Category Archives: Parenting

An Adventure with Food

An Adventure with Food

This summer, our family participated in a co-op with our local farm, the Hubbard Farm, which is about two miles from our house.

Each Tuesday evening, I would drive by “The Old Store” with my two little ones and pick up huge baskets full of fresh produce.  My 5-year-old would always get a small bag of candy as a treat.  We would then get home and unpack everything onto our kitchen counter.  It was a thrill to see what we got each week.

When laying out the produce and grouping them, every so often, we’d say, “what is this?”  Spaghetti squash, acorn squash and white squash were a few of the new vegetables we learned about.

The goal of this adventure was to eat more fresh foods, support our local farm and learn new things.

We also made many first-time meals as well, including: eggplant parmesan, homemade salsa, fried green tomatoes, and homemade potato chips.

Here are the informational sites and videos that helped me this summer:

My goal for next year is to learn how to pickle and can!

Optimized Parenting

Optimized Parenting

With two children at home, I’m highly interested in increasing my knowledge of parenting topics.  Specifically, I like to learn more about how to be a great parent and really enjoy my time with my children and family.  I’ve been reading books and blogs on the subject for 5 years now (when the first child was in the belly) and I’d like to begin sharing some of my key learnings and advice on this page.

Recently, we’ve greatly reduced the amount of TV we watch at our house.  We normally let our preschooler watch 1 hour of TV a day and a little more on the weekends – this is actually quite low for American children.  One week, I decided just to keep the TV cabinet closed.  He whined for one morning and one afternoon and that was it.  I just said NO, and he moved on.  There was no discussion involved.  He found something else to do.  We went from watching 2-3 hours a day (as a family) to 2-3 hours a week!

Removing TV from our lives (for the most part), has made our life more simple.  There are less choices in the day and I don’t have to “build in” TV time in my preschooler’s morning routine.  Instead, we sit together at breakfast and I get to hear some of the great thoughts he has in his head.  We have increased those small, special moments during the day that are worth more than gold.  TV had previously filled up our time and not allowed for many of these moments in our life.

Interested in more on this subject?  Check out Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne.