Monthly Archives: April 2011

Mom Congress

Miscellaneous

On Monday, I will be speaking at Mom Congress in Washington DC. I’m honored and thrilled to be a part of the event and I can’t wait to connect with moms from all over the country. I hope to inspire them to action in the name of child nutrition.

I’m there to speak, but I’ll be staying to attend the conference. I can’t wait to soak up the intelligence and passion of the attendees (one mom from each state – hence “congress”) and learn about their advocacy efforts at the local level. There will be breakout sessions with attendees and of course sessions led by speakers. Parenting magazine has lined up people who are making news in education, including Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and DC school reformer Michelle Rhee. Plenty of food for thought, indeed!

I feel guilt about missing work (I’m not being compensated and I’m taking unpaid time off for those who care), but I expect to come away from the experience with even more ideas to enrich the educational experience of my students. As usual I have to thank my husband for holding down the fort so that I can participate in amazing events like this without worrying about my little boy.

I’ll be sure to write a post about what I experienced and what I learned!

More home lunches

Packed lunches
I know you guys like to see what I’m eating for lunch and what I’m sending for my kid. I still feel like showing you our food is like showing you something deeply personal. Well, I guess that’s because food is personal.
It was a week where I really made an effort to match up what my son was eating with what they were serving at day care. Click below for lunch pics…

Monday (3/28)
Pancake, bacon, broccoli, (syrup), strawberries,
muffin, kale chips

It was a lunch with all of his favorite foods. They told me he ate everything and I wasn’t surprised. Thankfully he was healthy again too (when he’s sick, he stops eating). Day care menu: ground beef, hash browns (rounded, formed oval), diced pears, diced carrots with yogurt and bread with soynut butter as snacks

Tuesday
Fish sticks, rice stars, avocado, applesauce,
bag with apple slices
I resorted to fish sticks because the other kids were going to eat cod nuggets.
I have learned to look for the MSC logo, which shows that the fish is sustainable.
My son ate all of his lunch according to his caregivers. Day care menu was cod nuggets, mac and cheese, applesauce, peas with fruit and cheese and crackers for snack.
Wednesday
Goat cheese rice mac and cheese, salmon, green beans,
applesauce, yogurt, apple slices in bag
Thanks to one of your suggestions, I’m using goat cheese in his mac and cheese (since he can’t handle cow dairy). He’s enjoying it. Day care menu: diced ham with buttered noodles, bananas, green beans with fruit and ice cream as snacks. 
Thursday
Avocado, eggs, mac and cheese, apple slices, yogurt, bar
This was probably another one of those mornings where I’m running around with my hair on fire. Day care menu: scrambled eggs, tater tots, mandarin oranges, carrots with yogurt and pretzels with cream cheese as snacks.
Friday
Chicken taco meat with beans, cheese and crackers (for dipping),
yogurt, applesauce, bar
The day care menu was American cheese sandwich, chicken and rice soup, pears, peas with snacks of fruit and yogurt. Can you say processed, MSG, canned and more canned? — No thanks!

***
My lunches
Monday (3/28)
Pancakes, broccoli, (syrup), apple, kale chips, bar

The lunch was too small, not enough protein. I was super hungry after work!

Tuesday
Salad with apples and avocado, dressing on the side,
chicken sausage with rice
I did not want to make the same mistake the next day so I packed more food! 

Wednesday
Salmon, rice, green beans, mandarin orange, apple

That was a great lunch.

Thursday
Chicken taco meat with rice chips for dipping
and avocado as well as an apple
Again, another winner. That was a crockpot meal too. I don’t even remember exactly what I did.

Friday
Chicken salad with crackers and an apple

Those are by far the best gluten free crackers I have ever eaten. Perfect for mini-chicken salad sandwiches. The chicken salad was store-bought. I talked to the people and I know it was gluten and dairy free. My little guy chowed down on it  and got a little red rash on his face. Soybean oil in the mayo of course! Probably genetically modified (didn’t one of you tell me that 90% of soybeans in the US are GM?)

Elimination diets are really a great thing. Take it out, then add it back and see what happens! It’s like an experiment (none of which I would have known had I not eaten school lunch for a year and started paying attention to my body).

Let’s recap my son’s dietary restrictions: No gluten, no dairy, no soy — yes goat milk and cheese. And me? No gluten, no dairy, no goat products, no chocolate — iffy on soy.

