I have loved reading the food chat, and I hope that the conversation continues. I will post the penne bolgnese recipe soon (it was really good!), but right now it is 5 am and the lights are off, so I just wanted to say that all of this puts me in mind of a line from one of my favorite folk songs (thank you Dan Zanes!) “Hungry babies must be fed!” Read more

Okay everyone.It’s time to fess up…Last week, Mary Alice challenged all of us to an honest food log of 5 days of our children’s/family’s meals. What a great test this was for me. To see my kids’ meals in written form was incredibly illuminating, insighting some pleasure and some shame. The beauty of such an endeavor, though, is for all of us to be REAL and life-supporting to one another! I can’t wait to read your thoughts. Here’s our list... Read more

I took Gianna (age 4) to gymnastics last week. As we waited for the class to start a new girl and her mother entered. I introduced myself and the mom started peppering me with questions about the class. I was answering them to the best of my knowledge when suddenly the baby started to cry, and Charlie (age 2) made a mad dash for the bathroom. As I yelled for him to stop, she glanced down at Gianna, who was... Read more

We’ve hit this topic a little in our email discussions about midwifery, but I wanted to revisit it more generally. What’s with the larger-than-average number of Catholic moms who harbor a suspicion against the medical status quo? I wouldn’t pin myself as a “granola” or “homeopathic” mom, but this weekend when I found myself formally declining Pedialyte solution during a late night visit to the emergency room with a 105-degree 18-month-old Bean, I had to stop and wonder. It’s just... Read more

Since we are all talking about what we are feeding our families, I am wondering if anyone does a rotating meal plan. I’ve seen lots of versions on-line. Some moms use a 3 week rotating schedule, some a monthly schedule, some cook and freeze for weeks at a time with tired and true (and easy) recipes that take a lot of the guess work out of meal planning and grocery shopping. At this stage in the game, we don’t do... Read more

For the past couple of nights, my almost 4 year-old C has been calling out in his sleep, “Mommy, mommy” in such a sad, almost pathetic, tone. It’s heart-breaking, at least for this mommy, and the reason is that I fear that I’ve been a bit too harsh with him over the past couple of days. I’m usually a fairly calm, upbeat person, but over the past couple of days I have been “laying down the law” and in the... Read more

These conversations about food are challenging; feeding a growing family is a big part of a mother’s job, and picky eaters, dietary restrictions, and environmental concerns make decisions seem so complicated! In this month’s Domino magazine there was a woman who tried to eat locally for a month and wrote about the fact that it was hard and expensive but also delcious and satisfying. In O! Magazine, there was a woman who tried to “do everything right” for a month... Read more

I just finished reading Fast Food Nation, and the book was quite disturbing. One of the most upsetting parts–the gory details of the U.S. beef industry. And now we have the largest beef recall in American History. See story here: Huge Beef recall stems from California plant The beef industry regularly mistreats cattle and serves meat tainted with e-coli and other diseases. The entire system is set up with a drive for higher productivity, and higher profits, at the expense... Read more