Mindful Momma

Spring Beauty

After a lousy fall and a somewhat dreadful winter, we are having the most amazing spring ever in the Twin Cities.  Isn't there some way I can get time to just STOP for awhile?  I want to enjoy the beauty of these spring flowers for more than just a fleeting week or two. 

My neighbors tulips are so soft and pretty on the way to the bus-stop in the morning...

And so bright and cheerful at pick-up time!

Our crabapple tree is literally bursting with blossoms.  I just want to eat them up!

 

Here's one way you might save the spring beauty for awhile.  Betz White created this lovely pussy willow tree filled with brightly colored, felted-wool pussy willow buds.  Make one for yourself!

 

The 4 seasons are wonderful and all....but wouldn't it be nice to keep spring around just a little bit longer?

Win a Copy of the Bean Appetit Cookbook and Play With Your Food!

Do you have a picky eater in your house?  Yeah, I thought you did.  If you are getting a little desperate for ways to introduce healthy foods to your kids, then I recommend taking a look at Bean Appetit.  Bean Appetit: Hip and Healthy Ways to Have Fun with Food is a new cookbook for kids (and their helpful parents!) that encourages youngsters to explore new foods and flavors by creating playful food sculptures and play food-themed games. What better way to get kids excited about healthy eating than to let them play with their food? 

The recipe ideas in the book are incredibly creative and it helps that the photography is fab too.  Take the Campfire Crunch - who wouldn't want that for an afternoon snack?

 

And wouldn't it be fun to serve Mama Mato to a bunch of friends on a playdate?

 
Kids will also love the fun food activities and challenges like playing carrot stick Jenga, learning how to crack an egg without getting shell in the bowl and brushing up on table manners from other countries (you can slurp your noodles as loud as you want in Japan!)

Liam and I had a go at one of the recipes the other day.  We made Bug Bites....otherwise known as the dragonfly sandwich.  What do you think?

The authors of Bean Appetit, Shannon Payette Seip and Kelly Parthen, own an adorable kids cafe in my hometown of Madison, Wisconsin, called Bean Sprouts. I took my boys there and they ate snail sandwiches with grape kabobs and edamame.  Oh, and the lollipop cakes for dessert were a huge hit!  If all goes well, more locations will be sprouting up around the country soon...hopefully in a city near you!
 
Want to win a copy of the most fun kids cookbook EVER?  Leave a comment on this post telling me what you do to get your kids to eat healthy food and why you'd like to win this book!  I'll keep the giveaway open through midnight, Central time on Monday, May 3rd. For additional entries, you can follow me on my Mindful Momma Facebook page, follow me on Twitter or subscribe to my blog via RSS or email.  (Note: you must have US shipping address to win.) 

{Full Disclosure:  Bean Appetit is on my Amazon Affiliate list.  If you buy the book through the link on my blog I will get a teeny, weeny bit of money.  Also, I received a review copy of Bean Appetit from the publisher at no charge and the publisher is giving away a free copy to one Mindful Momma reader.}

The winner is commenter #17 - Jen who said her 2 year old daughter already loves to help her cook in the kitchen!! 

Happy Earth Day to You!

For weeks now, my In-Box has been absolutely overflowing with announcements and PR pitches about products and promotions for Earth Day.  Frankly, I'm a bit sick of it.  Earth Day isn't about buying stuff, it's about taking action to help the earth.  If you need to buy something in order to take that action (like a programmable thermostat or a reusable water bottle) then fine...but I don't think stocking up on discounted jewelry and clothing is really helping the earth much.

For me, Earth Day is a day to give thanks to Mother Earth for all that she brings us.  I will take special care to notice the blooming fruit trees and the chirping birds.  I will reflect on the eco-changes I have made this past year and think about what more I might do in the next.  I will engage my boys in a conversation about doing their part to help the earth. 

Instead of buying stuff on Earth Day, participate in an Earth Day activity!  There are plenty of Earth Day activities going on in the Twin Cities! (here's a listing of some of them)  My family will be participating in a neighborhood trash clean-up on Saturday.  I was planning to bike to school with my older son on Earth Day but realized he has a doctor's appointment....RATS!!

What will you do for Earth Day?

As a little Earth Day gift to my readers, I am giving away a signed copy of my book Practically Green: Your Guide to EcoFriendly Decision-Making.  Hopefully it will inspire you to make some earth-friendly changes in your life!  For a chance to win, just leave me a comment telling me what Earth Day means to you!  The giveaway will run through midnight, Central time on Tuesday, April 27th.  (only one entry per person please and you must have a U.S. shipping address) 

Making the Switch to Paraben-Free Beauty Products

Have you been following the Spring Cleaning Carnival over at Kitchen Stewardship?  So far we've learned about getting rid of antibacterial soap, gluten, plastic, refined sugar....and now it's my turn to talk about how to get paraben preservatives out of our daily body care routine!!  In my guest post at Kitchen Stewardship today, I explained what parabens are and why we don't want them in our products.  Now, I'm here to help you drastically reduce and possibly eliminate parabens from your home forever! 

