Growing Food and Kids

So here’s one more reason to buy (or grow) organic foods. A new study published in the International Journal of Biological Sciences found that three different varieties of genetically modified corn caused organ damage in laboratory rats.

The GM corn didn’t favor one specific organ; it caused damage throughout the body. According to an abstract, scientists found most of the damage in the kidney and liver, but they also documented damage from the corn in the heart, adrenal glands, spleen and haematopoietic system (that’s the system that produces blood and includes the bone marrow, spleen, tonsils, and lymph nodes).

So if we forgot how disgusted we were by the industrial corn industry portrayed in Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, now we seem to have proof that our corn chips are not just making us (and our kids) fat and unhealthy, but also actually damaging our essential organs. Do you have any idea how much corn we Americans eat? It’s in everything. (Take a look at a few of the labels in your pantry; most of us will find a lot of corn syrup, corn oil, corn flour, and cornstarch, along with simply corn.)

And unless we’re buying organic, or growing our own organic corn and making everything we eat from scratch, we’re usually eating corn that’s genetically modified.

What to do? The only solutions I know of are to eat more homegrown foods, whether from our own garden or the farmer’s market, and to read labels more carefully. What are your solutions to scary news like this?

Thanksgiving may have been only a week ago, but we’re already in the throes of Christmas around my house. And while I certainly don’t want Christmas to be all about buying and getting, I have to admit that finding cool gifts is part of the fun. (And it’s nice to have “Christmas shopping” marked off the to-do list.)

For kids who like to garden — or just play in the dirt — there are lots of interesting gift options, including some that cost hardly anything.

If you’re looking for just the right something for your little garden buddy, consider some of these:

• The gift that keeps growing. A packet of seeds wrapped in festive fabric or paper makes a perfect stocking stuffer for a kid with a budding green thumb. Consider something that can be planted right away during cold weather months, such as fava beans, so your gardener doesn’t lose momentum (or lose the seeds before planting time).
• Bring on the birds. A great way to watch wildlife during the winter months is by beckoning birds to your window with a bird feeder. I have sweet memories of sitting at my grandmother’s breakfast table in Nashville, Tenn., and watching hummingbirds eat their breakfast just outside the window beside us. There are all kinds of bird feeders in fun, kid-friendly colors and shapes. I like the Woodstream #262 48OZ Apple Feeder or the Woodstream #260P 48OZ Strawberry Feeder, especially for hummingbirds.
• A tree to grow on. What kid wouldn’t like to grow his or her own Christmas tree? This kit comes with a Douglas fir seed, peat, and a ceramic pot, along with a jingle bell ornament to hang on the tree when it starts growing. 
• Pamper your pets. If growing your own food is fun, what could be better than growing food for your pet? Suttons offers a cool pet food pack that includes seeds for  dandelions, carrots and other foods that rabbits, hamsters and other household pets love.
• Read all about it. My boys love books, and I love to give books to them and to other children. There are plenty of good books that are perfect for kids who love the outdoors, such as those included in this post from July. Other favorites include Growing Vegetable Soup (Books for Young Readers) by Lois Ehlert and The Tiny Seed (World of Eric Carle) by Eric Carle.
• No time to be board. Who knew there was a board game all about gardening? Your little gardener will love playing The Garden Game, which requires players to feed the soil, plant seeds, nurture plants, have harvest festivals, and help each other through natural disasters. You can win by planting the largest garden and saving the most seeds!

What are your favorite gift ideas for kids who love the outdoors? 

Say nobody in your family likes pumpkin pie, but you’re a traditionalist. So at Thanksgiving, you’re kind of screwed. You feel like you must serve pumpkin pie because it’s always been done, but you know you’ll be left with most of a pie to be thrown away or fed to the dog. But we don’t even have a dog, and this is my family.

This year, since I’m in charge of Thanksgiving dinner for the first time, I’ve decided to opt out of serving pumpkin pie. If you share my aversion to the pasty orange stuff, join me. Instead, I’m making pumpkin bread. It’s not a hit with my husband, but the kids and I love it, and my in-laws once made themselves try it to avoid hurting my feelings. (And I think they actually liked it.) So it’s settled.

I first made pumpkin bread in college after one of my fellow English majors brought it to an early-morning get-together. But the recipe I make now came from my good friend Gin Phillips. She’s the award-winning author of The Well and the Mine, but she’s also a fabulous cook, the kind that doesn’t really measure ingredients but just kind of knows how much nutmeg, how much salt, how much flour will make it just right. When I insisted, Ginny gave me a recipe for her pumpkin bread, but of course she doesn’t follow it herself. So it may never taste exactly like hers, but it’s still pretty darn good.

