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Greening The School Lunchbox On a Budget (& Dad’s too!)

November 18, 2011 The Natural Mammas 9 Comments

I am probably what you would call a born again natural mamma. At one point early in life I was way more natural than I am today and at some point in between I indulged in many modern conveniences with a tiny bit of admitted disregard. Being able to admit this is the first step to recovering some dignity. One arena in our house that was hard to wrestle back into shape was the lunch packing department and my struggle continues even today.

For the longest time, well for about 5 years, it was only my hubby and me and he packed his cooler everyday with weird blue ice packs from the freezer, plastic sandwich bags galore and usually a boat ton of soda (cause he used to be a soda fanatic). These were those aforementioned years of modern and wasteful conveniences that I or more representatively, we indulged in. I never paid much mind to the way he was filling his own lunchbox.

Once we had our first born, I started to notice what we were using and even more importantly what we were wasting money on to pack lunches and snacks. Immediate changes were made. We purchased stainless steel canteens for water, gave up soda, saved containers to re-use and eliminate the need for plastic bags and just made adjustments to do better by ourselves, our wallets and the environment.

We improved upon our lunch packing skills as the years, but here we are 5 years after our first was born and she is heading off to school each day with a packed lunch and once again, I was faced with challenges of keeping waste down, lunch items cold and a new added twist of dealing with “image” in the lunchroom. I am using “image” for lack of a better word, but we all know kids can be cruel and when you are on your first solo socialization adventure the pressure can be a bit much at times and lunch shouldn’t be one of those times.

I have been looking around at options to better green our lunch process for our Kindergartener. For starters, she likes her lunch cold. If her organic yogurt is warm, she won’t eat it. So, I didn’t really want to go with those weird lunch ice packs filled with, well actually I don’t know what is inside of them, so I discovered that I could make cute little tubes filled with dried feed corn (kind of like a corn bean bag?) that when frozen keep their cool long enough to keep her lunch chilled; easy enough.

Next was finding the right containers for holding snack size portions. We pack a lot of organic black olives, grape tomatoes, baby carrots and other live fruits and veggies as well as rice snack mixes, yogurts and the occasional natural cheese puffs. So the trouble with re-using product containers and packing a lunch box is size. To get a lot of snacks into a manageable size lunch bag, your containers have to be the right size. We did buy some BPA free plastic small Tupperware and they work well. In my search though I did come across these stainless lunch containers, from Eco-Lunchbox, that are pretty cool too. For us they weren’t in the budget at the time, but I still go back and look every now and again.

The next goal was to find reusable bags for some snacks to fill in those spaces between containers, but still not use plastic. After the first round of pricing, I was like okay…guess we’ll be making those and I found these great instructions for making reusable snack bags. But as a work from home mom, the time to craft my own never arrived so I finally broke down and looked again and found some that I really like and I think are reasonably priced on Etsy.

That is all the further I have come, so far. I am sure there is more I could be doing. So share your thoughts on greening the lunch packing experience and I guess I never said that we already use a cloth lunch bag and actually I still have my cloth lunch bag from when I was in school. It is a totally rockin’ 80s design, but I couldn’t convince my daughter to use it. For now, be green with lunch on the scene!

Eating Naturally, gallery

Planning Meals In Advance Helps You Eat Naturally For Less And Other Benefits Too

November 15, 2011 The Natural Mammas 1 Comment

Lets face it. Food is expensive; often even more so when you’re trying to eat naturally. Price is even a large reason many people give for not being able to buy the organic fruits, veggies and other foods they’d like to purchase otherwise. This means we’ve got to make the most of each and every item we buy.

For me, one of the ways I try to do that is meal planning. When I’m on my game, I plan the whole month at the beginning. It doesn’t always happen because sometimes, I just can’t get it together….but when I do it helps save money on the food budget in several different ways.

Ingredients aren’t wasted or mistakenly unused
Less trips to the store
Buying only what we need – no distractions!
Able to get dry goods in bulk
Making better use of leftovers and extra ingredients
I know what’s for dinner each night so feel less likely to come up blank or unprepared, cave, and just have Hubs bring home take out : )

All you need to do is sit down with a blank calendar (there are many possibilities here from paper to online programs), along with some cookbooks and other sources for meal ideas and come up with a plan for the month. Its a nice way to be sure to incorporate some of everyone’s favorites, and, you can even consider side dishes and other options for being sure there’s something for everyone at every meal time.

From there all that’s left is to create grocery lists so that you can pick up all the ingredients you’ll need each week. Then you can easily schedule ingredient prep accordingly too and make cooking even easier!

With this trusty calender full of meals and snacks you’ll get more variety in what the family eats, meals are easier and healthier and, don’t forget that lower grocery bill each week; which can make it more affordable to eat naturally.

Do you ever plan your meals? How do you go about deciding what to eat and creating your meal plan and grocery lists each week? Any other tips to help us all eat naturally for less? Share it all here by leaving a comment and getting the discussion rolling!

Eating Naturally, gallery

Pumpkin Season or Pumpkin Seasoning?

October 29, 2011 The Natural Mammas Leave a comment

What wonderful fun we had carving pumpkins this evening. We weren’t even sure we’d have pumpkins this year after battling the slugs in early spring, but low and behold Mother Nature blessed our garden with a select few beautiful pumpkins perfect for carving. While we harvested our orange giants a few weeks ago, tonight was the big event and the creative minds of a five and two year old came out to play.

Just as most childhood Halloween memories begin, the fun starts when the top of the pumpkin is opened to reveal nature’s bounty in seeds and what our family lovingly refers to as guts. While the children may think that the best part of the day has yet to come, I diligently separate seeds from pumpkins dreaming about my own favorite part of the event…the roasted pumpkin seeds.

I can’t quite remember if I loved pumpkin seeds as a child or if it is a taste that I developed during my granola hippy years, but roasted pumpkin seeds and even roasted squash seeds are one of my favorite fall snacks. I can still remember the first time I called my mom and asked her how exactly to make them and her recipe was, well deliciously simple with just roasting and salting. Needless to say I have grown and so have my tastes and I have experimented with several different seasonings to compliment the seeds already nutty flavor and it is those recipes that I’d like to share with you today.

First some quick tips on seed prep. I only learned recently that if you soak your pulpy seeds in water for a bit, it makes it much easier to separate everything. Soak them in saltwater for an hour then put them under running water as you work your fingers over them. The pulp almost falls right off of the seed. Of course then you rinse and dry the seeds. Okie Dokie! On to the fun stuff

We like to put honey on our seeds so that the seasoning sticks, but I have heard that others use oil. Whatever floats your pumpkin boat; as for pumpkin seed seasonings-here are a few ideas, but I encourage you to experiment on your own. Just add your seasoning then bake your seeds at 300 degrees for about 10-15 minutes.

Cinnamon delight-honey, cinnamon and sugar
Garlic-butter, garlic and sea salt
Hot-oil, cayenne, paprika and sea salt
Wowsers-oil, soy, ginger and red chili
Ginger-oil, ginger and orange zest
Cheesy-butter, parmesan and black pepper
All Natural-just some butter and salt do just fine to the already awesome flavor of roasted pumpkin seeds.

Don’t forget that pumpkin seeds and squash seeds are loaded with protein and fiber and make a great snack for giving a bit of extra energy into your day. They are also great in salads, on toast and anywhere else your taste buds can take you. Oh I just saw pumpkin seed brittle and think I may be trying my hand at that too. So happy harvesting, happy carving and even happier roasting your seeds.