At our local elementary school, we recently began a program called Cancel-A-Car that encourages families to take action at home to offset carbon emissions from cars. After the school-wide launch assembly, where a mama polar bear and her cub discover that their home is melting, the kids were excited to learn what they could to to prevent global warming. My kids are taking shorter showers, using reusable Sigg water bottles and encouraging their teachers to recycle more in the classroom.

With the global warming assembly fresh in my mind, I jumped at the chance to review a children’s book about a polar bear cub for KidsCuisine . Knut – How One Little Polar Bear Captivated the World arrived within days, and my kids grabbed it with enthusiasm and ran to the sofa so that we could read it together. Before I got there, they were laughing hysterically at the photographs of little Knut eating a boot, just like a teething puppy. They quickly became engaged as I read them the story of how this little bear was rejected by his mother in a Berlin zoo and was raised by a human foster-father. The duo became the main attraction at the zoo and emerged as a symbol for a greener world. Scientists have issued warnings that the polar bear will soon become extinct if proactive measures to protect the environment are not taken. Knut has become an inspirational icon and his story raises further awareness of the issues of global climate change.

By the time we had finished the book, we were all in love with Knut. The kids couldn’t stop talking about the school assembly about global warming, Knut, and what else we can do to help preserve and protect habitat for his wild cousins. We enjoyed reading the How You Can Help section in the back of this book and discussed additional ways that we might be able to make a positive difference in the world. For starters, when we move to our new house, we plan to make it energy-smart. We will start a new compost area, plant some of our own food and tell our friends and family how they can make a difference too.

It felt like a good parenting moment – snuggling with my kids on the couch, reading a fantastic book, and talking about saving the world. What could be better?

My friend at Crunchy Domestic Goddess turned me on to the Earth Hour 2008.  If everyone turned off their lights, even for one hour, that we could reduce greenhouse gases and raise awareness about global warming.  So simple.  So obvious.  Time to mark your calendar:  Sunday, March 29, 2008 is Earth Hour 2008.

During Earth Hour 2007, Sydney made a powerful statement about the greatest contributor to global warming – coal-fired electricity – by turning off its lights. Over 2.2 million Sydney residents and over 2,100 businesses switched off, leading to a 10.2% energy reduction across the city. What began as one city taking a stand against global warming caught the attention of the world.

In 2008, major cities around the world will participate in Earth Hour at 8pm on March 29. Earth Hour is the highlight of a major campaign to encourage businesses, communities and individuals to take the simple steps needed to cut their emissions on an ongoing basis. It is about simple changes that will collectively make a difference – from businesses turning off their lights when their offices are empty, to households turning off appliances rather than leaving them on standby.

Here are some tips from my friend:If your kids are still up at 8 p.m., you can make Earth Hour into a fun family event.

• Light some candles (out of reach of the kids)
• Have a “camp out” in your living room
• Play a game like Hide and Go Seek
• Talk about your day
• Talk with your children about why you are turning off your lights for an hour
• Try to do their normal bedtime routine in the dark or by candlelight
• Go outside and look at the stars

And if your kids are NOT still up at 8 p.m. (lucky!), then by all means, enjoy a nice quiet candle-lit evening with your significant other.  Other ideas for activities are up to you…
Will you pledge to turn off your lights for just one hour?

• Sign up for Earth Hour and then tell a friend or two. Together, our small actions can make a big difference.

Earth Hour doesn’t have to end at 9 p.m. on Saturday, you can incorporate it into your everyday life by doing little things like:

• turn off lights when you leave a room;
• switch to compact fluorescent light bulbs;
• turn off appliances when not in use;
• unplug things like cell phone chargers, the toaster, microwave and TV when they aren’t in use;
• use less hot water;
• switch to green power.

Every little bit helps to reduce global warming.

Hope you’ll join me and millions of others in the dark on Saturday! Don’t forget to sign up so you are officially counted.

When I found this article on Culinate, I knew that I was in love.  So eloquently put, I had to share directly with you.  For more inspiring articles, recipes and opinions, please stop by and take a look.

Too many options, too much junk food, By Kim Carlson

Recently I attended a meeting with fellow parents of teenagers where we were asked what practical know-how we hope our children will gain in the next five years.

Progressive and sensible, my fellow parents tossed out such ideas as “Learn to vote,” “Figure out birth control,” and “Balance a checkbook.”

When it was my turn, I said, “Learn to feed themselves — to cook and buy the right food.”

I couldn’t be sure, but was that the sound of two dozen eyes rolling?

Because we clipped along — “Understand rental information,” “Learn to drive,” “Figure out taxes” — I didn’t get to explain myself. But I’ll bet there was more than one parent who wondered, “What did she mean, ‘learn to feed themselves?’”