If you want to try it, here it is:

PUMPKIN BREAD

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 cups plus 4 teaspoons sugar, divided

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground allspice

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

2 eggs

1 15-ounce can of pumpkin (or fresh pumpkin, even better)

1/2 can canola oil

1/2 cup water

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Combine the flour, 1 1/2 cups sugar, brown sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, allspice, baking soda, salt and nutmeg.

Combine the eggs, pumpkin, oil, water and vanilla; mix well. Stir into dry ingredients just until moistened.

Spoon into two 8”x4”x2” baking pans coated with cooking spray. Sprinkle with remaining sugar.

Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 50 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

I’m still alive, although you’d never know it based on my conspicuous absence from this blog over the past few weeks. What can I say? We picked our last tomatoes in October and then I took a break from thinking about gardening for awhile. We do have a small fall garden underway, mainly just cabbage and greens, but I’ve been so busy with kids, work and life that posting to this blog got lost in the shuffle. 

Now here we are, less than two weeks away from Thanksgiving! And for the first time ever, I’m hosting Thanksgiving dinner at my own home. No more getting to drive in for the day bringing just a sweet potato casserole. No, this year, I’m responsible for the whole meal. Yikes! While I volunteered for the job, and am excited about the challenge, I have to admit it’s a little intimidating.

At least my mom won’t be here. She’ll be out west visiting my younger brother and his family. And while I’d love to spend Thanksgiving with her, I’m sure she’s the reason I’m intimidated. I’ve spent most of my Thanksgivings with my feet under her table, feasting on a lavish spread that I could never hope to replicate. Not just turkey and dressing (we don’t do “stuffing” in Alabama), but also ham, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, squash casserole, okra and tomatoes, green beans, congealed salads, homemade rolls, and sweet tea to wash it all down. And for dessert, there’s  pumpkin pie, apple pie, maybe a carrot cake, and turkey-shaped sugar cookies. I’m sure I’m forgetting a few things.

There’s a lot to be said for tradition, but as I plan our menu over the next week, I’m trying to put a new twist on some of the old favorites. For instance, nobody in our family really likes pumpkin pie, but we usually have it just for tradition’s sake. I’m thinking this year I might take the liberty of serving pumpkin bread instead, since I know we like it and it makes a good appetizer. I’ll share the recipe tomorrow.

What are you serving or bringing to Thanksgiving dinner this year? How do you incorporate foods from your garden or farmer’s market? Any new twists on old favorites? 

Do you have a third grader at your house? Or do you know a third grade teacher? If so, let them know about Bonnie Plants’ Third Grade Cabbage Program.

Through the program, Bonnie Plants provides free cabbage seeds to third grade students across the country whose teachers have signed up to participate. Each student plants his or her own cabbage, waters it and cares for it. The seeds are for oversized cabbages, so they’re especially fun to watch as they get bigger and bigger and bigger. And at the end of the growing season, Bonnie Plants awards a $1,000 savings bond to one student in each state.

The contest has been going on for the past eight years, and it’s now accepting registrations for the 2010 edition.

In a note to third graders on the company’s web site, Bonnie’s general manager Stan Cope writes, “We at Bonnie Plants want to share our love of gardening. By planting one of our oversized cabbage varieties, you can watch your cabbage plant grow bigger than a basketball! Help us by planting your cabbage and watch it grow, and grow and grow!”

It’s great to see a large corporation making an effort to get kids involved in gardening. Now if all the third graders will actually eat the cabbages, even better! Spread the word and get your local third graders involved. Maybe they’ll end up with $1,000 or even better, a lifelong love of growing their own healthy food.

Do you eat cabbage? How do you like it?

We parents knew that spending time outside did something positive for our kids (besides making them take a better nap). And now a new study shows that people who spend more time in the natural environment, as opposed to manmade environments, place greater value on personal relationships and community, and are more generous with money, than those who don’t.

“We are influenced by our environment in ways that we are not aware of," says Netta Weinstein, lead author of the study, which was published in the October issue of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. "The more you appreciate nature, the more you can benefit.”

The study’s authors offer a few good reasons why spending time in nature might make us more interested in other people. But I’d like to add a few of my own [which are completely unscientific but based on experience and a pretty good maternal instinct]:

• Nature reminds of our (small) size. When I’m indoors all the time, consumed by work, a book, the computer, or food, my thoughts tend to revolve around myself and the little indoor world I’ve created for me (my office, my kitchen, my playroom). But when I regularly spend time in the great outdoors, I can’t help but be reminded that the world is so much bigger than me, that there are so many concerns greater than mine, so much beauty greater than what I can create. The realization of my own smallness in the big scheme of things might help me take the focus off myself and lead me to show more interest in other people.
• Nature distracts us with discovery. There’s so much to learn and discover outdoors, especially with children. There are rocks to be overturned, hills to roll down, gardens to grow. The process of regularly discovering new things helps children develop inquisitive minds. And talking about those discoveries and ideas helps children grow into social people who love to share what they’re learning and hear about others’ ideas.
• Nature encourages us with its community. When we (and our kids) spend a lot of time outside, interacting with plants and animals, we observe the strong sense of community in the natural world. For instance, look at how bees and flowers work together to help food crops grow. Maybe our observation of strong community ties in the natural world makes us subconsciously more focused on building community in our own social world.

