cooking for our children

Hello again. I recently made an important change in my way of thinking, and it is amazing how much positive change I can make when I really want to. It seems so hard until I do it, then it's like, what took me so long, this is awesome! Here was my problem: I was so preoccupied with all of the things I thought I should be doing "for me," that I couldn't enjoy the things I needed to do, namely cook for my family. Every evening I would stress out about how I was going to make time for cooking dinner when the house is a mess and I have a project I want to finish, or I would struggle with inspiration for what to make, but mostly it just seemed so freakin hard when I had so much on my mind. I reminisced to a time when I loved cooking, when it was exciting to try new things, and I decided to bring that back into my life. I decided to value the process of cooking again, and put all of those other things aside and out of my mind at dinner time. I recently read this by Yoni Freedhoff and this by KJ Dell'Antonia, both of whom agree that the importance and benefits of cooking for one's family shouldn't be overlooked.

I thought there had to be a trade off between doing what I like to do or having time for myself and doing what needed to be done for my family. I resented being the one who had to make dinner every night and the feminist in me insisted that I am more than a cook and maid. After a lot of soul searching, and a lot of emotional experiences, I came to a very important conclusion. My children are so lucky to have a mother who loves to cook, and who wants to create an environment in which they can thrive, and I am so lucky to have a husband who supports me being home and caring for my children so that I don't have to rush to prepare meals every night of the week. I am so glad that I spent the time as a young adult learning about nutrition and cooking meals from diverse cultures. I am glad I have training in education and science so that I recognize learning opportunities in every day life. I have to love providing for my children, everything I've ever done has led up to this, and they are my biggest contribution to the future. So, I decided that there was no trade off. I still need to have time for myself, and if I am strategic about it, I will get it. But, cooking a meal for my family isn't taking time away from anything important, because that is the most important way I can spend my time. Caring for and spending time with my family is the ultimate "me time," really. And I've noticed that since I've dedicated the time and mental space to cooking with the kiddo, I've been better able to focus on other things as well. Mindfulness reaches into all aspects of my life, every time I practice it.

I'm saying all of this to say that I have fully embraced cooking lately. I have to wonder what life is like in a home where adults don't cook. I've heard people with children say they don't cook, and I imagine their kid in college eating donuts for breakfast and hot dogs for dinner and it makes me sad. But, at the same time, my mom cooked every day and I didn't learn how to cook until I moved out of the house. I'm determined to teach my little one how to cook, and maybe I can snag the interest of the big kid too. The big kid likes baking, but when I'm making dinner she's usually nowhere to be found. My big kid is mostly vegan, so I've been cooking a lot of beans and veggies lately, and she needs to learn how too before she's out there in the world eating vegan mac and cheese and oreos for every meal.

Most meals in our house start with the cutting of the onions and garlic, because I put onions and garlic in almost everything, and my little one announces, "Cut onions! Chair!" I have a stool that she stands on next to me while I prepare food. I give her a little plastic knife and she pretends to cut. The only thing her knife will actually cut is mushrooms. She will also spend as much as 20 minutes deep in concentration, peeling an onion. And, she does this fake cry while she rubs her eyes and says, "Onions hurt." It's adorable. She loves to count brussels sprouts. Any time I make something that involves mixing, the little one is the mixer-upper. She will stop what she's doing and come running into the kitchen when I say it's time to mix it up! She expects me to add sugar to everything, and does a little dance when I do. It took a while to get the concept of waiting for something to cook, but I think she's figured out that the reward is well worth the wait.

I'm sharing these little anecdotes in hopes that it will inspire someone to cook a meal with their toddler or young child. Even if it's something simple like noodles and sauce or pancakes (recipe below!), let them get involved. It's a little scary at first, with knives and hot things, but those things provide learning opportunities. My little one learned that big knives are off limits, and only uses her own. She also knows when things are hot, though that took a long time to learn because I never let her touch anything hot in the kitchen. It is definitely harder to cook with a little one in the kitchen, and it can be frustrating at times, but if you're prepared, patient, and you set aside a little extra time, it's totally worth it. There are so many opportunities for teaching language, counting, measuring, and even reading if kids are older, not to mention cooperation, following directions, and a love for creating yummy things!

Here's our pancake recipe, one that's fun to make together. I memorized this recipe from the Joy of Cooking years ago, and I've adapted it a little bit.

Mom's Attempt at Healthy Pancakes

makes about 6 good-sized pancakes

Dry Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups flour*
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons (or more**) ground flaxseed
(sometimes I add a teaspoon of cardamom too, because I love it so)


Wet Ingredients:
3 tablespoons Earth Balance (or butter)
1 1/2 cups soy milk (or any kind of milk)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup fruit and/or nuts (optional)

Procedure:
1. In a big bowl, mix up the dry ingredients. Let the kiddo pour them in and give them free reign with the whisk. Sure, some may fly out of the bowl, but a gentle reminder that the stuff stays in the bowl, and a quick demonstration of how to calmly whisk should get them on the right track. If you have a particularly feisty kid, it may take longer to get used to this.

