Food for All

The headline in today's paper was about the vital role food pantries are playing in keeping families fed during difficult economic times. I had just been thinking about ways we could up our contributions this year, not just by writing a check, but starting to educate our children about community service and giving. Our plan is to take the kid's grocery shopping, usually something most of us dread, and as a family put together a donation to drop off at our local pantry.

One really easy way to make your own dollars go further at the grocery store is to take advantage of the "Buy One Get One Free" promotions that I see in almost every grocery store I have been in this month. You may not always stock up this way for yourself, but maybe this winter (and not just around the holidays when more people do supply food pantries) get into the habit of getting that extra free box of pasta or tuna or beans or whatever it is that you buy. You can fill a grocery bag without any extra dollars spent. Also, search out items that you may not eat but are offering the extra freebie to stretch your donation dollars. And remember that many pantries also disperse diapers, shampoo, low-fat and low-sugar foods for elderly and diabetic clients, soap, paper products, and other non-food items that families need but are not always available at pantries or covered by food stamps.

Food plays a starring role for many families over the holidays, bringing everyone to the table to share a meal and spend time together. This year, help put food on someone else's table too; they'll be thankful you did.

Tuck it in and say goodnight

There are not many leaves left on the trees in our little northeastern town, and as the clock's hands creep towards five o'clock, the sun has already left the sky. All of this is a strong indication that it's time to put the garden to bed for the winter. There are die hard gardeners out there who have fashioned covered boxes and planted hardy crops to last several more months, if not until spring, but I'm leaving the winter gardening to the professionals this year and will reap their bounty at our new indoor farmer's market. There is still work to be done at home, however, to ready things for a winter's nap and the eventual spring renewal.

Flowers and plants in your yard typically have their own requirements for pruning and feeding. I may touch on a few of those in another post, but today I'll just focus on what I do for my vegetable garden and my strawberry and asparagus patch. Lots of people have their own routines, but the overall goal is to get the leftover weeds and plants out of the soil before it freezes, perhaps plant a cover crop of winter rye if you want to till it under in the spring for extra nitrogen, mulch in some compost that has been cooking all winter, and then decide if you need to cover your soil or not. The main reason to cover the soil is to prevent erosion (or it least that is my understanding), so if this isn't an issue for you (not too much wind, animals, or sloped grade playing their parts) you may not need to cover the soil. Last fall I covered some beds, including the strawberries and asparagus, with straw to protect the plants, but I think I over-covered and killed some of the baby strawberry plants. It never hurts to lightly mulch a vegetable planting area with leaves or straw. I mowed up a bunch of leaves with our last mowing this year, so that delicious mix of brown and green mulch went on the strawberry bed this year and some parts of the garden. You can always rake it off in the spring or till it under into the soil to add nutrients.

I find my other main goal is to make it easy to get outside in March and get the early crops in the ground like peas, lettuce, and radishes. So even if you get just one bed ready to go, you'll thank yourself when you don't have to pull out half-frozen weeds or last years plants. Especially with the blight this year, it is really important to pull out all of this year's dead plants, and I would keep all tomato plants and potato vines out of the compost pile. Toss them elsewhere or send them to the dump with your regular trash. This goes for any other plants that may have been diseased over the summer. Lastly, think about saving seeds from some veggies you may still have on hand. Pumpkin seeds, decorative squash, butternut squash, anything that your still eating and has seeds inside can be saved for next year's garden.

And don't forget it's time to plant the garlic. It winters over and you'll have garlic scapes in the early summer and full heads of garlic by July!

baby berries put to bed

Our leaves, their leaves

My daughter talked me into raking leaves the other day, a job I generally stay away from because of my allergies. But it was unusual for this daughter -- who usually prefers inside play -- to be asking to do something outside, so I agreed. We only had one rake (I ran over the second rake last autumn with my car), so we went next door to borrow one from our neighbor.

My daughter and I began raking and she was doing really well for a 6 year old. I didn't even have to bribe her. And when I stopped, she reprimanded me. Apparently, breaks weren't allowed -- unless of course it was to test out a pile by jumping in them.

I did stop to show her the different leaves that were carpeting the yard -- the elongated tear-shaped magnolia ones from the two trees in our yard and the pointy yellow maple leaves from our neighbor's tree. Mostly, the yellow maple leaves blanketed the yard. We talked a bit about how the leaves end up in different spots. Since we'd borrowed their rake, it seemed only fitting that we were raking some of their leaves up, too.

We weren't the only ones taking care of the leaves. Around the neighborhood, the sound of leaf blowers could be heard all week. And others were dragging tarps laden with leaves out to the curb. Of course, the sound of the town's trucks sucking up lawn debris to be taken to our compost center was also in the air.

I was grateful for the physical labor with my daughter. We laughed and talked as we raked -- especially when a stiff breeze blew some of the leaves back into our yard. And she was clearly proud of herself when I told her father that it was all her idea. While it wasn't a perfect job, it was a perfect moment. And even if we were doing a chore, it didn't feel like it because we were enjoying each other's company.

I'm a lover, not a fighter.

