Green Options

When I was a child we made sugar cookies every Christmas. As we waited patiently for the dough to cool in the fridge Mom would whip up the icing and divide it into tiny bowls. We were the colour consultants and we let Mom know when each shade was just right. When it was time to decorate she’d pull out baggies of colourful sprinkles and pour them into shakers for us.  Purple santas. Orange bells. Pink wreaths. These cookies were as Christmasy as they get. When we were done  we put our favourites in a special tin to make sure no guests got to them before we did.

Since this was one of my favourite Christmas traditions growing up, I was excited to keep it going with my own children. Though we kept to the program in previous years,  I made a few important changes this year. Not only did I use a whole wheat blend and cut out some of the sugar, I skipped the food colouring for the icing and experimented with natural colours.

When I was a kid we had a felt advent calendar. My mom always packed it away with the Christmas tree decorations, so every year when we put up our tree in mid December it was my job to pin the first two weeks of ornaments on the felt tree. For the rest of the month whoever got to the calendar first would pin up a new ornament. Not only was it part of our tradition, it was a handmade craft that my grandmother made. 

My own kids only know the store bought advent calendars. They expect chocolate.

Well it happened. The first snowfall of THE SEASON. As we nestle into our new home in Ontario, we must face the fact that winter Tis the season more often than Tis not. Ditto for the white stuff, which will soon become brown stuff as everyone likes to remind me.

Though my husband and I have little use for snow (a White Christmas Day would suffice) our kids are excited to have a new use for their sand toys. The other day as I stepped away from the window to grab the camera and prove to my friends in the west that we are in fact nuts, my daughter scooped up a generous helping of snow and licked her mittens right down to the wool. I laughed and told her to stick her tongue out to catch some flakes, knowing her little brother would watch and do the same. But, as I snapped the photo the green meanie suddenly came over me…Is it safe for kids to eat snow?

Okay, so here in Canada, Thanksgiving has come and gone. Our fall feast comes before Halloween, which means most of the turkey leftovers have disappeared. There is one big advantage to having Canadian Thanksgiving before the American holiday. If for whatever reason we miss getting together with our family or friends, we simply catch up a few weeks later, choosing to give thanks to the earth again in November as our neighbours to the south do. For some reason, this happens almost every year.
At our house, belated Thanksgiving wouldn’t be the same without Aunty Andy and her homemade Maple Apple Sauce. The original recipe was from Canada’s very own Chatelaine magazine. Auntie has adapted it over the years, whipping it into its current perfection. Serve it with a little ice cream or granola and you’ve got yourself the perfect Thanksgiving dessert, breakfast, or post turkey snack.  Print this recipe and keep it close to the stuffing one you always look for.

How long must your banana be? Well, according to the current EU regulation, anything shorter than 14 cm is unworthy of sale. (I’ll save you all the conversion…that’s 5.5 mushy inches.) Pears are a different story. They must have perfect skin free of all blemishes in order to be deemed good enough for European markets. Okay, what happens to the rejects?

There’s something about November that always make me a little crazy, and I’m not talking about leaf blowers. It’s all that Christmas cheer!  If you walked into a mall today or turned on your TV, I’m sure you noticed that all of the ghosts and goblins have already been replaced with happy elves and bobbles. In fact, even before the pumpkins started rotting and the costumes went back to the thrift shops, the jingling had already begun.

With my Scroogy wait-’til-December attitude you can imagine how irritated I was to find a Christmas library book in my daughter’s school bag on Halloween Eve. “Why didn’t you pick a Halloween book?” I asked, as she placed the Night Tree on my lap. She shrugged and looked at me as if it was no big deal. It wasn’t until after reading the charming tale that I forced myself to apologize.

My children love balloons. When I was first potty training my daughter I tried the sticker chart and the potty songs and videos, but nothing worked. A few months later I tried balloons as rewards. Before long our whole house was full of balloons and our daughter was using the potty on her own. This was before I learned the dangers of balloons.

The honey bees are dying off around the world, and yet still many people have never heard of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). This week the Italian government banned several pesticides that are thought to be linked to the honey bee decline. More research (funding) is required to find out exactly what is causing the disappearance.

During Honey Week on our sister site, Meridith Melnick wrote:

“One-third of the food we consume comes from pollinators. Bees are responsible for pollinating almonds, apples, soft fruit, and berries among other crops. Without them, we will lose more than honey (a tragedy in its own right!), we will lose a large portion of the biodiversity we now enjoy on our plates.”

The crayon craft we did today started as a research project. I was looking for a way to recycle or reuse a very old muffin tin. Not only did I find a craft for reusing my worn tray, I was able to make use of our collection of broken crayons. My kids enjoyed the fun and learned that it was an earth friendly activity, each in their own age appropriate way. 
How to Make Crayon Doodlers (Recommended for Age 3+)

Peel the paper off of old broken crayons (This may sound tedious but I found it to be a great stress reliever!)
Preheat oven to 300
Help your children separate the broken crayons into fun colour combos in muffin trays
Turn heat off and place muffin tin in the oven
Bake for about ten minutes (or until liquid forms)
Place tray in the freezer for about half an hour
Take out of freezer until doodlers reach room temperature
Flip tin over and bang out doodlers (onto a soft surface such as your hand or lap-not a counter)
Get colouring!

But, you may need to experiment a little. . .

I think “muffin” was one of my son’s first words. He says it even before he fully wakes up from a nap and it’s hard to keep him down to one per day. I’ve been baking muffins for many years, but I only learned recently that the trick to jumbo muffins is to fill the tins over the top (not 2/3 full as most recipes suggest).

My favourite recipes are those that can be adapted in so many ways that they almost never taste the same. To keep it healthy (and kid friendly), whenever a recipe calls for flour I use a combination of whole wheat, all purpose, and wheat germ, plus some flaxseed. I keep a large bag of this combo flour in my fridge and use it in cookies, pancakes, bread, and muffins. My husband was recently diagnosed with high blood pressure, and was told to cut salt out. I was surprised to learn that you could buy no sodium baking powder and baking soda. We use Featherweight. 

My preschooler is going through a meataterian phase (can a phase last two years?). She won’t eat fruit or vegetables in their bare naked state. These muffins have both, plus no added sugar or salt. I call them Cinnamon Muffins, because my daughter associates cinnamon with yummy. (When it’s time to add the cinnamon, make sure your picky eater is around to help!)

Recipe for Jumbo Cinnamon Muffins after the jump.