Can nothing be easy?

Lunch backlog

Packed lunches
(Since I haven’t posted our lunches for three weeks, I have a massive backlog of lunch photos to share. I’m going to try post twice this weekend and two lunch posts next weekend to catch up…)
Recently I said to my husband, “Do you think I am going to be able to be ‘cured’ and my body won’t hate gluten one day?”
There was no hesitation, “No, you are going to be gluten free for life.” I was taken aback. I thought maybe he’d entertain me for a second.
The reason I asked him that was not because I’m not enjoying the food I’m eating. I love to cook and experiment in the kitchen. At home it’s not a problem. It’s just hard when you have to leave the house.
When I google map “gluten free” in my area, I find a few different restaurants have gluten free menus. Finding restaurants with gluten free menus is actually not that hard, but I’m also dairy free. Then there’s the fact that there’s contamination. Unless you go to one of the few strict gluten free restaurants, you are taking a risk. If I had Celiac disease, I wouldn’t trust anyone aside from strict gluten free restaurants to prepare my food. The risks are too great. Gluten sensitivity like I seem to have, well, sometimes I venture out.
When I’ve inadvertently had gluten, I’m wiped out the next day…among other consequences. (Weird, I ate gluten for 30+ years and I’ve always been “tired” — never made the connection until last fall) I get nervous taking risks by eating out when we go out because sometimes having a meal out is not worth what happens the next day: bathroom, sleep problems, exhaustion, and irritability.
My husband is not gluten free. But he has noticed that his body is a lot happier on the weekends…when he’s not eating gluten. At work he goes out with the guys for burgers or Potbelly’s (a restaurant here in Illinois) or whatever. We still have gluten in the house for him, but not very much.
Continuing my conversation with my husband, I told him about the guy with the colitis who flew to Thailand to eat worms to heal his gut (warning: graphic photo of worms). For what it’s worth it worked for that guy. My husband was horrified.
I’d rather be gluten free than fly to half a world away and eat parasites (and I’m not recommending anyone do this — check with your doctor if you have health problems). However, it does make me wonder if our bodies were meant to have organisms living in them, like symbiosis.
I did ask my husband, “Do you think our little guy will be able to eat gluten one day and be okay?”
He thought about it and answered, “Maybe.”
For lunches, click below:

My son’s lunches
Monday
Goat cheese mac and cheese with bacon and broccoli (from a gf restaurant),
strawberries, yogurt, applesauce, (don’t remember what’s in the bag!)

We have some friends that live right by an amazing gf restaurant and so it’s really nice for us to meet there with our little toddlers. My son didn’t eat all of his large portion of mac and cheese so I was able to send with him to day care the next day. Day care menu: ground beef, tater tots, applesauce, peas with fruit and blueberry muffins (junky mini ones) as snack.

Tuesday
Lamb rice dish, strawberries with sunflower seeds,
cornbread muffin, yogurt, kale chips

My husband cooked the lamb/rice dish. Sorry no recipe – it’s from a library cookbook, which we photocopied and returned. Don’t know whatthe cookbook is called. It was delicious. Day care menu: cod nuggets, blueberry muffins, pineapple bits, green beans, with fruit and yogurt as snacks.

Friday
Cheese melted on gf pita bread, roasted beets with sweet potatoes,
sliced chicken sausage, yogurt, strawberries

We were home sick for two days (when I started my blogging break). During that time my little guy basically stopped eating. I tried to entice him with favorite foods and it didn’t work. I would have taken a picture of what he ate for lunch at home, but he didn’t eat. Friday’s lunch (above) was on the light side since he had rejected many attempts of mine to feed him and I didn’t want to waste anymore food. Day care menu: tuna with pasta, pineapple bits, green beans.

My lunches
Monday
Spring rolls with shrimp, sliced fruit, yogurt and “go raw” bar

 I bought those rolls at Whole Foods and they contained no gluten. Reading every label is essential.

Tuesday
Lamb rice dish, strawberries, sunflower seeds, kale chips.
 Roasting beets! (Thursday night)
Thought it would be fun to buy something new and roast it!

Friday
Italian chicken sausage, beets, sweet potatoes,
onions, crust of pita bread (top)

This is what I considering an “old school” lunch. If I was working construction in the 1940’s, I’d carry a sausage, simple roasted veggies, and a crust of bread thrown in there. I felt like one of these guys:

What if you laugh too hard at a friend’s joke?

