Where does Nature Mom go when she needs allergy-free recipes and clear reasoning for changing her eating habits? Making Love in the Kitchen with Meghan Telpner.

I seriously can’t recommend her site/blog enough. And if you are lucky enough to be local (she’s in Toronto), her cooking classes completely changed my boring, tasteless cooking void of all our allergy foods. I’m still learning everyday.

1. Don’t Take No for an Answer

A diagnosis of disease is not the last word. You have control of your health. It’s best if you start now, before allergy or disease force you to change your habits. If you are already facing disease, nutrition-dense foods will only help. No, I’m not claiming that you should forgo allopathic medicine, but you can improve body and mind through diet.

This is one of the most important lessons I learn from Meghan Telpner. She was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease and chose meditation, acupuncture, and a whole foods diet rather than surgery or medication. After six years, she is symptom free. During that time, she became a certified nutritionist and opened her own cooking school in Toronto.

2. Create a Guide that Excites You

For Meghan, her creed is her philosophy of living. Her creed is the image you see above. You might find this inspiring, but I want to tell you that part of the power of this creed is you flipping the switch and realizing that YOU can and you MUST create your own beautiful philosophy of living so that you are realizing your own dreams. Start here if you like, but stretch it, test it, try out a few new things, and build a philosophy that makes your heart sing.

3. You Can Still Eat Brownies

Are you worried that your food will be boring if you remove sugar and other processed ingredients? Really? Well, stop that right now. If anything, conventional, processed foods are a crutch that keeps you from being creative with food. If you need to be convinced that you will be fine in a future with healthful foods, Butternut Squash Ooo-eee Goo-eee Brownies will ease your transition.

When you hang out on the Parenting by Nature Facebook page, you will find that Nature Mom and others mention Making Love in the Kitchen a lot. Join us!

Super Foods are nutrient-packed, disease-fighting foods, many of which you probably have in your refrigerator or pantry right now. They aren’t unusual or difficult to find.

A lot of our customers have asked Nature Mom about the super foods that she uses, how she includes them in meals for the family, and how much she uses. Start where you are and add more foods over time.

Do you have a few of these around?

• Dark berries
• Dark greens
• Nuts & seeds
• Hot peppers
• Raw cacao nibs
• Honey

If you already have any of these on hand, you are ready to start adding health superfoods to your family meals. Add more dark greens to salads. Sprinkle seeds on many main dishes. Add hot peppers to your foods, if your family can handle them. Sweeten foods with honey. Add fresh or frozen berries to your cereal in the morning. There you go! You are a superfood super star.

Nature Mom’s Fast Food Breakfast

Nature Mom, owner of bynature.ca, eats fast food for breakfast. Shocking isn’t it? Well, hold on to your blenders, because it’s even faster food than you think. At least 2-3 mornings a week, when she is rushed, she has a super food smoothie.

NOTE: If you are nursing or pregnant, and there is anything that might be a concern, just leave it out. This recipe is really flexible, and she uses what she has in the fridge at the time.

Nature Mom Super Food Smoothie

1 cup of frozen berries (fresh is okay too, but frozen makes the smoothie taste colder)
2 handfuls of greens (I usually use spinach but cabbage, kale, Swiss chard also works)
1 large celery stalk
1-2 Tbsp nut butter of choice, I usually use Almond Butter (or Tahini for a nut-free version)
1-2 Tbsp hemp seeds
1 heaping Tbsp honey
1 Tbsp coconut oil
1 inch ginger, peeled
dash of cayenne pepper
3 cups of water

Put this all into a high powered blender. Blend and drink as you’re running out the door!

Optional superfood additions (I use them all):

• 1 handful cacao nibs (I like mine chocolatey!)
• 1 Tbsp lucuma powder
• 1 Tbsp goji berry powder
• 1 Tbsp chia seeds

A Month of Your Health Ideas

We’re devoting February to food and other ways our readers keep their families healthy. It’s the depth of winter and there are fewer fresh options, so it takes even more vigilance to eat fresh, healthy, whole foods. Comment here or jump over to Facebook and tell us how you keep your family healthy in the winter especially. We want to include your ideas.

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I think a lot of parents struggle with cooking from scratch, especially if it’s not what they grew up with, but we are trying to do better for our own children. What do you do if stopping for pizza or cooking from frozen just seems like the only way to get dinner on the table tonight? Not only do processed meals contain ingredients that you want to avoid, they are a more expensive option than cooking from scratch with whole ingredients.

