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Katie never quite appreciated the work that went into feeding kids until she had to do it herself, first as a nervous new mom — Can a baby really nurse for 20 hours straight? You betcha! — and now as an older and hopefully wiser mother of three. But whenever she feels like getting dinner on the table is an obstacle on par with getting a 2-year-old out of her Christmas tights on the hottest day of the year, she thinks of her own mother who managed, somehow, to simultaneously raise nine kids and cook at home nearly every night. In her own kitchen, in southern Westchester, she has since discovered the beauty of two things she swore she'd never serve HER children: frozen waffles and five-minute fries. So along with her journalist husband and mac-and-cheese zen master, Katie feeds a picky 5-year-old, a try-almost-everything-once 3-year-old, and the easiest to feed, at least simplicity-wise — a 5-month-old baby. Their 10-year-old German shepherd mix is the only adult in the house who likes a messy eater.
E-mail Katie Ryan O'Connor at kmryan@lohud.com
Colleague and foodie extraordinaire Liz Johnson has a great reader-submitted recipe for zucchini pesto on her blog, Small Bites. It looks like a slam dunk for veggie-averse kids — go Montebello mom Daniela Sepulveda! I’m going to try it this week and report back. And since we’ve been talking so much about eating cheaply and locally, this could be a hit [...]
The Wall Street Journal just had a short story about organic frozen kids’ meals. Mixed reviews from their tween and teen testers. Check it out here.  (Personally, I want the whole Jetsons experience of pressing a button on my fridge and making a tasty, nutritious meal for the kids fly right onto the table.)Â
Back in the good old days, a $175 weekly grocery bill meant I had a cart topped with imported cheese, a couple of nice strip steaks and wild salmon — splurge city.Â
Now I can’t seem to get out of the store without spending $200 no matter what, even with the family pack of chicken thighs [...]
I recently took our oldest to a routine dentist’s visit, a new one since we’ve recently moved.
He’s a lover of all things sweet and chocolate — and like many (most?) 6.5-year-old boys needs to be prodded to brush his teeth for the full two minutes recommended — I figured a cavity or two lurked inside [...]
Our youngest, now 21 months, was happily chomping on some green beans at a neighborhood BBQ last night, a sight to warm any mom’s heart.
But on closer inspection, stuffed in her dimpled little hand (and mouth) was something I never would have thought to feed her — pickled green beans.
And not just any pickled green [...]
Toronto’s Globe and Mail has a good story about going back to basics to get your kids to eat more nutritiously. No magic bullet. Involve them in helping serve the family lots of tasty nutritious food — and keep at it.
We all know higher gas and food prices are cutting deep into our own family budgets—$65 dollars to fill up! Milk at $3.99 a gallon!—but they are also carving holes into one program aimed at helping poor kids get better nutrition.
The federal school breakfast program gives nearly 10 million children the opportunity to start their [...]
Most moms I know have at least heard in passing the concerns over the safety of soy-based infant formulas, that phytoestrogens may cause thyroid issues or interfere with proper reproductive growth.
A new report by the American Academy of Pediatrics concludes there is no evidence of any harm, which should be of comfort to the many [...]
I always knew having a baby that didn’t sleep well was bad for a parent’s mental health — who loves sleep deprivation that stretches months (even years!) beyond the initial newborn stage — but now there’s new research showing it’s also bad for the baby.
A special sleep issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent [...]
Everyone knows green is hot right now. (Well, not in that polar ice cap melting sort of way — I hear that’s bad — but hot nonetheless.) Here’s an interesting post by blogger K.C. Ridihalgh I just read over at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. She has great tips for what to get that friend, sister [...]
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As most parents soon discover, feeding a family is rarely that easy, whether its nursing a fussy newborn or trying to get a hot meal into a squirming toddler (or attempting both at the same time.) And that's not even the days when work runs late, the main course burns, or your adventurous little sushi eater announces from now on she will only eat food that is pink. As parents ourselves, we've been there, done that, even learned a few tricks along the way. And we're pretty sure so have you. Maybe together we can make eating together as a family -- gulp! -- fun again.     Hema Easley has been a reporter for The Journal News since July 2002, first covering municipal government and then nonprofit agencies, women's issues and the South Asian and Muslim community in the Lower Hudson Valley. In her previous job, Hema was a correspondent for the Associated Press in South Asia. She lives with her husband and two sons in Orange County. Katie Ryan O'Connor, a Journal News editor and 35-year-old mother of three, never quite appreciated the work that went into feeding kids until she had to do it herself as a mother. If she had a food-and-kids philosophy it would be something like this: try your best to offer as much healthy food as possible, but sometimes fruits just have to be counted as vegetables and there are far worse things than chicken and spaghetti. Again. Tracey Princiotta, a 37-year-old mother of one, loves to cook, bake and eat, and is relieved that her son appears to be equally willing to chow down -- even if it's baby food and formula right now. Despite her husband's intense aversion to vegetables, she has high hopes of nurturing a true chowhound who will try everything at least once. And if all else fails, she's not above sneaking veggies into other foods. Marcela Rojas has been a municipal reporter with The Journal News since January 2003. She is a native of Putnam County and grew up eating Peruvian food. She didn't realize until she was 13 that rice did not come with everyone's meal. After several years of living in Los Angeles -- where she grew a fondness for Thai food -- she returned to Putnam County where she now lives with her husband and daughter. Zyla (rhymes with Lilah) just turned 1 in March and, so far (her mother is pleased to note), loves to eat everything. Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy, a Journal News reporter, started her career as a journalist in 1999 after graduating with a master's degree from New York University. Before joining the paper in 2006, Swapna worked as a municipal reporter for the Home News Tribune in New Jersey, and took a baby sabbatical to care for her two children, now ages 7 and 5. She has currently outsourced feeding her children and husband to her mother, who is visiting from India. Her friend and colleague Katie O'Connor, informs Swapna that she wouldn't mind being fed Indian food by her mother, too.
 Amy Vernon, a 39-year-old mother of two was fortunate that she, her husband and sons lived with her mother-in-law for the formative years of the little guys' lives. Now, even though she has her own home, she instilled a love of oatmeal in the boys. And whenever she's in town, she helps make sure the guys are well-fed. Randi Weiner has been a reporter with The Journal News since 1989, having covered police, government and schools in Westchester and in Rockland. An Ohio native and 1976 graduate of Bowling Green State University, she worked for daily newspapers in Ohio and Michigan before moving east. She has tended bar and danced in a beledi troup and sat on the boards of two community theaters. She plays mandolin with the Shamrogues, ConnecticutÕs largest Irish band. Randi lives in Connecticut with her husband and has three children. |
Copyright ©2007 The Journal News, a Gannett Co. Inc. newspaper serving Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties in New York.
