Mindful Momma

Lessons from the Lorax: 5 Ways to Help Your Kids "Speak for the Trees"

Unless you are living on a different planet, you've probably heard that Dr. Seuss' The Lorax is coming to town. Everywhere I look, there's another advertisement or product endorsement mentioning it. The adaptation of the classic book The Lorax by Dr. Seuss is about to hit theatres on March 2nd and I can't wait to see it!

When Universal Pictures asked me to be part of a 12 stop, Lorax inspired, blog tour, I was happy to oblige because there are so many lessons to be learned from this story, which manages to be both beloved and a little bit controversial at the same time.

 

 

The Movie

The Lorax, in typical Dr. Seuss style, is full of silly characters with even sillier names. From what I've seen in the trailer, it has huge appeal to both kids and adults alike. Still, it deals with a very serious, environmental topic - what will happen if we use up all the beauty in our wonderful world? I'm so glad to see this message being broadcast to a national audience. Let's hope people listen.

The Lesson

The lesson that stands out for me is that we must all do our part to preserve this beautiful planet we are so lucky to live on. I think it is critical to start at an early age, teaching kids to take responsibility for how they treat the earth. Help your kids "speak for the trees" by establishing eco-minded chores and actions like these:

Conserve water - Teach kids to turn off the water when brushing their teeth and to take shorter showers.

Save energy - Make kids responsible for turning off the lights when they leave the room. Show them how you lower the heat at night or when you leave the house.

Recycle - Let kids help sort the recycling (with supervision for younger kids) and take it out to the curb on recycling day.

Pick up trash - Get kids involved in community garbage pick-up events. Teach through example by picking up trash you see around your neighborhood and disposing of it properly.

Get in the garden - Involve your kids in growing something, whether it is a garden at home or a community plot; one tomato plant or a huge veggie patch!

The Blog Tour

Yesterday, my friend Lori from Groovy Green Livin shared her Lessons from the Lorax post.  After me, there are only 4 stops left, including Sommer at Green & Clean Mom tomorrow. Check out all the stops on the blog tour - each one has a different perspective!

2/20 New Green Mama

2/21 The Green Parent  

2/22 Eco Child’s Play

2/23 The Smart Mama  

2/24 My Plastic Free Life  

2/27Retro Housewife Goes Green

2/28 Groovy Green Livin

2/29 Mindful Momma

3/1 Green and Clean Mom

2/2 Moms Going Green Blog

2/3   Kitchen Stewardship

2/4 Nature Moms

Do you plan to see The Lorax movie? How do you teach your kids to "speak for the trees?"

(Full disclosure: I was compensated by Universal Pictures to write this post. All opinions are my own.)

 

FruitShare is 100% Delicious!

Imagine a big box of organic fruit arriving on your doorstep one day...with a flyer inside talking about the farmers that grew the fruit and a handwritten thank you from the owner of the company. This happened to me and let me tell you, it was quite a treat! It didn't take long for me to break into those juicy blueberries!

The box came from FruitShare, a Minnesota based company that delivers certified organic fruit to lucky customers all year long. The mission behind FruitShare is to connect organic family farms to consumers who want great tasting, in season, pesticide free fruit. FruitShare works with organic growers all over the country, with an emphasis on local, then regional, then national. The fruit is shipped direct from farm to FruitShare and does not spend time hanging out in a warehouse like most conventional fruit. They make it easy by delivering direct to your home, workplace or school.

Wouldn't this make a fantastic birthday, new baby, housewarming, thank you or teacher gift? They even have a fundraiser program - I'd much rather sell organic fruit than wrapping paper or chocolate bars!

We loved our FruitShare fruit! I bet you would too! To entice you to try them out, I can offer you a 5% discount on your first order. Just use the code MINDFULMOMMA at checkout. Trust me, it's 100% delicious!!

Have you ever bought a fruit share or fruit CSA?

{Full disclosure: FruitShare sent me a free box of fruit in exchange for my honest opinion}

Daily Eco-Deals: Feast or Fatigue?