2. In another microwave safe bowl, melt the Earth Balance or butter in the microwave for 30 seconds.

3. In the bowl with the Earth Balance, add the milk first, then the eggs and vanilla. The milk cools down the melted Earth Balance so the eggs don't cook in it, at least that's my theory. Again, give the kid the whisk! Be sure to use lots of encouraging words!

4. Next comes my kid's favorite part, mixing it all up! Add the wet stuff to the dry stuff, then add in any fruit or nuts or both, and mix it up. Don't overmix.

5. Heat a skillet to medium heat, and I use a soup ladle to add one pancake at a time to the pan, or let your kid do it. If you have a griddle, you can do more that that! Let the pancake cook completely on one side. This should take a few minutes at least. If it's browning too fast on the first side, turn the heat down a little. My mom told me to wait for the bubbles to pop, then turn it over, but that doesn't always work. An option here is to add blueberries once you've poured the batter in the pan and it's cooked for a minute. If you do this, and you're careful when you flip it, you can make smiley faces with the berries. If you have a bigger kid, give them the spatula and a stool and let them flip it! I usually let mine hold the spatula with me while I'm holding her. The second side usually doesn't take as long to brown as the first.

6. When you've cooked all the pancakes, then comes the best part....smother them in maple syrup and eat them up!

*You could use whole wheat flour to make it even healthier, but I don't like to because it has a gritty taste to me. Buckwheat flour is awesome though!

**Sometimes I add more flaxseed, and I have to add a little more milk so it's not too thick.

staying sane

Hello again, it has been a long time, and the ideas for this blog quickly took the back burner to the demands of a growing infant and a big move with lots of changes. In the meantime, I have been through quite a lot on a personal level, and I have fought battles I never would have imagined would be so difficult. I wrote about giving up alcohol, and I was successful for a time, but I did relapse, just because I didn't know what else to do. I have learned that I am a person who will always deal with an unhealthy anxiety level. I know I'm not the only one with social anxiety, and there are tons of self-help books about how to deal with it, but I'm not always the best at implementing the methods that I know will work. I know that daily exercise, eating well, and hanging out with friends can help to stabilize my moods and make me more resilient, but do I do those things? Not necessarily...in fact I think for some time I was doing the opposite of what I knew I needed, and every time I would have an emotional breakdown, I would blame it on the fact that I'm not getting enough exercise or I didn't eat well or I haven't had enough social time. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Sound familiar?

Every social encounter I engage in results in a neurotic analysis of every detail of my memory of the experience, and sometimes the memory is so vivid that I actually respond to it out loud, asking myself, "why did you say that?" Sometimes the anxiety is so distracting that it becomes impossible to think about anything going on in front of me, and my mind would immediately begin to think of ways to self-medicate. I could buy some cigarettes, I could have a drink...and then those thoughts take over. The anxiety paralyzes me, and then the guilt about how I wasted all this time obsessing takes hold, and then any little thing that needed to be done seems impossible because I was beating myself up so much that I'm exhausted. I'm told this is a familiar pattern for many people, and that the stresses of modern society increase our baseline anxiety levels so that it is becoming more common for people to experience chronic stress symptoms, which can actually destroy parts of your brain over a long term, making it more difficult to manage the anxiety. This is the pattern I am trying to break. I'm trying things. Things that I've known about for a long time, but haven't been able to do before. Things that are meant to strengthen the parts of the brain that are damaged from long term stress and alcohol abuse. I am making a decision to stop self-destructing, which would be the rational decision.

Thus, I will soldier on with this blog, and share my rational thoughts on parenting, not only my children, but also parenting myself. Isn't being a parent all about forgiveness, understanding, acceptance, love, generosity, connection, protection, and encouragement? Well, then I deserve a little rational parenting myself! I know I'm not the only one who struggles, especially having small children, to balance my devotion to my family with my own personal needs, and I know from my experience that at times I can't see the balance ever tipping in my direction, and it is very difficult to see anything but impending disaster in every aspect of my life. But, meanwhile, every day does bring me joy if I open my eyes to see it.

I think the irony lies in the fact that I named this blog "rational parenting" and then proceeded to be a most irrational person in my moments of weakness. I want to address the process of overcoming irrational fear in my life while also bringing information on how to manage being a parent without losing it completely. Really, I just want an outlet for my thoughts on life, so here goes...!

