Wel­come to the July Car­ni­val of Nat­ural Par­ent­ing: Let’s Talk About Food

This post was writ­ten for inclu­sion in the monthly Car­ni­val of Nat­ural Par­ent­ing hosted by Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama. This month our par­tic­i­pants have writ­ten about their strug­gles and suc­cesses with healthy eat­ing. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other car­ni­val participants.

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**This post was writ­ten on July 5 in prepa­ra­tion for the Car­ni­val of Nat­ural Parenting.

Suc­cess.

This sum­mer will be a sum­mer of amaz­ing veg­eta­bles in our apart­ment (I hope). Jason and I decided that we would share a com­mu­nity gar­den plot with some friends and also join a CSA (Com­mu­nity Sup­ported Agri­cul­ture). Our CSA is from a farm about 40 miles from where we live.  While I would like to give some great rea­sons like grow­ing tech­niques or pest man­age­ment tech­niques for choos­ing this par­tic­u­lar CSA, but that’s not the case.  It was the only one we knew about.  So, we signed up for it.

While I hope one day to be able to rely on my own gar­den as our family’s pri­mary source of sum­mer veg­eta­bles and to be able to store other veg­eta­bles for the rest of the year, it’s a good thing that we are not rely­ing solely on the gar­den for this summer’s veg­eta­bles for a few rea­sons. First, North Dakota isn’t exactly known for it’s long grow­ing sea­son. Between some late frosts and early June rain that left our gar­den plot with stand­ing water for quite a while, we only planted our gar­den on June 16th! Sec­ond, we have a 20x20 gar­den, and I’m a novice planter. I didn’t use any sort of space sav­ing meth­ods. I didn’t do a square foot gar­den. My par­ents and I went to the gar­den one night. We made some rows, put down some seeds, and cov­ered them up. Last, if we hadn’t put sticks in at the ends of the rows it would be nearly impos­si­ble to tell where any of our (tiny) veg­eta­bles were start­ing to grow in the midst of all the grass and weeds. While I’m cur­rently in the process of weed­ing the gar­den by hand, it will be at least another week of work before I get through all the rows the first time.  To give you some idea of the amount of weeds and grass I am remov­ing, imag­ine a gro­cery bag 3/4 full.  I am about 40% of the way through the gar­den, and I have pulled that many weeds.  Twice.  While I am grate­ful to be able to have a gar­den while liv­ing in a north fac­ing apart­ment, it’s frus­trat­ing to me to spend hours upon hours upon hours pulling hun­dreds of weeds from our plot.

Thus, a few of the rea­sons for the CSA. Over the past cou­ple years, Jason and I have also been talk­ing about things we want our chil­dren to know and one of them is where their food comes from. We want them to be able to enjoy eat­ing a vari­ety of fruits and veg­eta­bles and to under­stand how they come to exist. So, in addi­tion to hav­ing a gar­den, we decided to join the CSA. We have been fre­quent­ing our local farmer’s mar­ket more and more, but with our chil­dren being as young as they are (just about 3 and 4 1/2), we weren’t sure they would dif­fer­en­ti­ate between buy­ing broc­coli from a local farmer at a stand and buy­ing it at the store. One of the ben­e­fits of the CSA is that the farm is pretty close and the farmer is open to vis­i­tors. At the end of the sum­mer he hosts a potluck at his farm, and he put out an open invi­ta­tion for his CSA mem­bers to make an appoint­ment to come visit him. I’m hop­ing we’ll do this at least once.

This week was the first week we received a deliv­ery from our CSA. We picked it up on Wednes­day, and I’m happy to say that we ate most of the veg­eta­bles we received! We got a con­tainer of deli­cious, melt in your mouth straw­ber­ries, a bunch of spinach, a head of let­tuce which I believe was romaine, and a bag of some kind of let­tuce. The straw­ber­ries received imme­di­ate atten­tion from our fam­ily. They were gone within 2 meals. The romaine (?) was used in sal­ads for Kael, Jason, and myself. Unfor­tu­nately, Asa hasn’t yet come to love sal­ads yet. I’m sure his day is com­ing though. The spinach was used to make green smooth­ies which the boys (and Jason and I) love. The other let­tuce was eaten in both salad and wraps. We didn’t eat all of it though. Tonight, I took it out of the fridge to add to our taco salad and found that the con­den­sa­tion in our fridge had caused it to get limp and slimy. I’ll be work­ing on another stor­age method for next week’s greens. All in all, I would say our first week of eat­ing from our CSA was a suc­cess. I’m def­i­nitely look­ing for­ward to Wednesday’s drop to see what comes in our next box.