Do you go wild for daily deals or do you find them overwhelming? I subscribe to a bunch....but I have to admit....I've never bought a thing from any of them. I find I just can't keep up with all the emails. On any given day I might take a peek at one or two and while I love checking out cool, new products, unless I have a specific need for something, I am not likely to press the BUY button.

Green, health or cause-minded consumers have no shortage of daily sites to choose from. Here are the eco-minded daily sites on my radar:

Eco Mom  - An kid-focused eco-conscious shopping site offering organic food, skincare, toys, clothing, baby gear, home safety products and more. The nice thing is that you can still find the product (albeit at full price) after the daily deal is over. Sample Daily Deal:  LOVE reusable stash-it bags at almost 50% off + free shipping.

Blissmo  - Organic and eco-friendly products at up to 70% off. The company mission is to promote sustainable consumption for a happier, healthier people & planet. Deals last for 2-3 days but once the deal is done, it's done.  Sample Daily Deal:  3-Tier Tiffin with Carrier Bag and Bamboo Utensil Set from To-Go Ware:  $53 Value for $25 (53% savings).

Green Deals -  Discounts and deals from local and national green online businesses approved by Green America.  Deals appear to last for about a week.  Sample Daily Deal: 33% off All-Natural Shampoo, Conditioner, and Lotion from Sonoma Soap Company.

Daily Grommet - An online marketplace with a daily feature created to help people buy products and services that align with their values. You won't necessarily be getting a special price but this is a really great place to find unique products that you won't find anywhere else. Features include products for green and eco-living, health and wellness, food and drink, fair trade gifts and even donations to charitable organizations.  Sample Daily Feature: Moultonology Garden Bon Bons - seed balls that look like chocolate truffles - you have to see them to believe!

Milkshake - Another feel-good marketplace selling "goods that give back".  Milkshake invites readers to discover products, people, causes and companies that are making a difference and then inspires them to take action. Similar to Daily Grommet, the focus is less on the "deal" and more on spending your dollar wisely. Sample Daily Feature: Blackberry Farm Pickles and Preserves - straight from a working farm in the Great Smokey Mountains of Tennessee.

Other daily deal sites like Groupon and Mamapedia occasionally offer eco-friendly products and locally targeted deals but you have to wade through a lot of stuff you probably don't want or need before you find anything of interest.

What daily sites do you subscribe to?  Have you ever actually bought anything?  Do you think they provide a helpful service or just encourage consumerism?

Getting Kids To Eat Their Veggies: Root 4 Kids

For many health-conscious parents, life without Annie's bunnies or mac & cheese would be very sad indeed. What they might not know is that Annie (yes, there is a real Annie!) has been advocating for healthy food for over 20 years!  She started small with the goal to create healthy food that Moms felt good about feeding their families.  While the company has grown by leaps and bunnies, they have remained true to their mission over time....as evidenced by their new Root 4 Kids campaign.

Root 4 Kids is a movement intended to inspire kids to dig real food.  Both literally and figuratively.  Why?  Because too many kids out there have never tried a fresh pepper, much less planted one.  The goal of the campaign is to get 1 million kids to eat and plant new veggies from now through harvest 2011.  To achieve this goal Annie's has partnered with the National Farm to School Network, a nationally recognized, collaborative non-profit that connects schools with local farms to provide healthy school lunches, classroom education and hands-on learning through school gardens.

Get started by joining the movement and planting a veggie in the virtual garden.  Then visit the Eat, Love, Play and Dig sections of the website to learn more about what you can do to spread the veggie love.  You could even win a Farm to School program or garden for your school! 

Does your school have a garden or any type of nutrition education for kids?  Do you have any tips for getting kids to dig real food?  Please share!

(Did you have a chance to check out any of the Parent Earth videos I blogged about last week?  Pretty cool, huh?  Stay tuned for part 3 of my little series on Getting Kids to Eat Their Veggies - coming tomorrow!)

A Day at the CSA Farm

Most Fall Sunday afternoons in this testosterone-rich household are spent watching guys running around with footballs.  Thankfully yesterday, the family team of choice had a day off and I convinced my boys (2 kids + Dad!) to head out to the farm where we buy our vegetable CSA share for their annual Fall potluck. 