Freeze It
Understand first where you reach for a meal when you are in a time crunch or just too tired to start from scratch. Prepare in advance for that moment of weakness. To start, you need to think about the solution before tonight. When your will is strong and the kids are quiet (like that happens), plan ahead. Buy enough that you can make three times as much as you need. Eat the same food two nights in a row then freeze the rest for another meal later. You just put a bit more work into preparing one meal while you got three out. Think quantity, and work ahead.

Choose Convenience Tools Rather Than Convenience Foods
Buy a slower cooker and a bread machine. These should be on your baby registry. Experienced parents will understand.

If you wake up feeling like it might be one of those days, pull your saved leftovers out of the freezer and create some new kind of stew. Our favorite slow cooked meal is curry. You can hide a lot of vegetables in a mild curry that children will eat. Clean out the refrigerator or freezer and use what you have so it doesn’t go to waste (which, of course, saves you money). You do this in the morning, and you don’t have to think about it again until it is time to put on a pot of rice near dinnertime.

Fresh bread without fuss doesn’t mean using a mix. You can mix your own recipe in advance from whole ingredients to avoid expensive specialty mixes. Dump the ingredients in and hit the button. Kneading bread by hand feels great, but sometimes you aren’t into the process so much as focused on the result. It’s OK to do both.

Have a Back-up Easy Meal
My mother was a single parent who worked all day. We ate a lot of tv dinners. Sometimes, though, when she really wanted us to eat immediately, she opted for her favorite easy meal: egg sandwiches. It’s an omelet between slices of bread, and it takes about five minutes to prepare. If you have bread and eggs, you are set. My family’s quick meal is salad. We cut up all sorts of fresh vegetables and leftovers, toss it in a bowl, and call it salad. Know what your family is willing to eat and keep the fresh ingredients available.

Food: Discuss
We have had a great response to food discussions on the Parenting by Nature Facebook page recently, and, when we asked what you want to save money on, the answer was overwhelmingly FOOD! That’s why we followed Saving Money on Food with this post. You had a lot more great ideas, though, so during February we’ve scheduled a whole month of posts devoted to food and other ways our customers keep their families healthy naturally. Keep sharing your ideas and experience. Other parents can learn from you.

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Do you know how to ditch your $6 window cleaner for a natural $2 alternative? When you are saving pennies, those $4 count. If cost savings isn’t enough, those less expensive natural cleaners have far less environmental impact and they aren’t a safety hazard for curious children and pets.

Start with Water
Use water out of the tap on a reusable cloth. That will clean a lot of what passes for dirt in your house. Move up to boiling water when you need to.

Wipe Down Surfaces Daily
If you clean up the small messes, you won’t need so many expensive cleansers to clean up big messes. Wipe down surfaces as you go and pick up around you. It makes a difference in how you feel as well as maintaining a level of clean.

Don’t Buy Expensive Cleansers
While we’re on the subject, don’t buy those special cleansers for big jobs. Assess the mess and choose a natural cleaner from your own pantry instead. Check out our Clean Cleaning for the basics of cleaning with just 5 common ingredients: water, vinegar, baking soda, salt, and lemon. Buy the main ingredients, distilled white vinegar and baking soda, in large packages and you will save even more.

Buy or Make Reusable Pads for Mops
Good old string mops work, but you might not find them at your store. You can still use the flat style wet mops, but you don’t need to buy the throwaway pads. Make or buy your own reusable pads and wash them. It doesn’t even require sewing. Just choose an thick, absorbent, natural material like soft cotton sweatshirt material.

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If you have babies or young children, you know they leak in quite a few different ways. This leads to load after load of laundry all out of proportion to their size. This doesn’t have to blow up your budget. You can easily take simple steps to save money on laundry.

The costs to do laundry come from energy to run the washer and dryer, energy to heat the water, the water itself (or sewer bill), and detergent. Squeeze each of these separately, and keep in mind that you may need to adjust other parts of the process to get your laundry as clean as possible.

Reduce the Need
Start at the beginning. Wear your clothes a couple of times before you wash them. Reduce your laundry in half. This doesn’t work for snappy t-shirts covered in spit up or baby jeans after a leaky diaper, but some clothes can be worn multiple times.

Wash on Cold
By far the largest proportion of the cost of home laundry goes to the energy to heat the water. So, don’t heat the water. If you use cold water, though, you will save yourself from clothes covered with residue that holds on to stink if you use detergents formulated for cold. You need more agitation or longer rinse if you remove heat from the washing equation. If you are washing diapers, be extra careful to avoid residue build up.

Run Full Loads
A full load saves money because you end up with fewer loads total, but a full load also provides one of the essential parts of the laundry equation: agitation. The clothes need to rub against one another to get clean. If you put a couple of items in a full load, you are just sending them for a nice swim. They will be cleaner than when they started, but they won’t get clean. Adjust the water level to your load for effectiveness and water conservation, but hold on to that small load and wait for more clothes for cost savings on energy.

Use an Efficient Washer
This takes an investment up front, but you will save in the long run if your washer is the most energy efficient washer on the market.

Buy Powdered Laundry Detergent
Liquid detergent rinses easily, but you end up paying for bottled water. You can get the best of both by dissolving the correct amount of your powdered detergent before you wash. It takes more time, but it saves money. It’s all a matter of adjusting to which you have more of.

Make Your Own Laundry Detergent
High Efficiency washing machines require less detergent, so that is a start. You can also make your on laundry detergent and other laundry additives with a few basic and mostly natural ingredients.

But, be careful what you choose to use. If you are washing cloth diapers, make sure the ingredients you use don’t cause a residue build up on your diapers that will cause leaks. Just do research before you head off into the wild west of homemade cleaning supplies.

Use the Air to Dry
Don’t use extra energy to dry your clothes. Dry on a line. Without bumping against one another in the dryer, they end up a little bit more stiff, but you can roll them around in your hands to loosen them up. I also just saw this week a cool new contraption, Dryerpods, that essential puts a closed drying rack over your forced-air heating vent. Obviously, this would only work if you have forced-air heating (I do) and in the seasons when the heat is on, but it is a clever device to use what is already there more efficiently

Not a lot of money goes into laundry, but you can save by making the process more efficient.

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Having babies hits the budget hard, but you can lessen the impact through your choices. Did you know that it can cost more than $10,000 to raise your child for the first year and nearly that much each year after that? You might know this already as you see your bank account dwindling. You can stop that drain.

First, though, keep in mind that you should never skimp on health and nutrition. Give your children the healthy environment and the food that they need to reach their fullest potential. Keeping that in mind, get ready to squeeze.

Reassess Your Need
You will be told that you need piles and piles of branded baby goods, hospital add-ons, and processed foods. You don’t! Even using an average baby expense calculator will send you the message that you are missing out on a lot of stuff—stuff you just don’t need. Don’t let someone else tell you what you need. Sit down and decide what fits your lifestyle, and then squeeze your list a bit more. Do you need new? No. Do you need duplicates? No. Be realistic and frugal from the start.

Share
Especially if you have a family member or close friend whose 1-2 year old child is just growing out of baby clothes, furniture, or toys, accept hand-me-downs. Set up a sharing system, and you can cut out most of your major baby expenses.

Breastfeed
Save more than $1,000 a year by breastfeeding rather than buying formula. If your child has allergies, that formula expense could be several thousand dollars. Of course, you can eat through that savings quickly if you buy a breast pump and a nursing wardrobe, so only get what you really need. Some mothers don’t spend anything at all on breastfeeding. Breastfeeding without stuff can be done!

Sew
If you have more time than money, making your own simple baby clothes can result in big savings. Don’t over-buy fabric. Stick to a couple of patterns that work, and make them in several colors. Trace the patterns rather than cutting them, so you can use the next size up when you need it. Even if you only sew a simple blanket, think of the savings. No matter your skill level, you can make that skill work for you.

Cloth Diapers
Save $1,500-$2,500 over disposable diapers by choosing a simple cloth diapering option, like prefolds and covers. You know we love cloth diapers for all sorts of reasons, but cost savings just can’t be beat. You can cloth diaper without all of the stuff, too.

Just keep it simple. There will be a lot of advertising telling you that you need some new thing, but you probably don’t. Turn on your critical thinking, and stick with the basics for your baby.

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When you are squeezing your budget, work on those big expenses first. Household heating is one place you can save without too much pain. Start your savings by turning down the heat.

Warm Yourself Instead of the House
Turn down the thermostat, and wear a sweater and socks. Use a lap blanket if you will be sitting for a while. When I have a child in a t-shirt and no shoes telling me, “I’m cold,” I laugh and say, “Put on a sweater!” We start by heating ourselves, but it is a habit you have to work on with children.

Limit the Parts of the House You Heat
If you have a guest bedroom that doesn’t get used much, close the door or close the heating vent. Use a space heater if you spend most of your time in one room. Heat only what you need, but don’t let plumbing get too cold because frozen pipes will eat every penny you save and more.

Let Nature Work for You
Open your blinds or curtains while the windows face the sun, and close them when the sun hides or moves. Put a child in charge of this. They will love the responsibility, and it will help them become more aware of working with the power of nature.

Block the Leaks
If you see daylight around the edges of your door, you are losing money through that door. Replace weather stripping, re-caulk windows, and close off any spaces around cables or outlets that lead to the outside. Closing off spaces to the outside will also help keep unwanted creatures from using your house for a warm vacation.

Invest in Future Savings
Insulation and storm windows and doors will help you avoid losing heat into the great outdoors, but your up-front costs will be significant.

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One consistent theme among all of my friends is the need to save money in the current economic climate. For the next month, Eco Baby Steps will offer tips to save money. This week, we’ll look at essentials like food and heating.

What else do you want to save money on? Yes, I know: EVERYTHING! That’s obvious. Tell me, then, how you would finish this statement: “I wish I could save more money on ______.” Where are you really trying to squeeze the budget? Tell me, and I’ll see if I can come up with a few tips to help you.

Today, save money on food. This is one of the biggest items in my family budget, but I want to keep the family healthy and well nourished as well, so we look for a balance.

Focus on Un-processed Foods
Buy whole foods (not to be confused with a high-priced grocery store by that name). I know a lot of people who lower their food bills to almost nothing by using coupons, but I don’t do that. Most of the coupons are for processed foods and other items I wouldn’t normally buy. Keep your overall focus on those foods that have not become ingredients in other foods. Buy fewer prepared meals and more fresh foods.

Use Sales and Coupons
If you would buy the foods anyway, definitely use coupons and show up for sales, but keep in mind the value of your time as you search for and organize your coupons.

Manager’s Specials
In my grocery store, the food that is about to expire within a day or so is often marked down to half of the usual price or less. I often bring home foods with those bright red stickers and either use them right away or freeze them. If you are willing to be flexible about what you eat tonight, you might find a special.

Food Rescue
More than a billion tons of food is wasted around the world annually at every link on the supply chain. When food is past its sell-by date, a store won’t sell it, but the food might still be edible. Sometimes you can work with grocery stores for food rescue. Often, this food is donated, but a lot of dumpster divers find edible food for their families.

Start with a List
If you plan your meals, even if you are flexible about changes when you see opportunities in the store, you are less likely to buy expensive foods or foods that will go bad and end up in the compost. Before you arrive at the store, start with a shopping list. Also, make sure to list those foods your family really eats rather than the foods you wish they would eat. Food that is ignored is more likely to be wasted.

Buy and Cook in Bulk
You may have to pay more up front for a larger bag of flour, but you will pay less per pound. On the other hand, if you can’t use all of the giant bag of lettuce before it starts to brown, you haven’t really saved money. Having a chest freezer can be a great way to keep foods as you buy or cook them in bulk. Buy as much as you can afford, as much as you can store, and as much as you will use.

Join or Create a Buying Club
Some wholesalers don’t mind selling food to buying clubs as long as they can meet the minimum. To find a local buying club, ask around or do a search. There are also more organized clubs, which you can find through United Buying Clubs. Or, gather a group of families and start your own buying club.

Freeze the Leftovers
When you have bread that had gone stale or vegetables or rice that you won’t use before they go bad, freeze them. When it is time to make stuffing, you will already have plenty of bread ready, so you won’t have to leave fresh bread out to dry. When it is time to make soup, you will have a variety of ingredients to add to your soup. Even if you can’t use food right away, save it if you can use it later.

Grow Your Own
Whether you have a lot of space to grow your own fruit trees, a medium-sized space to plant a garden, or just enough space to grow a few herbs in pots, growing your own will save you money as long as you don’t overdo the money spent on gardening supplies.