Food, after all, is everywhere. Eating requires an appetite, but it hardly takes knowledge. Right?

Wrong. Michael Pollan has made that clear.

One of the great paradoxes of our time is food: We produce more food than ever on this planet, and still there is starvation. But at the same time obesity, with all the health problems that accompany it, has reached epidemic levels. The food that’s available to many of us often is “not fit for human consumption,” as nutrition expert Walter Willett says. As a result, an increasing number of us are becoming ill because of what we eat or the frequency with which we eat it.

One fat, juicy quarter-pounder with fries and a soda every few weeks won’t kill you. But one a day just might.

To raise a child in this era of abundance and obesity is to experience things our parents and grandparents could not have foreseen. Things like cutting back on snack time, which has happened in Aliza Wong’s son’s Texas school. Things like BMI report cards, which (according to a report last summer in the New York Times) many school districts are sending home to parents. (What’s a BMI report card? A account of where your child falls on the body-mass index scale, a comparative measure of height and weight.)

Cutting back on snacks and sending home BMI report cards are just two of the ways schools are trying to wage war against obesity. Unfortunately, many schools are still serving unhealthy lunches.

Fortunately, there are exceptions. Here in Oregon, the state government recently passed a farm-to-school initiative; in Portland, all 10,000 hot-lunch-eating elementary-school students were recently given a slice of roasted beet at lunchtime. The beets, grown on a farm just east of Portland, went over so-so, depending on whom you ask.

Slabs of cold beets, I think, may be particularly challenging, although chunks of roasted beets tossed with a little shallot vinaigrette and a sprinkle of blue cheese? Nothing better. (Then again, I wouldn’t have thought so as a third-grader.) As school district official Nikole Williams (who runs the Harvest of the Month program) said, exposure is part of the strategy.

But while obesity is one reason to teach kids about food, there are other important reasons as well. After all, who are the future stewards of our farmland? Who’s going to pass food-friendly legislation in 30 years? Who’s going to feed our grandchildren?

Sydney Spiesel, writing on Slate a while back, told the story of a Chicago pediatrician named Clara Davis, who conducted studies nearly a century ago in which orphans were given an assortment of foods to eat. Davis found that even though on any given day the children might not eat a balanced diet, over the course of several days they would. She concluded that, left alone, children would choose the diets their bodies required.

But here’s the catch: The orphans were not offered sweets (except fruit) or foods high in fat. And of course, they weren’t exposed to TV food ads or given soft drinks or chicken nuggets. One can only wonder how the results of the study would have skewed if such popular 21st-century standards as Hot Pockets or Lunchables had been among the choices. Even if long-term testing like this were still being done, it would be almost impossible to control for such pervasive phenomena as advertising or high-fructose corn syrup.

(A health provider in Canada has sketched out a typical “high-sugar day” for a hapless 21st century teenage boy in Canada. He ate almost two cups of sugar, all of it hidden in other foods and drinks — in other words, none of it the visible white stuff.)

Spiesel’s concluding advice on Slate was to give children a balanced diet and then stand back, bite our tongues, and let them choose what to eat. But I would argue that we can’t bite our tongues. We need not lecture or be punitive, but we should constantly encourage our children to eat whole foods, to question the value of the foods they like (as well as the advertising that surrounds it), and to see the big picture of food.

We have to give our children the skills to feed themselves well — to shop and cook with authority — and encourage them to place a concern for food at the center of their lives.

At the same time, we adults have to check ourselves: Are we honing our own food smarts and modeling good-sense eating?

Parents can’t take on these challenges alone; there are too many other adults with stakes in kids’ diets. There are many important reasons to help our children develop good food sense. We all need to look out for the kids.

“My Bag and Me” is a new book, released from Penton Kids Press just in time for Earth Day, 2008. Shaped like a grocery bag, this board book is just the thing to get toddlers excited about going green at the market.

This story follows a little boy on a shopping trip with his mother and clearly shows his pride when he is able to hand his reusable bag to the checker and say, “Paper and Plastic no more!” Stored in the back of this book is a small reusable and recyclable bag that your own child can bring along while shopping.

500 billion plastic bags are used globally per year, and they take 1000 years to break down when discarded. The accumulation of these bags in our landfills is staggering…not to mention the fossil fuels that are consumed in their creation. It is shocking that stores pretend that these bags are “free!” when these facts are taken into consideration!

“My Bag and Me” is a fun and creative book that introduces young children to how they can be stewards to our earth and prevent further contamination our planet, one bag at a time.

I have a new favorite in the Online Cooking world. Culinate is a meeting place of food professionals and aficionados, and their articles inspire me, both in the kitchen and out. Here is one of the first articles that I read there, and had me instantly coming back for more.

