Family & Home

In the coat closet of my tiny one-bedroom apartment, next to a suitcase and my winter boots, is my blue plastic worm bin. I have been composting with worms for about a year, and cannot imagine going back.

I am still in awe of the efficiency with which my worms work, and I'm always amazed to open the bin and find almost no evidence of the food scraps and coffee grounds I fed them only a week earlier. I am not an expert in biology, agronomy, or even vermiculture, but right in my closet, I have managed to maintain a thriving little ecosystem, and produce a continuous supply of rich, dark compost.

Image Credit: Kate SommersThe issue of time - specifically, how long it takes to cook and eat fresh, local, and organic food and how little time most people have - comes up again and again in my discussions with parents and friends who are considering making a change in their eating habits. (Not surprisingly, the other topic that comes up again and again is the cost of good food. Much has been compellingly written about the true cost of cheap food, and I encourage you to check it out.)

It'd be hard to make the case that my dad was a health food nut. Yes, we avoided sugar cereals. Yes, we tended to cook homemade dinners. Yes, we drank seltzer (often in glass bottles from from the seltzer guy) instead of soda (my friends still give me a hard time, but hey, we were in New York). One year, my dad even traded coffee for Postum.

This Saturday night, as you give candy to the little ghosts, witches, pirates and princesses who've come to your door yelling “trick or treat,” you may get something in return: A piece of chocolate. And an education.

This Halloween, thousands of children across the country will be “Reverse Trick-or-Treating” to tell grown-ups the ugly truth about the chocolate industry. To do so, they will distribute chocolate samples that are Fair Trade Certified and will be accompanied by cards that say this:

Thank you for the candy that you are generously sharing tonight.

Like Halloween, chocolate should be a source of joy for all children, including those in countries where cocoa is grown. Unfortunately, that is not the case today.

Why?

Star Tribune Photo by Kyndell HariknessMy family and I (pictured above) are happy and amused to have been featured in a Star Tribune article by Julie Pfitzinger this weekend entitled "Eat Well, Be Well." Most people who know us don't think of us as the world's healthiest family, although this quote from the article is certainly true:

The fall recreational soccer leagues are now behind us. And with them, the nutritional pitfalls of post-soccer snacks.

If you’re a parent with a kid who plays some kind of sport, chances are you know what I’m talking about. For some reason, snacks have become such a ubiquitous part of recreational sports that questioning their necessity is met with the same disdain as, say, suggesting that our children play their next game with their hands tied behind their backs.

Not that I’ve ever suggested such a thing – kids playing with their hands tied behind their backs, I mean. But I have, on several occasions, tried to gently convince whomever will listen that the post-game goodie grabs do more harm than good.

"The Feast," by SubwayHere’s what I’m dealing with. I’ve got these 2 boys, 7 and 11 years old (yeah, yeah, just like “7-11”), and they always seem to take forever to get going in the morning. Like this morning they woke up at 7 am, and they took about 20 minutes to get dressed. I was totally annoyed. I mean, the boys took so long we didn’t even have time to let them eat their cereal in front of the TV. We basically had to rush them out the door as soon as their coats were on, which meant that - again - they’d be eating breakfast bars in the car in the way to school.

In light of Simple, Good, and Tasty's recent article about our national school lunch program, I want to share some great news about school lunches for the kids in Colorado's 28,000 student Boulder Valley School District (BVSD): thanks to a recent partnership with Organic Valley, the milk will be organic. Here's an excerpt from their press release: