Photo of the Day: Tulip Time!

As you might (or might not?) have noticed, I’ve fallen out of the habit of posting my weekly photo round-ups. That may or may not be related to the fact that I have fallen out of the habit of taking and posting a new photo every day. I’m feeling inspired again now that the Endless Winter of 2013 has passed, though, and I thought I’d shake things up a bit by posting each day’s photo to the blog in its own post instead of doing the weekly round up.

The tulips are back! Today’s photo is my favourite style of tulip photo, shooting something through the tulips with the flowers in the foreground and in this case, the Library of Parliament in the background. I like how there are tulips in both the fore and middle ground. This is an iPhone shot, tweaked with VSCO presets.

Tulip time!

What do you think? Did you prefer a weekly summary or do you think the daily posts work?

Roadtripping: Crowdsourcing a route from Ottawa to PEI and back

I love that it’s finally May so I can say NEXT MONTH we are going to PEI. *insert happy dance here* It will be late next month, true, but it makes it seem so much more immediate now than it was six months ago when we booked the cottage rental for our first ever trip to Canada’s most lovely province.

I’ve been trying to get a big blog post out with all of our plans, but my busy schedule utter inability to focus on more than a paragraph at a time dictates that I parcel this out into smaller bites. And I am so paralyzed by all the possible route choices to and from PEI that I can’t get past them to think about the actual PEI part!

So, let’s talk about driving to and from PEI, shall we? This is my working route so far, but I would love your input.

I know it’s theoretically possible to drive Ottawa to PEI in one day and have a few friends who have done it. If it were just Beloved and me in the car, I’d do that for sure. The boys, although they are pretty good road-trippers, I think need that little bit of a break, so we’ll push as far as Woodstock, NB on day one, which is 9.5 hours, and then do the final 5.5 hours to the cottage on day two, leaving us plenty of time to explore PEI as we arrive. That part is pretty much locked down, but I am open to your suggestions. We stopped at Grand Sault when we drove out to Nova Scotia a few years ago, but I wanted to push just a little farther down the road for our first day of driving.

It’s the trip home that has me stymied. I hate to backtrack on the best of days, and we love exploring, and the Trans Canada drive is b-o-r-i-n-g, so we thought we’d shake it up by driving back through the United States. This is where you come in. I need your suggestions and advice, especially if you’re familiar with the New Brunswick-Maine-New Hampshire part of the drive.

Currently, if for nothing else than to put a pin in my endless dithering, I’ve got us booked at a place near Berlin, New Hampshire on the last night of the trip, so we drive 10.5 or 11 hours from PEI through NB, across Maine and into New Hampshire on the first day, and then home on the second day. Google Maps suggest I follow the Trans Canada past Fredericton and enter the US at Houlton, Maine but that seems like it’s superhighway all the way. Great for efficiency, lousy for scenic. My instinct is to dip down and go through Saint John. It only seems a difference of a few minutes but looks like a more straight and less super-highway route.

When we drove out to Bar Harbor in 2007, we followed Route 2 the whole way, which is pretty much Main Street of every little town in Maine. We loved it, but it was the opposite of efficient. I was thinking about doing it again, but then feared it might be the equivalent of driving from here to Windsor on Highway 2 so you could avoid the 401 – you could do it in theory, but why on earth would you torture yourself like that? So maybe we’ll pick up the I-95 and follow that around, which is longer but faster because you don’t stop every 10 minutes for a red light or duck crossing. Your thoughts on i-95 versus Route 2 straight across?

I’ve also been agonizing on places to stop in the US on that last night. I seriously considered Bangor, Maine as it is more or less half way. Okay, truth, I actually considered Bangor mostly so we could revisit the stalking of Stephen King. Mea culpla. Bangor’s also nice because we don’t have to haul ass quite so quickly out of PEI and can meander a bit on our way, but it leaves us with hella drive from Bangor to Manotick on the last day. I’ve tentatively settled on staying in New Hampshire largely because the hotel had a nice family suite with a pull-out couch as well as a couple of queen beds, not to mention an outdoor pool and a bouncy caste, and we’ll put the lion’s share of the drive behind us on the first day driving out of PEI, but I’m open to the idea of stopping earlier in Bangor or Augusta or just about anywhere else loosely on the route. Thoughts?

And as if those weren’t enough choices, on the final day I still have to decide whether we follow the Google Maps advice and head home via Montreal, which seems about the equivalent of stabbing a hot poker into your eye, or take the longer way and ramble up through upstate New York and cross at Cornwall. My instinct says avoid Montreal at all costs. Nancy or Angela, you got thoughts on that?

I have a sneaking suspicion that I am making this far harder than it has to be. I love the car and driving but have no particular love for “the slab” as the bikers call it, so I’m amenable to a scenic route – but adding hours on to the trip doesn’t seem fair to the kids.

Any experience here? Would love to hear your favourite routes to PEI and back, or any amazing places you might have stayed anywhere between Lake Champlain and Bar Harbor. Would you stick to the slab or put up with the stop lights on Main Street every couple miles down the highway? And stay tuned for more about planning for PEI, including one 15th anniversary and one 150th anniversary and a whole boatload of Anne of Green Gables!

Catching up – blogging a fun family photo session from last autumn!

I was poking around in the “drafts” folder of my blog and realized I have over a dozen blog posts I’ve started to write over the past six months and never completed. Last autumn was so busy with fun family photo shoots that I plum forgot to share some of them with you.

This particular shoot was one of my favourites from the year, so I’m surprised I forgot to share it. The family were funny, sweet and introduced me to one of my new favourite locations. It was one of the first truly chilly mornings as winter tried to crowd out autumn, but we had a wonderful walk and I loved exploring this location on the Ottawa River.

Fall family photos

Fall family photos

Fall family photos

Pretty in a pink hat

Is she not adorable? They both were. Heck, all four of them were! And so nice! You know how I love taking photos, but I really really love the wonderful people I get to meet along the way.

It’s been a long, cold, snowy winter, but I’m delighted that portrait season is starting to heat up again, even if the weather isn’t exactly doing the same. I’m particularly enjoying specializing in these kind of excursion photo sessions, where we go on a little adventure and have fun shooting photos along the way. Get in touch if you’d like to book a picnic, park, walk or other photo adventure – spots for this summer are already starting to fill up! For more information, you can visit Mothership Photography or feel free to drop me a note any time at danicanada (at) gmail (dot) com. 🙂

In which she utterly fails to lose a pound in six weeks

I will try very hard not to whine during this blog post, I promise, but I am soooo frustrated that I need some moral support, and maybe some advice.

As you might have noticed, I am really working on healthier living. I cook more than 90 per cent of our meals from scratch and I eat with purpose from whole foods. I’m very cognizant of just about everything I put in my mouth. I try not to eat sugar and I watch carbs in particular, although I have not cut out either one entirely and have no plans to do so. I’m also exercising diligently. I’ve ramped up my gym visits from once a week to twice a week, and for the last few weeks I’ve met my goal of walking 10,000 steps at least four days out of seven. For the last six weeks, I have been trying hard to lose the ten pounds I’ve gained over the last year despite my focus on healthier living overall, and for my daily and near constant efforts, I have lost – nothing. Well, I lost two pounds, gained one, gained two, lost one, lost one, gained two, etc.

I. Am. So. Frustrated.

My feet and knees ache with all the damn walking all the time. I don’t have room in my week for a third workout. I haven’t seen the inside of the elevator at work in a month (I work on the fourth floor) and I’ve switched to a further-away Starbucks. I am trying to eat with moderation instead of deprivation because I know deprivation isn’t sustainable. And if I were making any progress at all, even just a pound every two weeks, I’d at least feel motivated enough to keep working at it. I have to wonder, though, why the hell bother if I’m not getting any results? Pass the chips and dip, please.

You might remember I had great success with losing some weight after Lucas was born. It took me five months, but I went from 192 lbs to 165, and OMFG it was hard. I don’t want to work that hard again, but I also don’t want to lose that much – I’m just aiming for 12 lbs, which I thought was reasonable six weeks ago when I started. At the rate I’m going, I’ll be successful — in a year and a half. :\

I know the equation – consume less calories than you burn. Easy peasy, right? Gah. But when I start counting, I start getting obsessive. And also it’s a boatload of time and effort to measure and count everything, and I start getting anxious about what I’m eating and not eating and deserve to eat and should be eating, and I don’t like that road.

Vintage scale

So while I’m not ready to go back to the commitment of Dr Bishop’s clinic and the rigours of his plan (which I still have, somewhere – I remember it was 1200 calories a day) I’m thinking of maybe Weight Watchers Online. No meetings, I have neither the time nor interest in weekly meetings. But I know some of you have had great success with WW. I’d happily fork over the $60 for three months if I knew I’d be free of that damn 12 pounds at the end of the three months.

Any thoughts?

Guess which blog is featured in Capital Parent Newspaper?

Thanks a million to the amazing Lynn Jatania for writing this very sweet feature on Postcards from the Mothership for the Blogs We Love column in the May 2014 in Capital Parent Newspaper!

Featured in Capital Parent Newspaper

I knew Lynn was writing the feature when she asked me for the photo (truth be told, I took that photo because I didn’t have a recent one to give her!) but I had no idea what she might say. I laughed out loud when I realized she was quoting my rant about the time the detailer refused to clean my filthy car in her feature. Yes, my bloggy peeps, THIS is my legacy. 😉

Lynn is a tireless community builder in Ottawa’s ever-growing online community. In addition to writing for Capital Parent and her own blog Turtlehead (which just celebrated it’s TENTH anniversary!), Lynn is also the brains and the heart behind Blog Out Loud Ottawa. Also? She’s one of the most genuinely lovely people I know.

You can see the online version of the article on the Capital Parent website (page 13!) and you can find paper copies at various locations including the Ottawa Public Library, Shenkman Arts Centre, Boomerang Kids, Dovercourt Recreation Centre, Kanata Recreation Complex, Tiny Hoppers, Fun Haven, and many daycares, arenas, and community centres all across the National Capital Region.

Thanks Lynn and Capital Parent for the kind words! I wish I could express how flattered I am to hear that you say that silly old blog and I make you and others feel good. I can’t imagine a more delightful compliment!

Ingredient of the week: cabbage – and a Food Revolution Day giveaway!

When I was a kid, my dad did a fair bit of overnight traveling for work. I always knew my dad was on an out of town road trip when I smelled the unmistakeable odour of cabbage being boiled for dinner. My mom and granny loved it; my dad couldn’t stand even the smell of it cooking. I therefore called it a victory of considerable magnitude when we had my folks over for dinner recently and he not only didn’t hate the cabbage side dish I’d made with meatloaf – he actually liked it.

I had never cooked cabbage before this year. I neither liked nor disliked it as a kid so I never bothered to try cooking it or even paying much attention to it. I knew I liked coleslaw and cabbage rolls, though, and knew it was a fundamental ingredient in both. It turns out cabbage is an excellent source of vitamin K, vitamin C, and vitamin B6. It is also a very good source of manganese, dietary fiber, potassium, vitamin B1, folate and copper, and weighs in at a hefty 22 calories per cup. (That’s about the same as one twisty snack pretzel!)

But you know what I love the very most about cabbage? You can fry it up with bacon, garlic and onions and have the world’s best side dish. My friend Danielle recommended this recipe not too long after Christmas and I’m sure we’ve had it at least twice a month, maybe more, ever since. The smell of garlic and onions frying in rendered bacon fat is a thing of beauty, and despite being fried in bacon fat the sheer volume of low-calorie cabbage turns this dish into a reasonably nutritious, low-calorie AND flavourful option. This is the dish that I want to cook up for Sobeys #PotluckChallenge for Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution Day!

(Remember I mentioned it last week? The Better Food for All site is now live – you can now register your potluck event and to share tips and tools to host the perfect potluck event. And through it all, Sobeys will be donating to the Children’s Aid Foundation in support of cooking workshops for kids across Canada. And don’t forget to visit the Food Revolution Day site, too. Food Revolution Day is coming up two weeks from this Friday on May 16!)

So, back to the recipe – I streamlined and tweaked it a bit from the link above. Here’s how it rolls in my kitchen. Chop up three, or six, or however many you have available, strips of bacon and set them up to cook in a really big pot over medium heat. While the bacon is cooking and rendering, spend an inordinate of time cursing and trying to peel several cloves of garlic (seriously, there must be a trick to peeling garlic that I am missing. Help?) and decide that three cloves is better than the six you were aiming for, and chop that up with half an onion or so. When the bacon is mostly crispy, about 10 minutes or so, pour most of the fat into a jar without pouring it all over the outside of said jar (I am still perfecting this part) but don’t be too fussy about getting it all out. Put the pot with the bacon and a little bit of the fat back on the burner and dump in the garlic and onions. Give it all a good stir and wait for the magic.

While you are waiting for the alchemy, cut up the cabbage and swear that one day you will replace the ridiculous child’s toys that are your kitchen knives. I cut mine into strips that are small enough that they aren’t coleslaw candidates but not so large I can’t stuff a lot of them into my mouth at once. Avoid the core of the cabbage – you’ll have more than enough to fill your pot, trust me! Right about now take a deep whiff of the heavenly aroma that is the garlic and onions carmelizing in the bacon fat. There is no smell better in my kitchen, ever. Once the onion becomes translucent, maybe 5 or 7 minutes, start dumping the chopped-up cabbage into the pot. I dump some in and then use tongs to mix the cabbage in with the garlic, onions and bacon, then add more cabbage and mix some more, until the pot is full or I run out of cabbage. Despite the recipe, I usually only add a smallish pinch of kosher salt and that’s all – I find the bacon plenty salty and the onions and garlic give it all the flavour it needs.

If you perchance have burned the bacon to the bottom of the pot, which never happens to me regularly, don’t worry! Put a lid on the pot when you’ve crammed in as much cabbage as it can hold and let it stew in its own juices for 10 or 15 minutes, stirring frequently with tongs or a big spoon. The juice from the cabbage will soften up the flavourful burnt bits and you can scrape them into the mix as you’re cooking. Take the lid off the pot for another 10 to 15 minutes of cooking and you’re done. It is one of my favourite side dishes (goes great with meatloaf or any BBQ meat) and it’s even better by itself for lunch the next day, cold or warmed up. Best part? The kids eat it!!!!

Since I loved that dish so much I thought I would love this easy variation on the same theme – cabbage wrapped in bacon and grilled in foil on the BBQ. But meh, it was not worth trying a second time. I did expand my cabbage repertoire to include homemade coleslaw last week, though. I’ve always liked coleslaw but hate that the storebought versions have so much sugar and other things I can’t identify. This vinegar coleslaw recipe was fairly easy and I liked the tangy-ness of it.

I’m open to suggestions, though – got a family favourite coleslaw recipe to share? I personally like mine on the oil and vinegar side of the spectrum, but I am not opposed to a creamy recipe if its a keeper. Do you cook cabbage? I’d love to hear your favourite recipe or tips!

And now for the giveaway part! Thanks to our friends at Sobeys and their Better Food for All campaign, I have a $50 Sobeys gift card to share with one lucky winner. You could buy a lot of cabbage at Sobeys for $50, I’m just sayin’! Want to win? Leave a comment on this post telling me what your favourite dish is to bring to a potluck. Or are you the one who volunteers to bring the plates and napkins?

Here’s the fine print:

  1. This is a giveaway for one $50 gift card for Sobeys.
  2. To enter the giveaway, simply leave a comment on this post (not on Facebook, must appear on danigirl.ca/blog) telling me your favourite dish or item to bring to a potluck.
  3. One winner will be chosen at random from all comments posted.
  4. Everyone who “likes” Postcards from the Mothership on Facebook will get a bonus entry. (This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook.) If you already like Postcards from the Mothership on FB, just say so in your comment.
  5. This giveaway is open only to residents of Canada, excluding residents of Quebec. (sorry!)
  6. This giveaway will run until 11:59 pm EDT on Friday May 9, 2014.
  7. If you win, you must be willing to provide your full name and address to me so I can mail you the gift card.

Thanks to Sobeys for sponsoring this one and good luck to everyone who enters. 🙂

Disclosure: The author has received consideration from Sobeys or Sobeys’ media partners in exchange for this content. Sobeys has not reviewed these claims and is not responsible for the content.

A tale of three books

Once upon a time, and for quite a long time, I harboured secret dreams of being a writer. When I was in school, I wanted to be a journalist and even applied to the journalism program at Carleton. Over the years, though, I discovered blogging, and developed a little bit more self-awareness, and fell in love with photography. The blog allowed me to write in fits and starts when the mood moved me without committing to the long form of a book (I always saw myself as more of a short story writer anyway) but still scratch the itch that was my need to tell stories. The self-awareness revealed that not only do I have the attention span of a flea, while I love the act of writing, I am not really a writer in my soul. The photography gave me an outlet even more powerful and more intoxicating than writing to tell the stories I wanted to tell.

I hold books to be sacred things. If I were to think of a single thing that has most influenced who I am, what I believe, how I dream and what I love it do, that thing would be books. While I am content with the idea that I will probably never actually write a book, I am deeply and madly honoured to have been associated with not one, not two, but THREE books in the last month or so. You’ll have to pardon the hyperbole. I’m so excited that I’ve even regressed to typing two spaces after my periods.

The first book I want to tell you about is a book of poetry. It’s being published by a small literary press in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the poet is a young New Englander named Brian Simoneau. The publisher found my photo of Watson’s Mill on Flickr and sent me a note asking if they could use it. It’s not represented by Getty, so I negotiated a fair price – including a vanity copy for me and one for the Mill! – and we had a deal. I haven’t seen the final layout yet, but this is the photo they will be using:

Foggy Mill

Neat, eh? The publisher has promised me a mock-up of the cover soon, and the book will be available in September. I’ll share when I have them.

The second book was written by the person who posted the very first ever comment on this blog. Dean Dad, recently linked to his alter-ego Matt Reed, has been blogging just a little bit longer than me but has engaged a huge audience over the years with his blog Confessions of a Community College Dean. We became friends and kept in touch over the years, bonded by a shared appreciation of the wonders of parenting and the absurdities of working in a bureaucratic environment. Or maybe it was the wonders of bureaucracy and the absurdity of parenting?

Regardless, I just found out recently that Matt wrote a book based on his experiences called Confessions of a Community College Administrator. I was delighted for him, and when I congratulated Matt on his accomplishment, he casually mentioned that he had thanked me by name in the acknowledgements. (!) How cool is THIS?

Thanks again Dean Dad – erm, I mean Matt. It’s been fun bumping along this bloggy road with you over the last decade. 🙂

And last but not least, of course, is the book I first told you about in January. When I found out that my photo of Lucas drawing a hopscotch on the driveway was being used as a book cover, I was so excited I did a little dance around the room. It’s something I have hoped to see for as long as I’ve been licensing my photos through Getty Images. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine it might be used on a book that has been touted as one of the “most anticipated books of 2014” or a Publisher’s Weekly starred review.

What I really love about the story of this book, as opposed to the story IN the book, is how I have forged a connection to the author, Brando Skyhorse. As I mentioned back in January, I found the book cover using a Google Image search, and when I found it I tagged the book on Goodreads as ‘to read’ and commented ‘this is the book with my photo on the cover’.

To my surprise and delight, I received an e-mail a few days later from the author himself. He said,

Hi Dani –

I’m Brando Skyhorse, author of Take This Man. I just discovered today via Goodreads (which led me to your blog) your stunning picture graces the finished book jacket.

This book was an incredible challenge for me to write. Often times the only thing that kept me going was trying to visualize what the final jacket (and title) would be. I could never see it, though. When my editor emailed cover samples we had close to a dozen wonderful designs to choose from yet I kept returning to your image. Something about the child – whose name I now know is Lucas – drawing on pavement with chalk felt absolutely right. Maybe you’ll see what I mean if you read the book.

In short: THANK YOU. Your picture is an incredible gift that’s made my book complete.

Isn’t that wonderful? I swear I smile every time I read it. Not only is my book on a jacket cover, but the author is a REALLY NICE GUY. We’ve corresponded through the past few months, me telling him how honoured I am to have my photo on his book and him giving me status updates along the lines of ‘”Our” book got some great news this week!’

So my photo is on the cover, it sounds like it’s going to have a pretty impressive release later this spring, and the author is incredibly kind. What could be better? Oh yes, it’s an absolutely breath-taking book, one I promise you will never forget. I’ve gone a little rambly on this post (quelle surprise!) and I want to do the book justice with my review, so stand by and I’ll get that posted soon(ish) in a separate post.

But seriously, a photo on a book of poetry, name credit in the acknowledgements of another book, and Lucas on what sounds by all accounts to be a barn-burner of a best seller. Who needs to actually WRITE a book with all of that?!?

McDonald’s finally does away with “girl” and “boy” toy question

I started to rant about this on Facebook, but the ensuing conversation in my kitchen inspired me to bring it back to the blog.

Waaaaaaaaay back in 2006, I ranted my displeasure at being offered the choice between a “boy” toy and a “girl” toy happy meal at McDonald’s. I’d asked for a Polly Pockets toy and a Hummer toy, and the cashier repeated back to me “one girl happy meal and one boy happy meal”. At the time, I was at the counter with my two boys standing there at my elbow watching me order. Infuriated, I pointedly re-ordered my meals with toys by type, not gender. In the intervening eight years, I have ordered more than a few happy meals, and each time I have been careful to correct the order taker, who invariably specifies boy or girl toy instead of the actual type of toy on offer.

Apparently I wasn’t the only person rankled by this distinction. In a Slate.com article, high school junior Antonia Ayres-Brown tells the story of how she took her complaint about the boy/girl gender discrimination all the way to the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities and not one but two CEOs of McDonald’s. The current CEO finally listened (although her complaint to the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities was dismissed as “absurd”) and Antonia received a letter back from McDonald’s with the following promise:

It is McDonald’s intention and goal that each customer who desires a Happy Meal toy be provided the toy of his or her choice, without any classification of the toy as a ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ toy and without any reference to the customer’s gender. We have recently reexamined our internal guidelines, communications and practices and are making improvements to better ensure that our toys are distributed consistent with our policy.

It’s about bloody damn time, McDonald’s. But let’s go that final step down the road to righteousness, shall we? Why not simply offer one kind of happy meal toy at a time, and offer it to everyone? Some girls like Skylanders, some boys like Polly Pockets. Wendy’s and Harvey’s have been offering a single “flavour” of kid meal toys for years and there has been no anarchy, no fire and brimstone coming down from the skies, no rivers and seas boiling, no dogs and cats living together. I’m pretty sure they bypassed the mass hysteria, too, although the blogger hysteria is clearly still on the table.

You might ask why I think this is important. As I said, it’s the conversation in my very own kitchen that got me all worked up again. In seeing the reference to Antonia’s victory on Facebook, I mentioned it aloud to Beloved. My 12 year old mentioned that there have been “girl” toys through the years that he had liked, and I asked him if he would ever hesitate to order a happy meal with a toy he liked if it was labelled as a girl toy. “Not really,” he replied with a shrug, but that didn’t particularly surprise me. He’s not terribly concerned with rules and norms and what other people think on the best of days.

It was the six year old’s reaction that made me sad. “Would you order a happy meal with a girl toy if you thought the toy was really cool?” I asked him.

“No,” he replied with a tinge of regretful sigh. “I can’t play with toys that are for girls.”

Sigh.

Join Jamie Oliver and Sobeys for Food Revolution Day!

I love Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. I was just beginning to think about learning to cook food rather than heat up food from packages when we started watching his Food Revolution television series back in 2010. Since then, I’ve become even more comfortable and adventurous in my cooking endeavours, so much so that when I invited my parents over for dinner not too long ago, my father got half way through his meatloaf and said with no guile whatsoever, “Wow, when did you learn to cook?”

It may have taken me until the fourth decade of my life, but to the surprise of my family and me alike, I have learned to cook! And you know what? When you actually understand what you’re doing, it’s a far less cumbersome and hateful chore. And when you’re cooking from scratch, you understand exactly what you are eating – no preservatives, no fillers, no stabilizers or unpronounceable chemicals, just FOOD!

That’s why I am happy to work with Sobeys in promoting Canada’s Biggest Potluck Party, in support of Food Revolution Day on May 16. When participants share a post or photo of their potluck with the hashtag #PotluckChallenge, Sobeys will donate $1 to the Cooking Toward Independence Project. The new initiative run by the Children’s Aid Foundation will improve the lives of young people leaving the child welfare system across Canada when they turn 18 by funding cooking skills workshops and creating access to healthy food.

It was this quote from Jamie Oliver that made me want to get behind this project. He said, “Every child should understand where food comes from, how to cook it, and how it affects their bodies. Food Revolution Day is about getting kids excited about food, helping them get food smart and setting them up for a long, healthy life.”

This is exactly the right time in our lives for this. Just a few weeks ago, I supervised while Tristan cooked up bacon, eggs, toast and fresh fruit salad for dinner one night. Simon has been pestering for his turn to make dinner as well. In fact, he said just the other day he has been trying to decide whether he wants to be a teacher or a chef when he grows up. I told him he could easily do both – any woman would love to be married to a fellow who not only knows how but is more than willing to cook dinner for her!

Leading up to Canada’s Biggest Potluck Party, Sobeys invites Canadians to test their own kitchen savvy and compare their skills against others with an interactive quiz available at BetterFoodForAll.com. The quiz says I am an “aspiring apprentice” – that seems about right. What did you get?

The website also includes information about Food Revolution Day and, later this month, will feature potluck inspiration and the #PotluckChallenge photo stream. There will be tips and tools to inspire you, and you’ll be able to register your own potluck event. And through it all, Sobeys will be donating to the Children’s Aid Foundation in support of cooking workshops for kids across Canada.

I feel like I got off to a late start in letting the boys help out in the kitchen. We talk a lot about nutrition and where food comes from and why healthy eating is important, but they haven’t taken much of an interest in food preparation before now. They make their own sandwiches and occasionally pack their own lunches, but I really feel like I should be empowering them with more responsibility.

How does it work in your house? When did you (or have you ever) start to give your kids responsibility in the kitchen? Do you agree with the idea that teaching kids to cook is a health issue as well as a social one?

In my next post, I’ll share some ideas for kid-capable recipes, and maybe even a progress report on getting the boys inspired in the kitchen. And stay tuned, there may be a little something extra in it for one of you, too!

(Disclosure: The author has received consideration from Sobeys or Sobeys’ media partners in exchange for this content. Sobeys has not reviewed these claims and is not responsible for the content.)