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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
Most parents know about the recommendation to switch kids to 2 percent milk after the age of 2, the idea being that they get the same amount of nutrition with less fat and cholesterol. Many pediatricians further recommend going to 1 percent or fat-free milk after the age of 5.
Given the country’s obesity epidemic it makes perfect sense.
We never made the [...]
I’m sure the last thing you want after over-indulging this holiday season is another cookie recipe, but this proved so delicious and so wonderfully easy to make with kids, I thought I’d toss it out there so you can make one last batch before swearing off sweets in your 2009 diet.
From Gale Gand, buttermilk as [...]
What’s not to love about Thanksgiving?
A nice big turkey, pumpkin pie, football, family, more pumpkin pie, all those great leftovers, OK the last slice of pumpkin pie if no one else is going to take it…
It’s one of my favorite holidays. Everyone celebrates it, there is no mad rush to the mall because you forgot [...]
Now what could all those things possibly have in common?
A Tuesday afternoon at the car dealership, naturally.
I was just reading Hema’s great post about the healing power of ginger and it reminded me of a conversation I had recently with a fellow mom as I waited on an oil change.
We were both in the service-area [...]
Great idea by Amy for mixing healthy with fun (and gross!) this Halloween. Â It got me thinking, what’s the best low-GI, pre-trick-or-treating dinner you can think of to counterbalance all the sugar they are about to consume? (I know how I feel when I eat a lot of sugar on an empty stomach, ugh.)Â Â I think [...]
Whenever I have a little free time — you know, all those vast hours of uninterrupted space and time afforded mothers of small children everywhere — one of my favorite things to do is check in with a few of my favorite food blogs.Â
I’ve come across a great new bookmark — Chocolate and Zucchini by French foodie, [...]
My enduring love of reality TV is not something I’m particularly proud of, but I always find in between all the horrifying preening and only-in-America emotive TMI, there is something useful, OK maybe just interesting, to take away.
Consider Tim Gunn of Project Runway. Have you ever encountered a sweeter, more calming figure? Watching him, hand [...]
I don’t know about you but it’s only Day 2 of the 2008-2009 school year and I’m already sick of making lunches.
Probably not a good sign.
It doesn’t help that over the summer we switched to a new daycare-slash-preschool for the two little ones that provides snacks, not lunches. (Our previous one offered lunch, not snacks.) [...]
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
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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.
 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, Connecticuts largest Irish band. Randi lives in Connecticut with her husband and has three children. |
Copyright ©2009 The Journal News, a Gannett Co. Inc. newspaper serving Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties in New York.
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