Is processed food ever really all-natural?

I have to admit they got me.  I used to be 100% against buying Tyson or Purdue chicken (unless I was poor) because I know what they do to the chickens.  Then, they started putting green labels on the packages and putting the words "all-natural" on the label. I let my guard down.  I started buying them more often, with the added bonus that they are way cheaper than the organic chicken down the aisle.

Lately, it seems every label has some iteration of "natural" printed on the label, even some of the sugary cereals I was sure were invented in a laboratory with the specific goal of hooking young children into a lifetime of processed food addiction.  So I began to wonder...what exactly is "all-natural" in the eyes of food producers and marketers?  Unfortunately, I discovered it isn't anywhere near the same thing as what "all-natural" is in the eyes of food consumers.

Like for me and the chicken, for many people, "all-natural" means "not bad for you."  But, refined sugar and salt, even high fructose corn syrup, are considered "natural" by the FDA.  For meat and poultry, "natural" means they didn't do anything to it besides cut it off the animal, clean it, and package it.  It has nothing to do with the antibiotics and whatever else they add to those poor animals' feed, or whether the animal is eating what it would "naturally" eat.  This is misleading, and there are many people who have been trying to get the FDA to change (or actually make) rules for labeling things as "all-natural."  Currently, they hold the same stance as in 1993 (before the big health food industry boom):

"...FDA has not established a definition for the term natural or its derivatives.  However, the agency has not objected to the use of the term on food labels provided it is used in a manner that is truthful and not misleading and the product does not contain added color, artificial flavors, or synthetic substances."

As consumers and parents, how do we protect ourselves and our children from this marketing dilemma?  One solution is to only eat whole foods.  Wouldn't that be great?  But, there is a reason processed foods exist.  We want them.  Our kids want a bowl of cereal for breakfast, not a bowl of millet.  I was lucky enough to convince my daughter from a very young age that oatmeal was the best thing ever for breakfast, but even then I put brown sugar on it.  Because it tastes good, and sugar is all-natural, right?  Even though she loved oatmeal, we still had a meltdown in the grocery store over sugary cereal when she was 2, and once she was old enough to make a logical case for the occasional treat of Captain Crunch, I started to give in and buy a box every now and then.  People who aren't as crunchy hippie as I am (and I'm not that crunchy), who feed their kids what they got fed, what almost every kid got fed until this health food craze got up and running in the 90s, see the label "all-natural" and somehow think they're doing their kid a favor, when in fact its the same sugary, salty crap food it was back when I was eating it as a kid.

I hope they figure out a more honest way to label these foods, and I am glad consumer research and advocacy groups are out there fighting the ignorance.  PepsiCo had to remove the all-natural label on Naked Juices.  Frito-Lay (also a PepsiCo company) is in litigation over labeling products that contain GMO products as all-natural.  Ben and Jerry's (owned by Unilever) removed the all-natural label from many of its products that contain partially hydrogenated soybean oil, among other synthesized ingredients.  General Mills was sued over the use of the all-natural label on Nature Valley granola bars that contain maltodextrin, which is made in a factory much like high fructose corn syrup.

Until it is all worked out though, I will try to (most of the time) follow two rules: (1) If the ingredients list has things I can't pronounce or don't sound like food, I don't buy it.  You still have to watch out for some of the secret culprits, like autolyzed yeast protein or hydrolyzed protein (both equivalent to MSG), caramel color (processed with ammonium compounds that produce carcinogens), or evaporated cane juice (same as refined sugar).  And (2) If I can make it myself using actual food that comes from plants and animals, I either make it at home or I don't eat it.

Sometimes, though, a soda, or even better, a bag of Oreos is in order.  I don't look at the label or the ingredients.  I just eat them, with milk, until I can't eat anymore...when my child isn't around, of course.  And then I forgive myself and move on.


If you want to know more, some people involved in spreading information about this issue are:

Center for Science in the Public Interest www.cspinet.org
Natural Products Association www.npainfo.org
www.foodnavigator-usa.com

And the FDA's statement on labeling "natural" products:

http://www.fda.gov/aboutfda/transparency/basics/ucm214868.htm

Cord Blood Banking: The Reality

crochet umbilical cord by crochet artist Lauriane Lasselin

While researching cord blood banking, I quickly realized there is a lot of misleading information out there.  The private cord blood banks capitalize on parents' fears, and lead parents to believe that their peace of mind is worth the thousands of dollars they will pay to bank their child's cord blood.  One company even claims that cord blood has been used to treat 80 diseases.  I looked deeper and I will do my best to explain the real possibilities and limitations of cord blood banking.