I added some strawberries too!
I enjoyed my lunch — the beets were fun and different!

Food dyes, revisited

News,

During my blogging break, the FDA took a look at food dyes in our food system. Then they decided to do precisely nothing.

No bans.
No warnings.
Business as usual.

Well, at least the FDA no longer can claim plausible deniability. No longer can they disavow knowledge of artificial, petroleum-based food dyes and what many smart people think they do to people, especially children.

To truly appreciate the problems in our food system and what they are doing to our kids, you must watch Robyn O’Brien’s TEDx talk. Brilliant and moving:

Further reading:
What’s up with food dyes and hyperactivity? (Marion Nestle)
Food dye news every skeptic should read (Spoonfed)

Submit your comment to the USDA

Advocacy,

The USDA announced new school lunch guidelines back in January. The new USDA guidelines would:

  • Establish the first calorie limits for school meals.
  • Gradually reduce the amount of sodium in the meals over 10 years, with the eventual goal of reducing sodium by more than half.
  • Ban most trans fats.  
  • Require more servings of fruits and vegetables (including green leafy vegetables).
  • Require all milk served to be low fat or nonfat, and require all flavored milks to be nonfat.
  • Incrementally increase the amount of whole grains required, eventually requiring most grains to be whole grains.
  • Improve school breakfasts by requiring schools to serve a grain and a protein, instead of one or the other. (Source and Source)

The new rules have also been published in the Federal Register. Right now we have an opportunity to submit feedback to the USDA during the comment period. If you would like to submit a comment about the new proposed rules, you only have until April 13th to do it. Here’s how:

1) Go to regulations.gov

What’s Hot = LOL

You will notice that under “What’s Hot” (bottom left) the top two bills are related to child nutrition.

2) Click on one of the two options. I checked out this website a few days ago and there weren’t two options so I don’t know what kind of shenanigans have taken place…

Scroll down at your own risk

The next screen is a text file of the proposed regulation. You can peruse it, but it’s very long.

3) Click on “Submit Comment”

It’s like the payment screen on Amazon…

 This is where you tell them where you live and type your comment.

If you scroll down, notice that you can even upload a file. I could upload a picture of one of the school lunches I ate last year! Of course then I would out myself, but that would be super fun.

For the record, the School Nutrition Association has come out against the new rules for a variety of reasons. I think I agree with them on one count — where’s the money? Food costs are rising dramatically. New regulations without additional funds amount to unfunded mandates. I’m not a big fan of unfunded mandates in education.

Next season…

Miscellaneous

A friend sent me this email forward. I guess it has been floating around the Internet for a few years, but I had never seen it until recently. It made me chuckle because I used to be a super fan of the show Survivor. But seriously, it is a provocative idea for a reality show…

Next Season on Survivor…
Have you heard about the next planned Survivor show?

Three businessmen and three businesswomen will be dropped in an elementary school classroom for one school year. Each business person will be provided with a copy of his/her school district’s curriculum, and a class of 25 students, no aide.

Each class will have a minimum of five learning-disabled children, three with A.D.H.D., one gifted child, and two who speak limited English. Three students will be labeled with severe behavior problems.

Each business person must complete lesson plans at least three days in advance, with annotations for curriculum objectives and modify, organize, or create their materials accordingly. They will be required to teach students, handle misconduct, implement technology, document attendance, write referrals, correct homework, make bulletin boards, compute grades, complete report cards, document benchmarks, communicate with parents, and arrange parent conferences. They must also stand in their doorway between class changes to monitor the hallways.

In addition, they will complete fire drills, tornado drills, and the drills for shooting attacks each month. They must attend workshops, faculty meetings, and attend curriculum development meetings. They must also tutor students who are behind and strive to get their non-English speaking children proficient enough to take the tests. If they are sick or having a bad day, they must not let it show.

Each day they must incorporate reading, writing, math, science, and social studies into the program. They must maintain discipline and provide an educationally stimulating environment to motivate students at all times. If all students do not wish to cooperate, work, or learn, the teacher will be held responsible.

Lunch will be limited to twenty minutes, which is not counted as part of the work day. The business people will be permitted to use a student restroom, as long as another survival candidate can supervise their class.
If the copier is operable, they may make copies of necessary materials before, or after, school. However, they cannot surpass their monthly limit of copies. The business people must continually advance their education, at their expense, and on their own time.