Creative Sack Lunches for Kids
Reprinted from Culinate, By Keri Fisher

The worst thing about living in a communal household with a combined seven children is, without a doubt, packing lunch. Most mornings find me standing in front of the refrigerator, trying to figure out what I can pack that will make all the kids happy. Actually, happiness is a lofty goal; I’d settle for just finding something they’ll all eat.

Thankfully at the moment, only four of the kids need to bring a lunch. But just try to get them to eat off the same menu: Ronan’s school doesn’t allow peanut butter or nuts in any form, Declan likes turkey but not roast beef, Erika likes roast beef but not turkey, and Hilary — well, Hilary doesn’t eat much.

To top it off, none of the kids like sandwiches. (How is this possible? Who doesn’t like sandwiches?) And there is no way I am going to pack four different lunches for four kids.

I have my standby staples — organic cheese sticks, tubes of organic yogurt, Annie’s cheddar bunnies — but these always make me feel guilty. I want to nurture the kids, to cook for them, so feeding them prepackaged yogurt and cheese (even if they are organic) is, to my mind, only a short step from Lunchables. But “cooking” and “lunchbox” don’t often go hand in hand. The kids’ favorite foods – pancakes, pasta, mashed potatoes, gnocchi, scrambled eggs, sausages or hot dogs – aren’t easily packaged. (Yes, I know, we’re talking very advanced palates here.) If I could figure out how to make these foods portable, I’d be in business.

The solution? Foods that, like sandwiches, hold up well under transport, don’t require much (if any) assembly, and are satisfying eaten cold as well as warm.

My first foray into creative sack lunches focused on quiche. Forget all those 1980s slurs on quiche and girly men; the truth is, quiche is nothing more than scrambled-egg pie. And what kid doesn’t want pie for lunch?

When I first started making quiche, I played it safe and put in some strips of American cheese slices. (So sue me; the slices were organic, at least.) Since then, the kids and I have expanded our repertoire, and I’ve found that simple combinations of flavorful ingredients work best — smoky turkey and sharp cheddar, for example.

I love quiche because it meets all the essential sack-lunch criteria: it’s eminently portable (it fits nicely in a lunchbox), and it can be eaten at virtually any temperature with no utensils necessary. Though at home I encourage knife-and-fork use with quiche, at school the kids eat their quiche slices just like pizza triangles.

This meal-in-one-hand approach to lunches inspired my Frog in a Bog Muffins, a blatant ripoff of the traditional English dish called toad-in-a-hole. The English version consists of Yorkshire pudding wrapped around a sausage; it’s kind of like pigs-in-a-blanket on steroids. Wrap meat in pastry and you’ve got something kids will love. Which is why it makes sense to have an American version, in miniature, for tiny hands to hold.

My version replaces the English Yorkshire pudding (an airy popover flavored with beef fat) with cornbread, and the greasy pork sausage with leaner turkey sausage. The cornbread — slightly sweet and cakey, therefore perfect for kids — is baked into muffins, with chunks of the turkey sausage pressed into the batter just before baking. The muffins rise up around the sausages, leaving the sausages to peek out like, well, little frogs in a bog.

Featured Recipes:

• Frog in a Bog Muffins
• Smoked Turkey and Cheddar Quiche
• Baked Pita Chips and Purple Dip

Another thing I’ve learned about kids is that they love to dip. Whether it’s baby carrots in dressing, French fries in ketchup (or even mango in ketchup, as my nephew Jonah prefers), or pasta in sauce, kids simply like to be in control of their food. So, I’ve started sending the kids in with my version of chips and dip: toasted pita chips with ‘purple’ dip. Essentially a black-bean dip (which turns a lovely shade of purple when puréed), the kids like the smooth texture and mild flavor. And for dessert, honeyed yogurt makes a great dip for fresh fruit.

These lunches have gone a long way towards assuaging my guilt, which makes it easier to send the occasional cheese-stick-and-yogurt-tube lunch when I run out of muffins or quiche. But the truth is, just once in a while, I wish they’d eat a friggin’ sandwich.

Cookbook author Keri Fisher (One Cake, One Hundred Desserts) has written for Saveur, Gastronomica, and Cook’s Illustrated. She lives outside Philadelphia with her husband and two sons.

Ever since I was invited to become a contributor to KidsCuisine.net, my children have loved their new role as Taste Testers. They wait eagerly by the mailbox to see if samples of fruit or yogurt snacks have arrived. Even when we aren’t reviewing foods for a specific assignment, they ask if I can write down their opinions on other recipes, snacks, baked goods and restaurants!

