a peek inside the fishbowl

This is a difficult time of year for families in need.

The Ottawa Food Bank needs donations of cash and non-perishable food items.

Top requested items include baby formula and diapers, canned fish and meat, personal hygiene products, peanut butter, and Thanksgiving foods (cranberry sauce, stuffing mixes).  Although it’s not on the Food Bank’s official list of suggested donations I like to give coffee and tea. I enjoy coffee and tea (let’s be blunt, I LOVE my coffee and tea) and I know other people do too … but they’re expensive, so I bet it’s appreciated.

Can you imagine what it’s like to not be able to feed your family, especially now that the days are getting colder?

Some Food Bank facts to chew on:

• The Ottawa Food Bank provides 43,000 people each month with emergency food assistance, 40% of whom are children.
• The Ottawa Food Bank supports more than 135 food programs throughout the National Capital Region.
• 12 tons of food leaves the Michael Street warehouse each and every working day.
• $1 donated to the Ottawa Food Bank generates $5 worth of food into the community.

So the next time you’re grocery shopping at Metro or Loblaws, just buy a few extra items and drop them off in the marked bins.  It’s hard to believe that something that simple can make such a big difference.

I have been experimenting with my flash so I can take portraits indoors without the photos looking flashy or overprocessed. I need practice, but for practice I need models.

I know you’re wondering … why would I need models when I have two beautiful children?

Well, I’ll tell you. It’s because my models start out happy and reflective:

… which then turns into boredom:

… which very quickly turns into annoyance and moody faces:

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s October. Those of us with school age children have been dutifully (or grudgingly) packing lunches for about a month.

Making lunches doesn’t bug me anymore. It used to, but at some point I decided to stop letting it annoy me so much.

So what if my kids want to eat the same thing every day?
So what if they don’t want to eat leftovers from the night before?
So what if it’s a boring chore?

I’ve written about this before, but I wanted to address it again because I recently caught wind of someone complaining about the litterless lunch concept the other day. This person’s specific complaint was (a) that it is too hard to pack a litterless lunch (b) that the kids lunchboxes come home filthy (I’ll address this second point in a minute).

We’ve been packing litterless lunches since the girls were in kindergarten. I will confess to a teeny bit of mounting frustration with people who insist they can’t do it. IF I CAN DO IT ANYONE CAN DO IT. I’m just as tired and grumpy as the next mom. I’m in a rush too. I’d also like to be drinking a latte and reading the paper – but I can’t. There are lunches to make!

A litterless lunch is a packed lunch that doesn’t result in any lunchtime garbage: no wrappers, no single-use disposable containers, no baggies, no cans, and no plastic wrap.

The other added benefit of the litterless lunch is that the kids end up eating less processed food.

Here’s a typical lunch in our house:

1) Sandwich
The girls faves include various combinations of cheese and lettuce and cold cuts, and jam. They also really like tortilla spread with cream cheese and sprinkled with chopped red pepper. Sandwich is made and placed into a reusable container. Sometimes I toss a frozen bagel into a container and put some jam or cream cheese in a separate small one. Sometimes I pack the pita and hummus. Sometimes I pack tomato soup. Sarah likes cold rice. Result: no Ziploc or other disposable sandwich wrapping is used.

2) Fruit
Apples, pears, other seasonal fruits are washed and placed in the lunch bag. Grapes are washed and put into a reusable container.

3) Beverage (we don’t give them juice in the afternoons, just milk or water)
Milk is poured into a reusable drinking box. I pack a lunch-sized frozen cold pack along with it. Mark recently figured out that if you wrap an elastic around the milk container and the cold pack it stays very cold. Result: no cans, juice boxes, milk containers, end up in the garbage or the recycle bin.

4) Other
This is where many parents lose confidence in the litterless lunch because they wonder what else they can put in their kids lunches. Some parents get into the unfortunate habit of sticking a mini-chocolate bar or bag of chips in their kids lunch every day. This is really not necessary. Not every meal needs to include a treat or a sweet finish. We also don’t need to buy individual serving sizes of various traditional lunchtime foods, like mini-yogurts or fruit cups, boxes or raisins, puddings, or packages of cookies. Emma and Sarah both get yogurt and applesauce and even cookies or goldfish crackers or chips in their lunches, but I take it from the larger package and put it in a smaller, reusable container. It works really well and it really and truly doesn’t add significant amount of time to the lunchmaking routine. If I feel inclined I might portion off the yogurt/applesauce/crackers the night before and just do the ol’ grab ‘n go the next morning.

Yogurt tubes, mini-candy bars, mini pretzel/cheese dip things, pudding cups, fruit roll ups and granola bars strike me as totally unnecessary.

If you’re concerned about the lunch box coming home with puddles of yogurt and spilled milk inside, talk to your child and your teacher and find a way to get your kid to rinse their containers out before putting them back into their lunchbag. The girls started doing this with their milk containers. No more stinky milk!

Anyway, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the litterless lunch idea. Do you do it? Can you do it? Would it be too difficult to try? Can you endeavour to try to replace one thing, like trading your sandwich baggies for a reusable container? Or cutting out the yogurt tubes?

Here’s the other benefit of the littlerless lunch: it’s cheaper. And you can’t disagree with the bottom line.