The winner of this Season of Survivor will be allowed to return to their old job.

Pass this to your friends who think teaching is easy, and to the ones that know it is hard…

Peaches and sporks

Spork Award,

Dana Woldow, winner of December’s Titanium Spork Award, has just launched a website PEACHSF.org. The website’s official title is Parents, Educators and Advocates Connection for Healthy School Food. It is THE go-to website for people with questions about school lunch reform. Dana has been working to change school food in 2002 and has made wonderful progress in San Francisco. She is putting all of her knowledge, along with the input of other very smart folks, in one place online help newbies like me.

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of talking with Dana on the phone and we struck up an easy conversation. She is passionate about school food reform and I found her to be incredibly informative, friendly, and down-to-earth. Dana recently wrote her Titanium Spork Award acceptance speech and it appears below.

Thank you so much to Mrs. Q and to everyone who voted for me to win the Titanium Spork Award. I’ve spent the past 8 years working for better school food in San Francisco’s public schools, and I have had the honor of working with so many selfless dedicated volunteers – this award is really for all of them too, not just for me.

After so many years of working in the trenches, I have decided to share everything I’ve learned about fixing school food with everyone across the country who wants to get started making changes in their own communities. On March 26th, my new website, PEACHSF.org, made its debut. PEACHSF stands for Parents Educators and Advocates Connection for Healthy School Food; the website is a place where people can find how to guides, everything from ‘how to talk the talk’ to ‘how to do a pilot’, from ‘how to make friends with your student nutrition director’ to ‘how to figure out if your school or district can do what another school or district is doing’. It’s a place where people can share their successes and bring their questions about how to move change forward.

It’s hard to navigate between the naysayers, who claim that school food can’t be improved because it is controlled by Big Food and Big Ag, or that it should not be the government’s responsibility to feed kids at all, and those on the other side who focus exclusively on the “miracle workers” who are doing great things in their own schools, but without revealing how those improvements are paid for, or whether they are scalable or sustainable. We believe that the truth lies somewhere in between – that a dedicated group of concerned citizens can get informed, get organized, and get going on fixing school food, and achieve success which, even if not miraculous, is at least replicable in other communities, and benefits the kids who are our future. PEACHSF is an open source guide to doing just that, written by volunteers to inspire other volunteers. I hope readers of Fed Up With Lunch will come visit the site at http://www.peachsf.org/ and be motivated to push school food reform forward in their own communities. Thanks again!

Open thread: Taking a break from technology

Open threads

Last Saturday night (March 26), I participated in Earth Hour by turning off the lights, switching off our computers, and powering down our phones. I reluctantly ran around the house in the minutes before 8:30 turning off lights and looking for candles. I rounded up my husband and we searched for candles. We found four and placed them on the hearth of the fireplace.

My husband and I sat on the couch and talked. I laughed a little too loud at one point and then the little guy cried out (he’s a light sleeper). I went into his room and settle him down, but then I came back I sat back down on the couch in the dark and resumed chatting and staring at the flickering lights.

We had a rogue candle.

While lighting the candles, I dropped the match right into the small glass cup to avoid burning my hand and that flame flickered up erratically, scorching the side of the glass. The three other candles were still, but this flame moved and danced around.

I tried to take photos of the candles as we wrapped up the hour. I had been staring at the flames, so I didn’t notice what was written on the side of the biggest candle. I turned it around and saw the saying…

It felt as magical as New Year’s Eve
Chatting with my husband in the dark was the highlight of the weekend. Turning everything off and taking a breather with the ones you love is valuable and important. For me it’s the computer, for you it might be your TV or phone — turn them off and take a break. It’s okay. It’s worth it. You’re worth it.
***
Posting is going to be light until mid-week. I’m not sick this time, but I’m working against a deadline.
In the next couple weeks, I’m going to work to streamline my content, make things a little more predictable, and organize things ahead of my blog’s redesign:
  • “Open thread” blog posts will be combined with food news and book club information and appear on Monday.
  • Saturday will be “My Lunch” day (where I post my lunches and my son’s), but I can’t guarantee what time I’ll get those posts up because they take a long time to put together (I know I have two weeks to share with you — know they will be coming, but maybe not today).
  • I would love to have one day devoted to guest blog posts, but some weeks I have lots of guest bloggers and other weeks I have none.
  • Any organizational suggestions you have would be welcomed.