Yesterday, they tore open the wrappers of the some new FruitaBu Organic Smoooshed Fruit Flats with relish! Between bites, they offered their commentary and asked questions about the ingredients of their snack. Ari insisted that his Strawberry fruit flat tasted like apples – and when I told him that the first ingredient was “organic apple puree,” he said, “I told you so.” He thought that these snacks would be delicious cut into tiny pieces and served over ice cream. Amelia, the more practical child of the two, thought that the individual serving sizes and packaging would make these more ideal to eat on the go, instead of at home.

As we talked about the Strawberry Fruit Flat, and I asked the kids how they thought the snack got its bright red color. Ari hoped that the color came from the Strawberries, and Amelia hoped that these didn’t contain food coloring, like some other snacks that we have looked at. We were happy to see that the coloring came from real fruit – Elderberry Juice!

As soon as the kids finished tasting Strawberry, they rinsed their mouths with a long drink of cool water, and pounced onto the Raspberry sample. They loved the sour flavor and the real raspberry taste. Ari said that it was Good, and Amelia thought it was Fabulous!

My only constructive feedback? I would prefer if there were an alternative to the plastic packaging that is wrapped around each fruit flat. Overall, however, we really enjoyed these snacks. They contain 1/2 serving of fruit in each snack and had a delicious flavor. When you are craving a sweet treat, this is a nice option…and is a lot healthier than reaching for something less healthy, like a candy bar or cookies.

It happened! Finally! A cookbook for fun, delicious AND healthy recipes for kids – that uses an honest to goodness approach to feeding kids real foods, as they were meant to be. The Toddler Cafe, by Jennifer Carden, is a breath of fresh air when it comes to the world of kids cookbooks. I own a company that teaches healthy cooking classes to children, so you can believe me when I tell you that the overwhelming majority of cookbooks “for kids” aren’t worth your time. Most of them focus on “kid food,” a concept that I find offensive to children. Why should they be doomed to a menu of hot dogs, pb&j and grilled cheese, when they could be eating tantalizing recipes like those found in The Toddler Cafe: Treasure Triangles, Mango Fandango, Pinto Panzanella and Knock Knock Gnocchi?

The Toddler Cafe offers fun, delicious and creative recipes that will tempt even the pickiest of eaters. Jennifer encourages families to cook and eat healthy foods together, and to enjoy the process of being creative in the kitchen. The recipes contain fresh ingredients and lots tips on how to stock a pantry so that families can prepare these recipes on a moment’s notice. There is even an organized grocery list template in the back of the book to save families time while shopping!

My children, ages 5 3/4 and 7 1/2 stood in the kitchen with me, ready to help, as I prepared Treasure Triangles for us to eat with dinner last night. My son smashed bananas and my daughter pinched the corners of puff pastry, trapping the delicious filling inside. They took turns brushing an egg wash on the dough to make it shiny for its debut from the oven. They gazed through the dimly lit glass of the oven door, waiting for the tops of our triangles to become golden and wondering how long they would have to wait for a taste.

It wasn’t long before there were puff pastry flakes littering the top of our table and the kids were asking for seconds…and thirds…and fourths! My daughter admitted that she felt nervous to taste the recipe because it contained black beans. But she said that when she tried it, she loved it – “I don’t even taste the black beans, I just taste warm sweetness, and want to eat more! Can I have the leftovers in my lunch tomorrow at school?” My son exclaimed, “Wow! Look inside – I got the luckiest one! I can see a bean!”

Treasure Triangles
From The Toddler Cafe, by Jennifer Carden

2 Tablespoons butter
2 bananas, sliced in rounds
1/4 cup diced onion
One 15 oz. can black beans, drained
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
One 16-ounce package frozen puff pastry, 2 sheets
1 cup shredded Monterey Jack or mild Cheddar cheese
Egg wash: 1 egg beaten with 1 Tbs. water

1. Heat the butter in a medium saute pan over high heat. Add the bananas and saute until golden. Remove the bananas to a bowl.
2. Add the onion to the saute pan and cook for 3 to 5 minutes, until clear and softened. Add to the bananas.
3. Add the beans to the bowl. Using the back of a fork or a potato masher, mash the bean mixture to a coarse paste; season with the salt and cool.
4. Preheat the oven to 425. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or spray it with cooking spray.
5. Unfold each puff pastry sheet on a lightly floured cutting board. Cut each piece into 9 equal squares. Place 1 heaping tablespoon of cheese in the center of each square. Place 1 tablespoon of filling on top of the cheese.
6. Fold 1 corner of the dough over the filling to the opposite corner, forming a triangle. Using a fork, seal the edges of the dough. Arrange the triangles on a rimmed baking sheet; brush with the egg wash. Bake the triangles for about 20 minutes, until golden brown and puffed.

Tip: Put the finished faw triangles in the freezer for 5 minutes before cooking. The colder the dough, the more beautiful the finished product.

Our family loved this recipe, and we can’t wait to eat our way through the rest of this book!