Rooftop Farms and Food Deserts

Rooftop farms have been enjoying growth of attention and resources as innovators look for creative ways to bring fresh, affordable food into highly populated areas where fresh produce isn’t always readily available. Gotham Greens, a company that started in New York, has announced that it will be expanding to Chicago to bring the nation’s largest rooftop farm to date to the Pullman neighborhood, where fresh produce can be tough to come by.

Continue reading »

The State of CSAs

The featured photo of the article.

As we’re taking October to consider responsible food trends, community-supported agriculture is next up, particularly farm shares. The idea is simple: to help farmers even out their income throughout the year and to make sure they have the cash on hand for repairs and the up-front costs of planting, community members purchase a share of the crop, to be picked up on a regular (usually weekly) basis throughout the growing and harvest seasons. It’s the easiest way to make sure that you’re eating local, in-season produce and is often a good option for eating organic as well. Interested in learning more?

Continue reading »

Stock a Make-Ahead Pantry

The featured photo of the article.

Are you on board with cooking less? Is your kitchen equipped for make-ahead cooking? Great! Now let’s talk pantry. Allrecipes.com has a nice list of good items to keep on hand in your pantry. If you routinely keep your kitchen stocked with their recommendations, you can feel quite confident of your ability to make a wide range of recipes from your cupboards any given night. Here are a few tweaks we’d recommend to cut down the time you spent in the kitchen.

Continue reading »

Cook Less, Eat at Home More

The featured photo of the article.

Home cooked meals are better for your health. It’s no secret that when you have handled every ingredient going into a dish, you have completely control and knowledge about what you’re feeding your family. When we don’t cook at home, it’s often because we don’t have the time or energy on a given night. Andrea Dekker has a wonderful blog post detailing her tricks for cooking less while still getting home-cooked food into her family. Here are a few tips we particularly like:

Continue reading »

Sportsmanship Across the Net

The featured photo of the article.

We’ve been looking about bringing tennis home for your family during August, and as with all competitive sports, tennis presents an excellent teaching moment for good sportsmanship. The abilities to lose graciously, win humbly and, perhaps most importantly, persevere under challenging circumstances are all skills that will serve your kids in life and in sports. Dr. Darrell J. Burnett has shared a list via P.E. Links 4U designed to help parents and teachers alike discuss good sportsmanship.

Continue reading »