From the category archives:

Tricky

Etiquette, eating out and other forays to the dark side

Simplicity, stress and other relative things

January 9, 2012

It’s been nuts in my house since late summer. That’s when my husband and I decided to act on our long-nagging desire to shake things up by paring things down. Things, literally, as in possessions. (It’s been non-stop Craigslisting, Freecycling and donating around here.) But also things in the greater cosmic sense: stress, expenses, responsibilities. We’re [...]

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Halloween treats don’t have to be tricky

October 11, 2011

When you blog about kids and food, people ask you questions. Especially this time of year, when sweets flow like lava and the sugar high carries you from trick-or-treats to Easter baskets. What do you do about the candy? So here it is. The post about the candy. Our Halloween night strategy is pretty simple. [...]

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(No) Judgment Day. Pass it on.

August 17, 2011

On the road this summer, I was struck, as I always am while traveling, by what other kids eat. For all the junk food in everyday life, there’s something astonishing about vacation. Maybe it’s the sheer volume of really bad food. Or the vacation-treat mentality. Or all those wiped-out parents desperate for something, anything, edible. All I know is that it gets to [...]

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Kiwi article: Have food, will travel

August 4, 2011

Back from traveling. (Mostly) unpacked. (Mostly) caught up on work deadlines. Ready to get back to blogging. And I’ll start by sharing an article I wrote for the June/July issue of Kiwi magazine. It’s timely, about eating well while road-tripping. And though some of the ideas will be familiar to those who’ve read my Spoonfed posts about real [...]

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Real food on the road

June 17, 2011

Summertime. When the living is easy, road trips entice, and that road is paved with fast food and greasy spoons. What to do, what to do. As a longtime vegetarian, I’ve been bringing food on the road for years, if only a few bananas and granola bars to get me through the gauntlet of golden [...]

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Lesson at the bakery case. But who learned what?

December 17, 2010

We’d left school and were driving to a nearby art studio to pick up a print I’d won in a raffle. Tess was in the backseat, cranky, tired, whining about needing to pee, despite being asked that exact question at least four times before we’d left school. Not wanting to descend upon the artist with a crabby and incontinent child, I [...]

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Halloween post-mortem. Candy recalls. And why teachers hate the day after.

November 3, 2010

Halloween night, Tess and her best buddy (aka the spider and the witch) went trick-or-treating in a cold rain, returning with a modest array of candy and snacks that they dumped on the carpet and fanned out like peacocks. The No. 1 thing they were hunting down: the popcorn (homemade, plain) that a neighbor had tossed in their bags.   [...]

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Candy insanity: Halloween here we come

October 20, 2010

When you blog about kids and food, people ask you questions. Especially this time of year, when sweets flow like lava and the sugar high carries you from trick-or-treats to Easter baskets. What do you do about the candy? So here it is. The post about the candy. Our Halloween night strategy is pretty simple. After trick-or-treating, costume [...]

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Send me your children’s menus!
(Because it’s one step forward, 25 steps back.)

July 23, 2010

Just when I was feeling good about children’s menus, this depressing round-up crossed my desk. In it, the Daily Beast names the 25 worst meals from kids’ menus at chain restaurants, analyzed for calorie count, saturated fat, carbohydrates and sodium. I’m not into counting calories for kids. And I think standard dietary guidelines like the USDA food [...]

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Creating a better children’s menu: A chef speaks

July 2, 2010

So this is fun. A month ago I wrote a diatribe against children’s menus, calling them out for being unhealthy and insulting. A lively discussion ensued. Then Brian Van Etten, the chef at The Owl House, a new restaurant in Rochester, N.Y., got in touch. He wanted input on his children’s menu. I posed the question to readers. Another lively [...]

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