And just to keep things interesting...we've got giveaways!!  Katie at Kitchen Stewardship is giving away two unique paraben-free lotions and I've got a gift certificate to a wonderful little soap company (paraben-free of course!) in the offing.  Details are at the end of this post!

Baby Steps

To begin your paraben-free mission, you need to know where parabens hide and how to recognize them.  On a product label you will find parabens listed as methylparaben, propylparaben, ethylparaben and butylparaben. They are typically found at the end of the ingredient label because they are added in small amounts as preservatives. 

A surprising number of personal care products may contain parabens, including the following:

• Lotions and creams (including sunscreen products)
• Bubble baths and liquid soaps
• Shaving products
• Deodorants
• Toothpaste
• Baby products including wipes and diaper rash cream

Check the ingredients lists on the products you have currently have at home to see whether or not they contain parabens....PRONTO!!

Kicking it Up a Notch

The next step is commit to switching over to paraben-free products wherever possible. Some people may decide to immediately toss any products containing parabens, others may choose to use up what they have to avoid waste.  It's really up to you.  My tendency is to use things up, unless it is something I didn't particularly like in the first place.

So you're ready for some new products....how do you know what to buy?  Start by looking at the label to see if it says paraben-free anywhere.  If not, check the ingredient list for the specific paraben ingredients that we talked about above. 

Finally, there are a couple of seals of approval that specifically ban parabens.  If you see these seals on a product label, you can be certain that there are no parabens inside!

• Natural Products Association
• Whole Foods Market Premium Body Care 
• USDA Organic Seal

You can also do your research at home by using the Skin Deep Cosmetic Safety Database.  Look up products that you have at home or are considering purchasing to find out whether or not parabens are on the ingredient list. 

Going All Out

How would you like to have complete control over what goes in your beauty and personal care products?  You can if you make your own!  It may sound intimidating but I'm telling you it's really quite easy!!  Here are a few tips:

• Recipes for homemade beauty products are easy to find both in books and online.  The book Natural Beauty at Home by Janice Cox is an especially good book chock full of enticing recipes.  I have checked it out from the library more than once!
• Most ingredients and supplies are readily available at natural food stores or co-ops but can also be ordered on line if necessary.  My local co-op carries many things in bulk like shea butter, beeswax, sweet almond oil and more.  I've heard that Mountain Rose Herbs is a fantastic online resource although I have not ordered from them myself.
• Keep in mind the shelf-life of your homemade products will be limited (typically 2-3 months) because there are no synthetic preservatives.

To get you started, here is a recipe from my book, Practically Green: Your Guide to Ecofriendly Decision-Making for a lovely shea butter body cream.  You will be amazed how easy it is to make and how luxurious it feels on your skin!  It makes a great gift too!

Shea Butter Body Cream

Ingredients:

3 T shea butter

4 T sweet almond oil

8 drops each geranium, orange and sandalwood essential oils

Heat shea butter in the top of a double boiler until melted.  Stir in the sweet almond oil.  Remove from heat and stir in the essential oils.  Pour into a glass container.  Yep, it's that easy!!

Next, dive in to some other recipes I've covered on my blog like this yummy chocolate facial mask, a soothing homemade lip balm and fun fizzy bath balls for the kids.

The Giveaways!!

What better way to move forward on your quest to Get the Parabens Out then to win some paraben-free products!  Katie has 2 very interesting lotion productsto give away - a hard lotion bar (an excellent plastic-free option!) and a product called shielding lotion from SkinMD.

My giveaway is a $20 gift certificate from a sweet home-based soap company called Cheeky Maiden Soap Company.  Missy, the chief soap maiden, sent me a bunch of samples and it's been super fun to check out all the different varieties!!  My favorites are the Bamboo Charcoal Detox and the Happy Thoughts blend.  She has lots of unique products including shampoo bars, foot scrub bars, pet soap on a rope, dental soap (yes, soap for your teeth!), laundry soap (soap nuts), baby soap, sugar scrubs, lip balm and a very nice Mango Body Butter.  Her prices are very reasonable but to top things off she has offered all Mindful Momma readers a 15% discount through the end of April.  Use the code MM0410 at checkout! 

For a chance to win this giveaway or either of Katie's giveaways, you can do one or more of the following:

1. Use the Linky to link up your own post about this topic!
2. Leave a comment on this post sharing what you are doing to get parabens out of your life.
3. Leave a comment on my guest post over at Kitchen Stewardship.
4. Leave a comment on Katie's review post.
5. Become a fan of my Mindful Momma Facebook page. *
6. Follow me on Twitter and tweet about the giveaway. *
7. Subscribe to Mindful Momma via email or RSS . *
8. Stumble or DIGG this post! *

(*Be sure to let me know in the comments if you have done this!)

