Baker City herald. (Baker City, Or.) 1990-current, September 08, 2020, Page 7, Image 7

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    B
Tuesday, September 8, 2020
The Observer & Baker City Herald
NUTRITION:
IT’S ALL GOOD
Satiating Students When They’re Learning At Home
ANN BLOOM
Staying
healthy
when times
are uncertain
If this was another time, this column
would be about how to make healthy
school lunches and afterschool snacks
for children. But this is not just another
time. Although children returning to
school in the fall is still an uncertainty, or
how that will all look, nutrition has, and
will continue to be, important in the lives
of all children and their families.
Some families are experiencing
food insecurity for the fi rst time. Food
insecurity is defi ned as not having consis-
tent access to enough food to provide
a nutritionally substantive diet, with
questions about where the food for the
next meal will come from, due to lack
of money or other resources. For other
families food insecurity is their normal;
there is nothing new about it. Hunger is
defi ned as not having enough food to eat,
and going without food for some portion
of the day, or days. Food security is when
there is enough food for everyone in the
household, at all times and in suffi cient
amounts to provide for the dietary needs
to live a healthy life. Budgeting and
watching every penny to see where it
goes in the family’s food budget is more
important now, than perhaps ever before.
See Healthy/Page 3B
BETWEEN
THE ROWS
Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times/TNS
Brown sugar cookies with maple drizzle can brighten everyone’s day.
S CHOOL L UNCHES ,
S ERVED H OMESTYLE
WENDY SCHMIDT
By Genevieve Ko
Los Angeles Times
On behalf
of the bees
Very sadly, the bee population seems
to be declining. Our two most common
bees are the bumblebee and honeybees.
Yellowjackets are not truly bees, they’re
predatory social wasps. Yellow jackets
(and wasps in general) are carnivorous,
whereas bees consume nectar and pol-
len. Wasps and bees are social insects,
all living in colonies founded by a
queen, and having workers and drones.
Honeybees are the stars when it
comes to surviving winter. The whole
honeybee colony lives through the
winter. Sadly, only the queen bumble-
bee and yellow jackets survive winter,
founding or starting a whole new colony
every spring, some even building or
locating a new nests in new locations.
Bumblebees are rock stars as far
as pollinating. Bumblebees of various
species have varying tongue lengths, so
they effectively pollinate a tremendous
variety of fl owers. Honeybees commu-
nicate so well among themselves that
they frequently pollinate only a single
nectar source, ignoring others in the
area if the nectar is plentiful in that one
source.
We need all kinds of pollinators.
Bumblebees are the best pollinators for
fruit orchards as they won’t leave the
area until all the fl owers are pollinated.
Honeybees are more selective, but with
bees of all kinds, the job gets done. Fruit
is much sweeter and more productive
when pollinated. In fact, some trees
make inferior or no fruit if unpollinated.
To maintain the status of our popula-
tion of pollinators and prevent further
decline it would be wise to plant food
and fl owers for them, making our
landscapes havens for attracting them.
Also, it would help their population to
use biological controls to prevent plant
damage and control disease insects
instead of herbicides and pesticides and
other toxic chemicals.
If you have garden comments or
questions, please write to greengar-
dencolumn@yahoo.com. Thanks for
reading!
I love cooking — that’s
t’s why I don’t like packing school
lunches. It’s no fun making
king food that inevitably tastes subpar
after hanging out in a brown bag for hours. Online schooling
eliminates that issue but
ut invites countless other mealtime
aching “school lunch” the same way
problems, so I’m approaching
re, not a joy. (And yes, I’m writ-
I always have: as a chore,
al cook and more as a working
ing less as a professional
mother of three who is very, very tired.)
The tips below come from years of optimizing effi cien-
est kitchens and in my kitchen at
cy in restaurant and test
home as well. They also o address the cooking questions
ed me since quarantine started
mom friends have asked
y’ve shared. Feeding
and the challenges they’ve
children is as much a mental and
emotional struggle as it t is a logis-
tical one. Here are some e ways to
make it easier:
Go easy on yourself
You don’t need to stack
ack artisanal
sandwiches or fashion Hello Kitty
faces on onigiri rice balls
lls concocted
from ham and seaweed.
d. If you
have the desire
and energy for
that next-level
lunch-making,
go for it. If not,
don’t feel bad
about it.
There have
been days when I’m so exhausted from work (ironically, cooking) that
I’ve simply popped open a can of beans, cut up a pepper and tossed
string cheese packs on the table for a “meal.” My kids are still alive.
Genevieve
Ko/Los Angeles
Times-TNS
One-pan pasta with
tomato sauce.
meal.) Make everyone happy by estab-
lishing a regular lunch repertoire: You
can keep dishes in rotation to eat when cravings strike or assign cer-
tain lunches to certain days. My youngest always looked forward to
“pasta Mondays” in her school cafeteria, so I’m going to re-create that
for her, both to make her happy and to eliminate the stress of decision-
making for me.
Leftovers are the best
If there’s a silver lining to school-at-home, it’s the ability to reheat left-
Don’t make three meals a day; batch cook for future meals
overs for your kids midday. Popping a plate in the microwave takes less
In April, one of my friends told me how wiped out she was from
time than slapping together a grilled cheese sandwich, and it feels special
cooking breakfast, lunch and dinner — and doing all the dishes in
to eat a steaming not-steam-table hot lunch.
between. My response: That’s crazy. Unless you actively want to be
Prepare dishes that hold up or even improve post-chill, such as roasted
doing all that, don’t.
vegetables or anything stewed or braised. Rice, whether fried or seasoned
Instead, cook a lot when you feel like it and save leftovers for the
with cilantro and lime, still tastes great after zapping. While pasta usu-
times you lack kitchen motivation. Morning people can make huge
ally doesn’t reheat well, this one-pan number does. Toasting the noodles
breakfasts that last until lunch; folks with evening meetings can prep fi rst keeps them al dente forever.
enough lunch to stretch to dinner. If you’d rather not eat the same
Assemble a ‘lunch box’ for the fridge
thing for two meals in a row, refrigerate or freeze leftovers to reheat
If you’re more of a cold-lunch family, make last-minute assembly easier
for future meals.
by keeping all the ingredients together. Once you’ve fi gured out your rep-
If you don’t want to do breakfast, buy cereal or make a big pot of
ertoire, group what you need in an open container in the fridge. When it’s
oatmeal to last all week. If your kids insist on eggs every day, teach
time for lunch, simply slide out the box full of sandwich or taco or salad
them to fry or scramble their own if they’re old enough to deal with
fi xings. It saves a little time and a lot of frustration digging around for
the stove. Otherwise, boil half a dozen at once and keep them in a
that pack of sliced provolone. Do the same for any pantry items dedicated
grab-bowl in the fridge. To streamline daily lunch prep, prepare big
to lunch, keeping the box easily accessible wherever you have space.
batches of building blocks, such as grains and beans, and keep them
If you’re adding leftovers or other unmarked ingredient containers to
ready-to-scoop in refrigerated airtight containers.
either box, use painter’s or masking tape to label them. So when someone
Create a lunch routine
who knows how to read keeps asking, “What do we have for lunch?,” you
A lot of kids are perfectly content eating the same lunch most days can simply gesture toward your lovely labels.
or prefer the regularity of a scheduled menu. (And most home cooks
fi nd that deciding what to make is half the struggle of preparing a
See Homestyle/Page 2B