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By Mom Unplugged, August 24, 2009 10:55 pm

Today was the first day back to school for my oldest two (9 and 7), and they were VERY excited.  OK, OK, so was I (choirs of angels and all that).

The two of them were up early and dressed before I even managed to open an eye.  By the time I had dragged myself reluctantly out of the shower (I am NOT a morning person) they had already made their own breakfasts and packed their own lunches.

What?? My heart sank when I heard they had packed their lunches.  This was new, and entirely their idea.

Of course I immediately inspected their lunch boxes expecting to see cookies, chips and goldfish crackers, plus perhaps even some candy that had been squirreled away somewhere. What would you have packed in your lunch at that age?

However I was shocked to find that they had actually done a good job!  There was leftover pasta (kept warm in thermoses), sugar snap peas, apples, yogurt, and…one Oreo each. I could live with that.

I plan to continue this self-packing of the lunch, and hope it does not fall by the wayside as school becomes less easy to wake up early for.

One less job for me is good.  I am a lazy mom.

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By Mom Unplugged, February 14, 2008 10:18 pm

A quick post tonight. I have spent far too much of my little free time today trying to figure out what all this “tagging” business is about. I have categories, but I guess tags are meaningful for search engines??? I am learning a lot and that is good, but I have things to say that I don’t have time to say when I am learning a lot!

My sister just gave me these two books for my birthday: The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution (Alice Waters) and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (Barbara Kingsolver). I am very excited about these books because I feel that I am in an unhealthy “meat and potatoes” cooking rut. Do any of you ever get in a cooking rut? Perhaps Alice Waters can assist me in thinking a bit more broadly (but simply). Also, I have been wanting to read the Barabara Kingsolver book for quite some time, so that is a happy gift too.

Have any of you read these books? If so, what did you think of them?

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By Mom Unplugged, October 30, 2007 4:37 pm

A good friend of mine just brought my children a whole bag full of these “Witch Hands” treats that she found at a Halloween bake sale. I thought this idea was SO clever and easy (not to mention funny!) that I had to share it!

The “hands” are just plastic food service gloves filled with popcorn “bones” and candy corn “fingernails.” Drop a candy corn into each finger tip, fill glove with popcorn, and tie the wrist closed with black yarn. Too cool!

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By Mom Unplugged, September 11, 2007 8:59 pm

Today I promise not to bore you all once again with tales of my A-list vegetables…but how about my new A-list eggs!

A-list eggs are fresh from the chicken. They come in a carton of twelve, just like grocery store eggs, but they are all different sizes, colors and even shapes!!! Not the uniform white or brown varieties that look like they were made in a factory in China, along with everything else in this world today. You can sense the happiness, exuberance, and individual personalities of the chickens that laid these A-list eggs.

The shells are rough, not smooth and porcelain-like. The thickness of the shell seems to vary from egg to egg also. Do stubborn chickens lay eggs with thicker shells?

In my opinion, the yolk is what sets a fresh egg apart from its copycat grocery store cousins. When you crack a “really happy egg” into a frying pan, the yolk stands up straight and doesn’t seem to want hide itself by melting away into everything else. It stands tall and proud. It is an egg of honor. It is an egg with good self-esteem.

When you eat a happy egg, the yolk has the consistency and texture of sweet cream fresh from the cow. It coats the tongue in a most delightful way.

Signs of egg freshness:

• Shell is rough and chalky (the smoother and shinier the shell, the more ancient the egg)
  
• When placed in a glass of water, egg sinks. If it floats – no good! (as an egg ages, the small air pocket inside it expands and causes the egg to float rather than sink)
• I read that a stale egg has an unmistakable “rattle” when shaken, a fresh egg does not (I haven’t tried this one)
• When cracked, an egg that runs out more like water than goo is probably old
• In a pan, a fresh egg yolk stands up and the white is noticeably thicker

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By Mom Unplugged, August 13, 2007 11:00 am

This is old news now (about one week old) but I MUST blog about it. A study by Dr. Thomas Robinson, the director of the Center for Healthy Weight at Packard Children’s Hospital and associate professor of pediatrics and of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine has found that children ages 3 to 5 tend to prefer the taste of food that comes in a McDonald’s wrapper over identical food which does not.

Dr. Robinson’s research team gave 63 children, ages 3 to 5, the following foods: chicken nuggets, a hamburger, french fries (all from McDonald’s) as well as baby carrots and milk (from the grocery store). Each child received two portions of each food. One portion was wrapped in a McDonald’s wrapper or bag, the other was in a plain wrapper. The children overwhelmingly preferred the food in the McDonald’s wrapper over the identical food in the plain wrapper.

Dr. Robinson says:

“Kids don’t just ask for food from McDonald’s, they actually believe that the chicken nugget they think is from McDonald’s tastes better than an identical, unbranded nugget.”

Other interesting (and frightening) findings of the study are the following facts about the children:

- One third of the children ate at McDonald’s more than once a week.

- More than three-quarters had McDonald’s toys at home

- They had an average of 2.4 televisions in their homes

- More than one-half the children had a TV in their rooms! (Wow! These kids are only 3 to 5 years-old!!!)

Discussing his findings, which seem to link TV-viewing with a preference for McDonald’s, Dr. Robinson said:

“We found that kids with more TVs in their homes and those who eat at McDonald’s more frequently were even more likely to prefer the food in the McDonald’s wrapper. This is a company that knows what they’re doing. Nobody else spends as much to advertise their fast-food products to children.”

This frightening placebo effect of food preference in children seems to me to be yet another argument in favor of placing some sort of limit on food marketing to kids. If you want to read a bit more about about recent efforts to put limits on food ads targeted to kids, please read my June 25th post Food Marketing to Kids.

So, in case anyone still had a doubt, kids as young as ages 3 to 5 can be successfully “branded” by large corporations spending billions on TV advertising targeted at young viewers.

OK. On a lighter note, I think I’d better stock up on McDonald’s wrappers for a proper presentation of my A-list brussels sprouts to my children. “Hey kids, did you know McDonald’s now serves brussels sprouts? Yum!!!!!”

The study: Effects of Fast Food Branding on Young Children’s Taste Preferences appearing in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medecine, Vol. 161 No. 8, August 2007

(You can read an article about the study at the Washington Post online: Foods Taste Better With McDonald’s Logo, Kids Say.)

Thanks to morguefile.com and photographer spress for the “Good Food” photo.