The giveaway will be open until midnight, Central time on Sunday, April 25th and I'll post the winners by the following Tuesday.

Coming Up

Next week the Spring Cleaning: Get the Junk Out Carnival will be hosted by Lenetta of Netacow on the topic of food additives. I'm really looking forward to this topic - there is so much to know about what's in our food these days!

{Full Disclosure:  Cheeky Maiden Soap Company provided me with free samples to review and is providing a  $20 gift certificate to one Mindful Momma reader.}

Green My Parents - An Exciting New Campaign!

As parents it can be easy to assume that our children rely on us to teach them everything they need to know about life.  We sometimes forget how much they have to teach us!  That's why I am so impressed with a new environmental campaign called Green My Parents.  It is a youth-led movement with the goal of educating parents to make changes at home that will benefit the planet, help the economy and save them money to boot! 

5 amazing kids are behind the movement:

• Adora Svitak, a 12-year-old who is a published author and was the youngest speaker at the TED 2010 conference. 
• Jordan Howard, 17, a senior at Environmental Charter High in LA, Green Ambassador Youth leader, and prolific speaker and blogger who inspires at her blog jordaninspires.com
• Alex Loorz, a 14-year-old who founded Kids Against Global Warming as a 12-year-old. He is  the youngest trained presenter with Al Gore's The Climate Project.
• Ally Maize, who three years ago, as a 15-year-old started the Green Youth Movement
• Erin Schrode, a freshman at Columbia University and founder of Teens Turning Green

Starting on Earth Day these 5 kids will start recruiting more kids to help green their parents by showing them how to save over $100 per year by reducing energy consumption, water usage and waste at home.  The ultimate goal is to save over $100 Million in the next year! 

To launch the program, the group is hosting a webinar via The National Wildlife Federation's SchoolTube.com that starts at 1 pm EST on Earth Day (next Thursday, April 22nd).  If you have school-aged kids, please let your teachers know about this terrific educational opportunity! 

P.S.  They also have an e-book launching on Earth Day called Green My Parents.  Visit their website for more details.

Getting Kids in the Garden

Most kids in the US don't have a clue where the food they eat comes from. There's been a ton of press about this lately.  Have you heard? Watched?  Experienced? 

Jamie Oliver's new Food Revolution show has been getting a lot of buzz.  Have you seen it?  I don't have cable, but I've watched the trailer.  This video blew me away - these kids didn't even know the names of common vegetables like tomatoes!

My local public radio station, MPR, recently did a series called Fighting Obesity One Meal at a Time that talked about the problem of food illiteracy and ways to overcome it. The story mentioned a 9 year old boy who didn't know a potato when he saw one.  I have a 9 year old boy myself - one who not only knows what a potato looks like but has grown his own!  We're extremely lucky - I realize this - to have the luxury of both buying and growing all the healthy food we care to eat.

It's not that easy for most people.  The problem of food illiteracy has so many dimensions (income and education being the largest) and it's a huge challenge to fix.  As the MPR show pointed out, part of the problem is when parents don't know how to cook for themselves.  If they don't bring fresh produce into the home, kids aren't likely to learn what fresh produce is. 

One of the ways to bring kids a little closer to their food is to get them into the garden.  There's nothing quite like watching a plant sprout out of the ground, watering and weeding and eventually harvesting and eating the fruits (or vegetables) of your labor!  We have a little vegetable garden every year and my boys have been "gettin' in the garden" ever since they were tiny tots!

 
Don't have space for a garden?  See if there's a community garden nearby where you can rent a plot.  There might even be free opportunities to garden, like the amazing Youth Farm program that we have here in Minneapolis or a similar community program in your area.  Don't have time to garden?  Try a couple of container pots (great for herbs and tomatoes) or take your kids to the farmer's market for a little food growing education.

Do you let your kids help in the garden?  What else do you do to teach your kids about the origins of the food they eat?

The Green Moms Carnival is all about gardening season this month and Anna at Green-Talk is hosting.  Head on over there tomorrow to hear us exalt the joys of spring and share our green gardening tips!!

Waste Not, Want Not....From Carrot Juice to Muffins!

Fresh homemade carrot juice just can't be beat but I've always felt a little bit badly about all the leftover fiber that goes to waste.  You know, the stuff that's left around the edges of the juicer?  It gets composted of course but I hate wasting perfectly good food. 

 
So I decided to create a recipe for muffins that uses that up that fiber!  I took one of my favorite banana muffin recipes from a cookbook called Muffins by Elizabeth Alston that I've had forever (and was amazed to find is still available on Amazon), and made a few substitutions.  The result was delicious and I felt like a goody-two-shoes for using the whole carrot!  (Actually mine was a carrot & apple blend and you could use whatever fiber blend you happen to have.)