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Visit Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama to find out how you can par­tic­i­pate in the next Car­ni­val of Nat­ural Parenting!

Please take time to read the sub­mis­sions by the other car­ni­val participants:

(This list will be updated July 13 with all the car­ni­val links.)

• Wel­come to Two — All About Food — In case you hadn’t heard, there is a con­spir­acy afoot from the two year olds of the world. Shana at Tales of Minor Inter­est stum­bled onto their newsletter!
• Four Sea­sons of Eat­ing Locally — Jenn at Mon­key Butt Junc­tion has point­ers for what fresh pro­duce can be found year-round. (@MBJunction)
• Happy Fam­i­lies Can Have More Than One Diet — Deb Chit­wood at Liv­ing Montes­sori Now has fig­ured out a way for her fam­ily to live hap­pily as veg­ans and veg­e­tar­i­ans with rel­a­tives who eat meat. (@DebChitwood)
• My Own Omnivore’s Dilemma — Seon­aid at The Prac­ti­cal Dilet­tante pri­or­i­tizes respon­si­ble con­sumer choices for her family.
• No Gluten — No Cry — Joni Rae at Tales of a Kitchen Witch Momma learned to cook bal­anced meals when her son’s food sen­si­tiv­i­ties prompted a diet over­haul. (@kitchenwitch)
• Try, Try Again — Ste­fanie at very very fine has become an enthu­si­as­tic con­sumer of locally grown food.
• CSA — Week 1 — Casey at What Love Is wants her chil­dren to know where their food comes from, so she joined a friendly CSA. (@CBerbs)
• Food: Par­ent­ing or Home­mak­ing? — Michelle at The Par­ent Vor­tex sees food as part of a parent’s nur­tur­ing role. (@TheParentVortex)
• 5 Tips to Help Kids Develop Healthy Eat­ing Habits — If you strug­gle with healthy eat­ing, help­ing your child develop healthy habits might be a chal­lenge. Dionna at Code Name: Mama shares five easy tips that will help your kids learn to make good food choices. (@CodeNameMama)
• Fam­ily Food: Seek­ing Bal­ance Between Healthy, Sus­tain­able & Afford­able — Kristin at Intre­pid Mur­mur­ings has a whole list of ideas for how she can improve her family’s eat­ing, both now and into the future. (@sunfrog)
• Whole Foods in, Whole­some Feel­ings Out — Jes­sica at This is Worth­while has turned her back on the processed, preservative-ridden food of her child­hood. (@tisworthwhile)
• When to Splurge on Organic (and When It Is Okay to Skip It) — Becom­ing Mamas tell you what foods to pri­or­i­tize when buy­ing pricier organic food, and where you can find it cheaper. (@becomingmamas)
• A Locavore’s Fam­ily Meal — Aca­cia at Be Present Mama tells a story in pic­tures of her fam­ily tak­ing a trip to the local organic farm­ers mar­ket and then prepar­ing a sum­mer meal together with their bounty.
• Eat Your Food, or Else — Why should we not bribe a child to eat? Twin­Tod­dlers­Dad from Lit­tlestom­aks (Sci­ence Dri­ven Real Life Tod­dler Nutri­tion) explains. (@TwinToddlersDad)
• Food, Glo­ri­ous Food! — Luschka at Diary of a First Child describes three easy ways her fam­ily has started eat­ing health­ier. (@diaryfirstchild)
• Cel­e­brat­ing Food — Mrs Green at Lit­tle Green Blog believes in food as med­i­cine and thinks it’s worth pay­ing more to keep healthy. (@myzerowaste)
• Oil and Yogurt — What have you been moti­vated to do with the cur­rent oil spill cri­sis? mid­night­feed­ings has started mak­ing her own yogurt. (@midnightfeeding)
• Growth-Spurt Soup (AKA “Bean­nut Stew”) — BeanMa has a spe­cial stew to help her baby through growth spurts that keep her up all night. (@thebeanma)
• Why I Love The Real Food Com­mu­nity — Much like many peo­ple who fol­low AP/NP val­ues, Melodie at Breast­feed­ing Moms Unite! takes the parts of the “real food” phi­los­o­phy that work for her fam­ily and leaves the rest. (@bfmom)
• Feed­ing a Fam­ily of Six — Mandy at Liv­ing Peace­fully with Chil­dren gives help­ful tips for feed­ing a fam­ily of six.
• Start­ing Solids at 6 Months — Did your doc­tor rec­om­mend that you give your baby cereal? Sheryl at Lit­tle Snowflakes dis­cusses how whole foods are so much health­ier (and more deli­cious) than tra­di­tional cereal. (@sheryljesin)
• Am I What I Eat? — Andrea!!! at Ella-Bean & Co. has fig­ured out a way to avoid gro­cery stores nearly altogether.
• Are We Set­ting Our Kids Up To Fail? — Megan at Pur­ple Danc­ing Dahlias found that cut­ting out the junk also trans­formed her sons’ behav­ior problems.
• Chang­ing your family’s way of eat­ing — Lau­ren at Hobo Mama has tech­niques you can try to move your fam­ily grad­u­ally toward a health­ier diet. (@Hobo_Mama)
• Real Food — What kinds of fake foods do you eat? And why?! Lisa C. at My World Eden­wild talks about why she chooses real food.
• A Snackaholic’s Food Bat­tle — Julie at Sim­ple Life wants to stop snack­ing and get into the old ways of cook­ing from scratch and rais­ing her own food. (@homemakerjulie)
• Food, Not Fight — Sum­mer at Find­ing Sum­mer doesn’t want her kids to grow up like her hus­band: hat­ing every­thing green. (@summerm)
• How Do You Eat When You Are out of Town? — Cassie at There’s a Pickle In My Life wants some tips on how to eat healthy when you are out of town.
• Car­ni­val of Nat­ural Par­ent­ing: Food! — Sybil at Mus­ings of a Milk Maker hopes that by serv­ing her chil­dren healthy, bal­anced meals, they will become accus­tomed to mak­ing good food choices. (@sybilryan)
• There’s No Food Like Home’s — Navel­gaz­ing­Ba­jan at Navel­gaz­ing rev­els in the Bajan food of her upbring­ing. (@BlkWmnDoBF)
• This Mom’s Food Jour­ney — Kat at Lov­ing {Almost} Every Moment made a jour­ney from not pay­ing atten­tion to food to grow­ing her own.
• Who Knew Eat­ing Was So Hard? — The chal­lenges involved in chang­ing to health­ier eat­ing habits take on a whole new dimen­sion when you have a child who has dif­fi­cul­ties eat­ing. kadiera at Our Lit­tle Acorn shares her own expe­ri­ences. (@kadiera)
• Lov­ing Food — Starr at Earth Mama truly believes food is her family’s med­i­cine and is will­ing to spend days prepar­ing it the tra­di­tional way.
• Food Mind­ful­ness — Danielle at born.in.japan details how her fam­ily spends money on each cat­e­gory of food. (@borninjp)
• Food for Lit­tle Peo­ple — Zoey at Good Goog wants to bless her daugh­ter with happy tra­di­tions built around good food. (@zoeyspeak)
• Eat Like a Baby — Have you been told that you should not equate food with love? Kate Wicker at Momopoly shows us why that’s not nec­es­sar­ily true. (@Momopoly)
• Food — Deb at Science@Home tries to teach her chil­dren three rules to help them eat a healthy diet. (@ScienceMum)
• Healthy Eat­ing Lactose-Free — MamanADroit gives us tips on how to eat healthy if you are lac­tose intol­er­ant (or just don’t want cow milk). (@MamanADroit)