I love vegetables. Love growing them. Love cooking them. Love eating them. But, yes, to be sure, there are some vegetables that I cannot stand. Green peppers. Spaghetti Squash. Dark red beets. In the spirit of adventurous eating, I try to retry a vegetable every year that I had previously not enjoyed. To date, I have added from the "gross" to "delicious" lists: tomatoes (raw and cooked), raw onion, brussel sprouts (how did I ever not love these?), mushrooms, acorn and butternut squash, and red/orange/yellow peppers. Not a bad transition period, if I say so myself. However, there are clearly more vegetables to be explored and this summer I finally broke down and roasted some rutabaga (sweet with an earthy taste) and finally, finally, finally, peeled that ridiculous looking kohlrabi and discovered a gem inside. Simply peel, slice into matchsticks, boil and toss that bad boy with some butter and Parmesan cheese. Even my children ate it, and those of you who know my children can attest to their fear of new and different foods.

So why should you care about my personal taste evolution in the world of vegetables? Not sure, actually, except that perhaps it will remind us all that tastes evolve over time, and an adventurous eating spirit can start at any age. As the primary chef in my family (and that means planning, buying, prepping and cooking most of the meals), my tastes tend to dictate what everyone else eats, so I need to remember to introduce certain foods that I may not like so at least my kids can get the chance to not like it too. Just kidding (except for the green peppers).

New York Moments and free apples in the Big Apple

So, my husband loses his Blackberry while we are in New York City this past weekend. He ran outside at 7:15 a.m. to search because he had just moved our car and thought he might have dropped it. I started calling it, hoping it was still in my brother-in-law's apartment where we were staying. The second time I try, a cabbie picks up. He found the Blackberry on the street and was hoping we would call. We made arrangements to meet and I gave him a $20 tip. He told me it happens all the time and he had no use for it anyway.

Afterward, when we'd packed and left the keys in the apartment as instructed thus locking ourselves out, my daughter decided she had to go to the bathroom -- in the worst possible way. Of course, that's despite my request while we were inside for our children to visit the facilities. We dashed into a diner on 14th street and the owner gestured downstairs, no problem. And they gave us free apples on our way out. I love the Big Apple.

I like to think that this was some sort of karmic payback for something we've done. However, I now feel that we should pay the goodness forward. Whenever we do go to New York, something like this always happens. I've left my ATM card in a machine and a man called after me to come back. I dropped a lipstick in the subway and a woman ran after me to give it back.

Farm to You Fest in our Schools

This week has been busy... My school district's Healthy Kids Committee, in which I'm very involved, is celebrating its first annual "Farm to You Fest". Farm to You Fest, which we have lovingly dubbed "F2YF", is a week-long series of school and community events, classes and experiences that will help our kids build stronger connections between the food on their plates (at school and at home) and the farms where it grows.

Among the activities our committee planned for this week is a Farm Fresh Recipe Contest where kids submit their favorite recipes using local, seasonal fruits and veggies to our district's Food Services Director. He will then choose several of these kid-inspired recipes to feature in school lunches in the upcoming months (winners will have their menu items named after them!).

Additionally, we are working with a local organization, Capital District Community Gardens (www.cdcg.org) to support their Squash Hunger produce donation program. Through this program, instead of bringing cans and boxes of food to school, we have asked students to go to their home gardens, their local farmers market or their grocery store to donate fresh fruits and vegetables that will be taken directly to soup kitchens and pantries in a day or two. It's wonderful to see the boxes in the school lobby brimming with apples, zucchini, squashes and cabbages. We hope this reinforces the message that everyone needs to eat fresh.

Finally, our district is participating in a Farmers Market Scavenger Hunt at our new Saturday Delmar Farmers Market which is located at our very own middle school. Students received checklists at school and they are invited to visit the farmers market and answer questions like: "What fruits and veggies are not found here at the market, but would be found at a grocery store and why?", and "If you chose one item to bring home today from the market, what would you cook with it?". Completed checklists will be returned to school and kids can win coupon prizes donated from vendors at the market - an 8 oz ball of fresh mozzarella, a bag of fresh apples, etc... farm fresh rewards!

In addition to these three larger activities, the school lunch program featured fruits and vegetables grown on local farms (we have a long way to go with improving school lunch, but it has come a long way this year..). Also, individual schools have organized Visiting Farmer classes, in-class taste-testing workshops, and a walking field trip to a neighboring dairy farm to visit the cows, calves and kittens. Our middle school spent the summer cultivating our district's first Organic Kitchen Garden and the new Garden Club harvested greens, carrots and other veggies to create salads for their fellow students this week - yum!

It was a lot of work to organize this week and it took a lot of passionate parents many hours. So, why do we knock ourselves out for these kinds of things? Because, as Heidi so eloquently said in her recent entry: " if our kids can make a tactile and emotional connection to their food, it will imprint on them the importance of healthy eating and understanding of where and how food grows". In my opinion, this is one of the most important lessons we can learn in life - and in school.

Happy harvest, everyone. For more information on Farm to You Fest in New York State, go to: http://www.agmkt.state.ny.us/AP/PrideOfNY/farm_to_school.html

Coins for Kids

I've written before about how I'm coin jar advocate. I never spend my change, opting to throw the coins in one of many jars I have around the house. This saving technique has helped us with vacations and bolstering our savings account. This month, however, I've decided to put all our extra change in a "Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF" box -- a program created by kids in 1950. When I spotted the boxes at a local Hallmark store, it evoked memories of collecting for UNICEF when I was a kid. I couldn't remember ever having a trick-or-treater asking for change in the last 11 or so years we've lived here. I grabbed two boxes for my kids to take out on Halloween. And I put one on my kitchen counter and slowly it's been filling. The back of the box says that just 6 cents can help provide water for a thirsty kid.

If you'd rather donate online or want more info about how to get the boxes, check out www.unicefusa.org/trickortreat