Keep Chickens
Another big trend I’ve noticed among my friends is keeping chickens for eggs. My children took care of their grandparents’ chickens over the holidays, and they are very confident that they can become small-scale farmers themselves. My local garden store has classes in chicken keeping. You might find a similar local class that eases your transition from gardener to farmer.

How do you save money on food? Your friends, neighbors, and family members are all trying to save money. It is just one of the realities of our time. Share your tips.

Image of my in-laws’ backyard chickens.

Recently, a friend of mine said to me, “I seem to have misplaced my support system.” It’s easy to do. While you are still thinking about what you genuinely need in your life during the new year, ask if you have the support you need. For new parents, the new reality can sometimes mean you need to adjust or even rebuild as you find that you need a different kind of support than you did before children.

For me, the support system came in the form of a play group. A group of parents who had planned homebirths within a few months of one another had also taken a birth relaxation class together. We knew one another pregnant, and we continued to see one another as we gave birth to our babies over several months. When the children were tiny, they didn’t play much, but we as adults needed the time we had together. We sat around breastfeeding and talking. Occasionally, we invited others from our community to join us, and the play group turned into time for the children as well as for the parents. Now, our children are teenagers and close friends.

The kind of support system you seek should be driven by your need. Do you need breastfeeding support? La Leche League could be the support you need. Do you want to talk about diapers or parenting? Try a Real Diaper Circle or a Holistic Moms Network local chapter. Do you want someone to walk to the park with? Get together with new parents in your neighborhood.

Years ago, Mothering Magazine published an article called “Finding Your Tribe” on each of us seeking or building the support system we need as parents. They have continued to have a Finding Your Tribe section in the Mothering forums. If you don’t know of any local resources, look in the Mothering forums to find any posts by other parents in your area who are looking just as you are.

Stop long enough to ask if you have what you need. If not, you are not alone. You can find other parents so you can share support for your parenting journey. Good luck finding your tribe.

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Before setting goals for the New Year, have you considered taking an index of your own and your family’s wellbeing? I find the broad outline of the Canadian Index of Wellbeing (CIW) a helpful place to start because it takes into account the complexity and interconnectedness of human society. It offers a deeper understanding of what constitutes social and individual good. It speaks about relationships, social interaction, and general enjoyment of life. It gives me a place to start as I set out to design my own ideal life with my own measurements of wellbeing.

Assess your own wellbeing. While you are thinking of how to improve your life, consider the 64 indicators from eight broad domains of the CIW: living standards, community vitality, democratic engagement, education, healthy populations, environment, time use, leisure and culture. Some of the indicators are really only relevant on the national level. “Representation of Women in Parliament” under Democratic Engagement, for example, is probably 0% in your household, but you could create your own list of indicators for yourself, such as: know who your representatives are, know what laws are under consideration and voice your opinions to your representatives, and vote at every level from national elections right down to your city or town. If you make a list with just a few indicators under each of the eight domain areas, you can easily assess how well you are doing and mark the areas you would like to improve.

Then, keep your assessment and check back in with it one a month or once a quarter to keep yourself aware and accountable to your New Year’s check in.

What is under your control already and what needs some focused attention? This year, a schedule has become my anchor. My own work is under control. I do it without fail, so I don’t need to pay too much attention to it. I know my children’s schooling needs some intense focus, though, so we are more scheduled than we have been before. I know I will never just happen to have time for yoga or my husband for tai chi, so we’ve added those to the schedule. If it’s on the schedule, we are sure to show up. I suppose that means that I’m approaching balance through the domain of Time Use.

Choose one thing, and embrace it. If it seems too overwhelming to look at the broad view, just pick one thing you want to do. It’s easy to focus that way. For me, it’s yoga. I’ve told two friends who are yoga teachers that I’m going to do this, so I will feel accountable to them, and I’ve just told you, so now I’m accountable to you as well. Once you feel like you have one thing under control, choose another. You don’t need to wait for New Year’s Day or some other special occasion to set a firm goal for yourself, but don’t wait until you are ready. You might not ever feel quite ready. Stretch yourself at least a little to reach one specific goal. Do you want to redo your bathroom to accommodate your growing family? Do you want to learn to knit a sweater? Do you want to become involved in a local charity? Do you want to be certified as a doula? Figure out the first step, and take it—then take another.

Do it! Dream big or plan tight, but choose one thing you can make your own this year. When it becomes a part of your life, choose another thing and do that with gusto.

Happy New Year from bynature.ca!

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