’re done preparing them. I don’t know if the habit is common anymore, but I remember always having a spoonful of sugar spread over my cereal as a kid any time it wasn’t one of the sugary sorts. Wouldn’t eat them any other way back then. Thank goodness my kids haven’t heard of that habit.
My mother told me a while back that when a study was done comparing different kinds of cereals and the way they were really eaten, sometimes the sugary ones would come out ahead in nutritional value just due to how much sugar people would add at home to less sweet cereals. Now this may well have been done when different sweeteners were used, I don’t know, but it’s an interesting tidbit to consider if you still add sugar to your own cereal.
Better yet and potentially cheaper can be to buy oatmeal and have that for breakfast. No worry about artificial colors. You may have the sugar issue going again, depending on your sweet tooth, but you can easily add naturally sweet things such as raisins to make it a bit better. My kids love oatmeal, although they do want more brown sugar or honey in it than I really like to give.
There’s a good side to this kind of labeling, however. It’s a great teaching point for parents about advertising and how you really can’t trust everything you see on a box or on television. It’s a way to teach kids to be more cautious consumers.
Tags: advertising, food, labels
Green Your Halloween with Reduce, Reuse and Recycle
Oct 23, 2009 Going Green
Halloween is a fun holiday and one that has picked up quite a bit on the consumerism side. And while it’s really fun seeing all the houses decorated and the kids dressed up in costumes, avoiding waste is still a worthwhile goal.
Reduce
Just don’t buy so much stuff. If you have Halloween decorations, use them of course! If you’re bored with yours, see about trading around with other family members or friends.
Think more carefully about how many treats you need for trick or treaters. How much overage do you really need anyhow? If you’re really into it, look into fair trade or organic candy.
You also don’t need to buy special buckets for trick or treating. Pillow cases have worked well in that area for many years. Any reusable shopping bags you have may also work well.
Reuse
I said it before: reuse the decorations you already have. But if you really need new ones, think about making them. Some construction paper, glue, markers, paint, or other art supplies you may have around the house can combine well to make creative Halloween crafts to decorate your home inside and out.
You can also find Halloween costumes or parts to create your own at thrift stores or your own closets. A homemade costume will stand out far more than one of the many store bought ones. But if you do buy one from the store, try to be sure that you either send it to the thrift store after or get one good enough that the kids can play dress up in it after Halloween. Why buy a costume to be worn only once?
Recycle
Start with your pumpkin. Make sure its remains make it into the compost bin rather than the trash.
Halloween only creates so much recyclable trash, but keep your eyes open for possibilities. If you aren’t going to reuse those costumes, send them off to the thrift store and maybe someone else will. If you made your own decorations with paper, make sure that any that aren’t in good enough condition to be reused next year hit the recycle bin.
Dead leaves can make for great Halloween decorations, then be composted as well.
What other ideas do you have for a green Halloween?
October 24, 2009 – Can You Join the International Day of Climate Action?
Oct 22, 2009 Environmental News
On Saturday, October 24, 2009 there will be events around the world aimed at building awareness of the need for an international climate treaty to try to bring CO2 levels in our atmosphere down to 350, which is believed to be the highest safe level. Yes, we’re beyond it now.
You can find events in your area with this map. It’s just one more way for you to learn what you can do and show politicians that there is support for fighting climate change.
Tags: climate change, global warming, international day of climate action