I think the most misleading thing that hit me in the face after discussing cord blood banking with my husband, is that cord blood stem cells are basically the same as stem cells in your blood marrow.  They are hematopoietic stem cells, not embryonic stem cells.  I guess I was naive at first, because I assumed the reason for all the hype was because the stem cells were embryonic.  Then it clicked...why would there be embryonic stem cells in the umbilical cord?  There aren't, they are only in the embryo.  So, the stem cells in the umbilical cord only give rise to different types of blood cells.  The good thing about hematopoietic stem cells is that they self-renew, and transplanting a small number can repopulate the receiver's deficient blood cell population, after chemotherapy, for example.  However, they have limited potential uses, and 80 diseases is definitely a stretch.

That leads to the next most misleading thing...they say that storing your child's cord blood can help if your child has leukemia.  Unfortunately, this is just flat out wrong.  The cord blood can help if your child is healthy and a sibling has leukemia.  But leukemia is cancer of the bone marrow stem cells, which are the same as the cord blood stem cells.  If your child has mutated, cancer-prone hematopoietic stem cells, it is likely genetic, so it stands to reason that you would not want to transfuse more mutated, cancer-prone cells from the umbilical cord into your child.  But, if you find out your child has leukemia, a sibling's cord blood may have healthy hematopoietic stem cells that match, and could be useful.  Even among siblings, the chance of a perfect match is low, with estimates ranging from 25-30%.

When compared with bone marrow transplants for leukemia, umbilical cord blood transplants are not consistently more successful.  In general, mortality and occurrence of graft-vs-host disease were similar, and in one study, mortality and recurrence of leukemia were slightly higher with umbilical cord transplants.  The main advantage that I discovered is that umbilical cord blood could have one or two mismatches in human leukocyte antigens (HLAs) and have a similar result as completely matched blood marrow.  But, the biggest predictor of success in treating leukemia had nothing to do with the source of the transplant, it was how early in the disease progression it was treated.

A major drawback to umbilical cord blood transplants for leukemia is that there just isn't enough of it in the umbilical cord after birth.  Adults typically can't use umbilical cord blood, unless they are able to obtain a double dose.  Finding a double dose of matching cord blood is not easy, especially for African Americans.  People from African ancestry have more diversity in HLA types, and even more new combinations of HLA types are present in people with both African and Caucasian ancestry, or various other combinations of ethnicities.  In addition, African Americans make up a smaller portion of the population, and are less likely to donate bone marrow or cord blood.  This leaves them without many options if they need any kind of transplant.

As many as two-thirds of cord blood samples that are donated are not usable because they are of insufficient quantity or quality, and are thrown out.  You could imagine that the same would be true for privately banked cord blood.  So, the way I see it, you could pay thousands of dollars only to find out that your banked cord blood is useless when you need it.

But, what about all those other diseases?  Researchers are looking in to using cord blood to treat things such as cerebral palsy and autism.  From what I can tell, nothing major has been accomplished as of yet, but people will always hold out hope.  The more probable advances in cord blood therapy are technologies for multiplying hematopoietic stem cells so they can be used even if the sample is small, and the culture of mesenchymal stromal stem cells from the umbilical cord tissue.  Mesenchymal stromal cells have the potential to be used for tissue regeneration and immunotherapy, but much work is yet to be done.

So, in the end, the private cord blood banks aren't wrong completely...there is a chance that by the time your child is grown up, advances in technology may very well open doors to very useful therapies using cord blood and tissue.  In the same way, advances in technology will likely open doors to useful therapies using stem cells from other sources as well.  It doesn't appear that the umbilical cord is some sort of holy grail.  My advice?  If you're going to privately bank, do your research to make sure it is a solid company that isn't going anywhere (I think the saying "you get what you pay for" applies here), and be sure they save the blood and the tissue of the umbilical cord.  The more humanitarian and useful decision, however, is to donate your child's umbilical cord to a public bank.  Sure, the chances of your child's cord blood being usable are small, but your child could very well save someone's life.

Sources and Further Reading:

Ballen, KK, et al. 2013. Umbilical cord transplantation: the first 25 years and beyond. Blood 122: 491-498.
Laughlin, MJ, et al. 2004. Outcomes after transplantation of cord blood or bone marrow from unrelated donors in adults with 
leukemia. New England Journal of Medicine 351: 2265-2275.
Rocha, V, et al. 2001. Comparison of outcomes of unrelated bone marrow and umbilical cord blood transplants in children with acute leukemia. Blood 97: 2962-2971.

From the World Stem Cell Report 2009, published by the Genetics Policy Institute.
http://www.worldstemcellsummit.com/files/2009_report/4-8_2009.pdf
Great article on parents.com with more detail.
http://www.parents.com/pregnancy/my-baby/cord-blood-banking/the-cord-blood-controversy/