Carrot Apple Fiber Muffins

{use organic and local ingredients whenever possible}

1 large egg

3/4 cup packed light brown sugar

1 cup carrot/apple fiber from juicer (leftover from 2 large carrots and 1 med/large apple)

1/3 cup vegetable oil (I use canola)

1/2 cup orange juice

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup raisins, other dried fruit or chopped nuts

1 1/2 cups all-purpose or white whole wheat flour

1/2 cup oats

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

Heat oven to 375 degrees.  Grease muffin cups or use unbleached baking cups. 

Beat egg and sugar together in a medium bowl.  Add in carrot/apple fiber, vegetable oil, orange juice and vanilla and beat until well blended.  Stir in raisins.

Mix flour, oats, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt together in a large bowl.  Add carrot fiber mixture and fold in with a spatula until dry ingredients are just moistened.

Scoop batter into muffin cups.  Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until brown on top and springy to the touch.  Cool slightly before eating.  Enjoy!!

The Mindful Momma's Guide to Food Storage

Uh, oh.  I smell trouble.  The topic for the Spring Cleaning: Get the Junk Out carnival this week is about getting plastic containers out of your kitchen.  And my friend Beth @Fake Plastic Fish is hosting.  She doesn't have plastic containers in her kitchen. I do.

Not as many as I used to though.  Over time, as my plastic containers have cracked or lost their lids, I have tossed them and replaced them with more environmentally-friendly storage containers.  Here's what you'll find in my kitchen cupboard - keep in mind, there are pros and cons to each of the options:

• Glass - Heavy-duty glass containers like Pyrex are both microwave and freezer-safe but not all glass is that durable.  Be sure to check the label for usage advice. Glass containers are odor-free and clean up easily but can be a bit on the heavy side to carry to and from work or school.  I'm not comfortable sending glass containers in my kids' lunchbox and I notice that my husband doesn't take them to work either.
• Stainless Steel- Lightweight, durable and non-reactive, stainless steel is the superhero of food storage containers. The biggest drawback is that they are comparatively expensive.  My favorite stainless food container costs about $15 and you could buy a boatload of plastic containers for that.  My suggestion is to look for them on sale or put them on your holiday wish list.  My Mom gave my husband one for Christmas last year! 
• Ceramics - Make your dinnerware do double duty by acting as food storage containers too!  A salad plate makes the perfect lid on top of a cereal bowl.  I have a lot of ceramic ramekins that I use to store small amounts of food or sauces in the fridge.
• Plastic- If you already have plastic containers, I say keep on using them until they are cracked or badly scratched.  Just make sure they are BPA-free.  Polycarbonate plastic (the kind that has BPA) is hard, clear plastic that may or may not have a #7 recycling code on the bottom. Plastics #2, #4 and #5 are generally considered safer for food  storage. And remember, don't use plastics in the microwave!  Even though the company may say a container is microwave safe, heat causes chemicals to leach out of plastic and that's not a good thing.

Although I still use some plastic containers in the kitchen, I am inspired by Beth's commitment to live as plastic-free as possible.  Please read her post and other links about the topic as part of the Spring Cleaning: Get the Plastics Out carnival this week! 

Update:  after reading Beth's post I discovered she does still have plastic containers in her kitchen.  She just doesn't use them for food anymore. :)

What kind of containers do you use for food storage?  Are you completely plastic free, stuck on plastic or somewhere in the middle like me?

Tips from the Easter Bunny on Natural Egg Dyeing

A couple of lessons learned about natural easter egg dyeing....

• Boil the eggs with the dye ingredients to get brighter colors, faster.  I made the mistake of boiling the eggs ahead of time and then reading the instructions.
• The cold method (submerging pre-cooked eggs in cold dye) works fine but it can take awhile.  Turmeric (a spice) colored my eggs yellow pretty quickly, but with beets and cabbage, it took a couple hours of soaking in the fridge.
• If you are dyeing eggs with kids, you'll probably want to use the cold method but keep in mind that it won't work as fast as PAAS.  Plan another activity to keep the kids occupied while their eggs are coloring!
• Adding vinegar to the natural dye helps set the colors, however I noticed that my pink eggs (from beet juice) faded over time to a pinkish brown.
• The color you get from curry powder probably depends on the type of curry you have.  I saw a gorgeous orange egg dyed with curry but mine turned out yellow and since I already had yellow eggs from turmeric, I was less than impressed.  If anyone knows what variety of curry makes orange eggs, let me know!
• My chili powder created brown eggs, instead of the reddish tone I was hoping for.  If I had wanted brown eggs, I would have bought brown eggs.

What's your favorite natural egg dye?  Do you have any  tips to share?