Common Harvest Farm is out near Osceloa, WI - about a 75 minute drive from our house in the Twin Cities.  It was a gorgeous day for a drive and a picnic - sunny, clear blue sky, about 60 degrees - my idea of the perfect fall day!!  When we arrived, we were met by Margaret, one of the owners, who gave us the run-down on what was going on (and how to find the compost toilet!) 

We plopped down on our picnic blanket, listened to the lively music and feasted on an incredible array of healthy dishes including a yummy kale & fennel salad that John made.

My favorite part was seeing the long rows of vegetables - especially the purple & green kale!

And check out all the squash in the storage shed - there was tons!!

Liam's favorite part was the animals.  We took a ride on a wagon pulled by horses and got to visit the pigs.  Liam loved the pigs!

Drew spent most of his time playing with his pigskin (football) and sampling desserts....but here he is checking out the CSA box assembly line:

I couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to live on a farm.  It's SO different from our urban life.  It's beautiful but it's hard work.  I'm hoping to bring the family out for a work day sometime - to give them (and me!) a taste of what it's really like to work on a farm.  Hmmmm....better check that football schedule....

Random Updates

Um, where has summer gone??  How is it that the beginning of the school year is only 2 weeks away?  (my kids are starting a week before labor day this year - outrageous!) Just thought I'd fill you in on a few random things since I clearly won't have time to write a separate post on each.

The Garden:  Remember when I was lamenting my pest-ridden garden?  Well, I'm happy to say that my broccoli is flourishing and I've got a bumper crop of basil!!  But have you seen the price of pine nuts lately?  I think I'll be using walnuts in my pesto next time.  How is your garden growing?

The CSA:  Joy of joys - we got sweet corn in our CSA yesterday!!  A huge wind storm damaged the corn crop at our CSA farm in Wisconsin and I wasn't sure if we would be getting any.  It's kind of wild having a vested interest in the well-being of a farm that I have never even visited (yet).  Each week we get an update on what's coming in the box and what's going on at the farm.  This week we learned about various ailments that have hit the vegetables:  purple leaf blotch that causes onions to go rotten and alterneria blight that has hit the tomatoes.  Right now I'm feeling very thankful to the farmers who grow my organic vegetables and I'm more than happy to take on my (very little) part of the risk.

The Green Moms Carnival:  I'm hosting this month and the subject is back-to-school!!  Do you have any ideas to share about eco-friendly ways to head back to school?  Feel free to contact me and submit a post for the carnival -I'd love to hear from some new voices!  It's going live on Monday, August 23rd.  

(Speaking of back-to-school, be sure to check back here next Monday for a review and giveaway of the Healthy Snacks To Go eBook from Katie at Kitchen Stewardship.  It's a back-to-school must!)

The House: We are gearing up for a major remodel of our 100+ year old house. I almost don't even want to tell you about it because it involves lead paint and some eco/financial trade-offs.  Thankfully the lead paint will be gone soon and the plan is to re-side our house in eco-friendly Hardie board.  We'll be adding a lot of insulation too.  Meanwhile, does anyone have a recommendation for a good vacuum with a Hepa filter? 

On another note, I did a radon test in our basement awhile back and it came back a bit above normal.  They suggested doing a 3 month test so I did.  Just got the results back and they came back normal!  Big sigh of relief.  (FYI - you can order test kits online and they are super easy to use)

That's all for now!  See you next week.

Sticker Shock

Do you mind if I vent a bit this morning?  I'm still recovering from the sticker shock I experienced yesterday during a trip to the co-op for the upcoming week's groceries. 

I spent a whopping $182.89 (after deducting $5.50 in coupons) and holy crap, I just don't feel like I bought all that much.  Granted, I did splurge for some wild-caught Alaskan salmon for dinner last night.  (And it was deeeeelish...served on a bed of home-grown spinach and baby lettuces.)