What do you think – does nature make you and your kids nicer? If so, why do you think so?

Photo credit: 123RF.com

Our Big Boy was sent home early from preschool one day last week. He wasn’t sick. He wasn’t biting other kids. He just couldn’t stop scratching. He’d clawed his arms and legs to the point of drawing blood in some places. What I’d thought were a few bug bites that morning turned out to be a full-fledged reaction to poison ivy. (Bad mom. Ouch.)

We’re not sure where Big Boy came into contact with the urushiol oil of the poison ivy plant. Maybe it was when he helped his dad and granddad clear some brush in a field the previous weekend. Maybe it was when he played in a hollowed tree with his cousins at the lake on Labor Day. Wherever the poison came from, it was potent. And it got everywhere: his back, his tummy, his bum, in between his fingers. For almost a week, Big Boy has scratched and squirmed and awakened in the night crying for more calamine spray and Benadryl.

It’s a sad sight. And he may end up with some ugly scars from the incessant scratching. Even as the bumps and blisters begin to fade, I still feel sympathy for him, along with a little parental guilt — shouldn’t I have checked inside that hollowed-out tree before allowing him to climb in? Shouldn’t I have made him wear long pants to clear brush? (Oh yeah, I did.)

Then again, a little poison ivy isn’t so bad. To get it, he had to be playing outside, which is Big Boy’s favorite thing to do. And poison ivy potential aside, I know that unstructured, creative outside play is good for his mind and his body. As I’ve noted before on this blog, today’s kids spend 50 percent less time outside than they did just 20 years ago, according to KaBOOM. And research from the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that kids spend an average of six and a half hours each day on electronic media.

I’m thinking that if I had to choose between a squirmy, itchy, blistery boy with a day of fresh air, sunlight, dirt and exercise behind him, and a four-year-old couch potato with a dazed look in his eyes, I’d take the poison-ivy sufferer any day. Who knows? One day he may see those three-pronged leaves and feel a rush of nostalgia for his playful boyhood.

But I think we need to prune the brush around our back fence, just in case.

Photo credit: 123rf.com

Please join me in welcoming guest blogger Jodi Torpey! Jodi is a Denver-based garden writer, master gardener and nonfiction author. Her articles are published on gardening websites, in national gardening magazines and regional newspapers. She has special interests in creating backyard habitats and gardening with her dog, Rufus T. Smudge. Read more of Jodi’s writing at www.WesternGardeners.com or follow her on Twitter @WesternGardener.

This morning I lost track of time while standing in my garden and watching seven fuzzy bumblebees buzzily enjoying the fading blooms on the tall purple bee balm (Monarda).

I watched as they noisily made their way around each flower, stopping momentarily to gather nectar before moving onto the next flower. It was a beautiful bee ballet.

If truth be told, this is the real reason why I garden. Even though I enjoy planting flowers, vegetables and herbs, I’m not gardening for myself or to make a lovely landscape for my neighbors to enjoy. I garden for the wildlife in my life.

Backyard habitats like mine are important because so much of our natural space has been compromised by development. Bees, birds, squirrels, spiders, toads and other critters need our help.

Your yard can become a habitat if it provides the essential ingredients for wildlife to survive: food, water, cover and a place to raise their young. Focusing your gardening efforts on attracting watchable wildlife is a wonderful way to get children interested in the natural world.

This is easy to do if you hang a bird feeder or add plants to your landscape that produce berries, seeds, nuts, fruit, nectar or pollen. Water sources can be a birdbath, pond, stream or even a small puddling area for insects.

Examples of shelter include a brush pile or dense shrubs. Nesting boxes, host plants, mature trees or a water garden also provide places for wildlife to safely raise their young.

Sustainable landscaping practices, like avoiding the use of synthetic chemical herbicides and insecticides, also help protect wildlife from harm.

If you’re interested in learning more about creating a habitat in your backyard, the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) can help you.

The NWF is a terrific organization and its volunteers work around the clock to protect America’s wildlife and their habitats. Even though most of its work focuses on polar bears and gray wolves, bees are as important to the organization’s efforts as are bald eagles.

Even though my backyard had been a welcoming habitat for many years, I didn’t consider it a success until the spring I watched robins build a nest and raise four baby birds. The day I saw one fledgling leave the nest, I felt as proud as any parent.