But I keep thinking about all the things I didn't buy because I just couldn't justify the cost.  Like the local, organic asparagus for $6.59/pound!!!  It would have been great with the salmon, but I opted for green beans instead.  The rosy red organic peppers were calling my name but at $7.99/pound I figured I could do without.  My kids would have been thrilled if I had brought home some organic berries, but at $6.99 for a 1/2 pint of raspberries, $5.99 for blueberries and $4.75 for strawberries I decided to take a pass this time and wait (not very patiently) for our garden strawberries to ripen.

Now I know one could argue that I shouldn't be lusting after foods that are not in season here in Minnesota.  But I am.  A true locovore I will never be.

Do you ever get frustrated by the sticker shock of healthy food?  Are prices for organic sometimes out of reach?  Trust me, I love shopping at co-ops and natural food stores because I know the food is consistently healthier for my family and for the planet than what I can find at a conventional grocery.  Plus I prefer to spend my money locally whenever possible.  But I can't always do it.  Sometimes I have to compromise.  And when I do I get frustrated. 

Part of my anxiety about it is because I've been reading the book The Conscious Kitchen by Alexandra Zissu.  It's a fabulous book (which I will be writing more about in another post) but as I'm reading, I'm thinking heck, I really should be doing a better job at buying food....there's lots of room for improvement here....blah, blah, blah.  And then I head to the store all determined to buy everything organic and totally freak out about the prices!!  Does this ever happen to you?  I hope I'm not the only one to get a little cranky sometimes about trying to live consciously.

BTW - I'm hosting a book discussion about The Conscious Kitchen tonight as part of the Friends of the Saint Paul Library's Eating, Reading and Living Well book series!  If you're local, I'd love to see you there!  I promise not to be cranky. :)

{full disclosure:  The Conscious Kitchen is part of my Amazon affiliate program. Buy the book through the link and I will get a few cents out of the deal!}

How Does Your Produce Grow?

Pesticides.  They may help keep the bugs away but they are not something we want to be ingesting ourselves.  Inevitably though, pesticides find their way into the produce.  Even when we wash them it's not possible to completely get rid of pesticide residue.  That's one of the reasons why it's important to buy pesticide-free as often as possible. 

Want to read more about getting rid of pesticides?  The Get the Junk Out Carnival over at Kitchen Stewardship is covering the topic of pesticides this week!  Read all about how to "Get the Pesticides Out" on Katie's blog and then hop over to Heavenly Homemakers for details on growing a pesticide-free garden yourself.  Plus there's a giveaway for some organic gardening supplies!

Also - you might want to familiarize yourself with the updated Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce put out by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) for 2010.  I was intrigued to notice a few changes to the list from last year: 

New to the Dirty Dozen:  Blueberries, Spinach and Potatoes

Off the Dirty Dozen:  Lettuce, Carrots and Pears

New to the Clean 15:  Cantaloupe, Grapefruit and Honeydew Melon

Off the Clean 15:  Tomatoes, Broccoli and Papaya

Now this doesn't mean you should immediately change your shopping habits.  The list changes a bit with each new year of data and just because something is OFF the Dirty Dozen doesn't mean it is pesticide free.  In fact, if you look at the full list of the 49 fruits and veggies tested, lettuce is the 13th worst item and carrots are the 15th. 

How do you manage pesticides in your diet?  Do you use the Dirty Dozen & Clean 15 lists?  Do you have a pesticide-free home garden?  Do you purchase a CSA? 

I tend to focus on the fruits & veggies that I buy most often and buy those organic almost all the time - like apples and carrots (yes, even though carrots are off the dirty dozen!)  As for the rest, I buy organic as often as possible but if I have to grab something conventional I don't sweat it too much. 

In the summer, we have a small home garden where we experiment with different things and get the kids involved.  My husband just built me a new raised bed for Mother's Day!!  And we also just joined a new CSA.  It's called Common Harvest and it's based in Osceola, WI.  I'm super excited to be part of this CSA that has been around for 20 years!!  And of course, I'll hit the farmer's markets now and then when I need to supplement.  Clearly, it's much easier to eat pesticide-free in the summer than in the winter, at least here in Minnesota.

{image from RaeA's photostream on Flickr}

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?

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!!