This is a great time of year to celebrate with the children in your life--make sure this holiday season is a safe, healthy and fun one! Here are some expert tips from state and national experts:

• Advice on choosing safe and age-appropriate toys from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.
• Button battery safety info from the state Department of Health. 
• Holiday food safety tips from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

And finally, a reminder that the holidays--and every day--are a good time to love, talk and play with your child!

I've been writing more in my journal lately than my blog, sorry.  I've got some internal work to do so may go missing more than usual in the next few months.  But I wanted to post this salad I've been eating and really enjoying.  I call it a Christmas Tree salad because it's green with red (pomegranate) berries that remind me of Christmas tree lights.

Ingredients:
1 head romaine lettuce
1/2-1 lb cabbage
1/4 -1/2 lb broccoli
1/4-1/2 lb cauliflower
1 apple
1 asian pear
1 orange
1 Tbsp spicy pecan vinegar
1 Tbsp riesling raisin vinegar
1 small pomegranate or 1/2 large
1/2-1 oz seed mixture

Chop the lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower in the food processor using the S-blade.   Put in a big bowl.  Blend the apple, asian pear, orange, and vinegar in the food processor.  Add to the bowl along with the seed mixture.  Extract the pomegranate seeds and add.  Stir.   I like this a lot.

Well, if you don't hear from me for a while, all you have to remember about healthy eating is this:  GOMBBS

G is for Greens
O  onions
M mushrooms
B beans
B  berries
S  seed mixture

That's what I remember when I'm making soup and veggies for the week.   Happy holidays!

The Early Learning Advisory Council (ELAC) on Dec. 12 decided to support a recommendation to create a phased-in, voluntary preschool available to all Washington 3- and 4-year-olds as an entitlement program. The issue now moves to the Quality Education Council, which will meet on Monday, Dec. 19.

The recommendation for a statewide preschool program comes for the Early Learning Technical Workgroup, established in Senate Bill 6759. That workgroup submitted its final recommendations in November.

SB 6759 required the group to develop a plan for a voluntary program of early learning as either a part of basic education or as an entitlement program, to help support school readiness for all children in Washington. The final recommendations propose phasing in a high-quality, comprehensive preschool program open to all 3- and 4-year-olds with a graduated co-pay based on family income. The workgroup recommended a mixed-delivery system of providers, including nonprofits, faith-based organizations, licensed child care facilities, private schools, ECEAP and Head Start providers, school districts and others.

ELAC members reviewed the recommendations and heard public comment before deciding to recommend that QEC adopt the workgroup recommendations, with one addition and one change:

• Adding a Birth-to-3 Technical Workgroup, which would use the existing state Birth to 3 Plan as its basis to focus on enhanced services for infants and toddlers.
• Phasing in the workgroup's recommendation that lead teachers in the preschool program be required to have a Bachelor of Arts degree.

The QEC meets from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 19, in Cherberg Conference Room ABC on the Capitol Campus in Olympia. It will be webcast on http://www.tvw.org/. The QEC must make recommendations to the Legislature by Jan. 1, 2012.

Today my salad is so good it boggles my mind, because it is simple.   I just chopped a head of romaine lettuce, a half lb of cabbage, some raw cauliflower, added 1/2 cup frozen peas, 1/2 cup frozen edamame, a grapefruit, peeled and chopped (okay, a really good grapefruit from Texas called Rio Star), an ounce of my seed mixture, 2 Tbsp Dr. Fuhrman's D'angou pear vinegar.  Now it's true, the high quality ingredients is what makes this salad delish--the good grapefruit, and the d'angou pear vinegar add a wonderful taste sensation that is not sour.  Wow. This made two giant salads.  I also made a microscopic version for housemate.  I'll have these for dinner?  --in 2 stages for sure.

Next week, first the first 3 days anyway, my micro salads will have lettuce, cabbage, carrots, satsuma (small orange), asian pear (a honey-sweet apple), small pomegranate, flavored vinegar, and seed mixture.  I'm expecting that to be yummy!  My roasted veggies will be broccoli, cauliflower, a little butternut squash, a little beets, onion, with chives, sage and basil ('cause I have some in the freezer from the garden), and I'm still working on the marinate, but probably orange juice and no-salt mustard.  Breakfast will be light before exercise,  a bowl of frozen cherries, blueberries, mangos.  Lunch and dinner will be bean soup, micro-salad, and roasted veggies.  I'll probably eat my lunch bean soup early because I'll be hungry after exercise.  I still have lots of bean soup from two batches in the freezer so don't have to make any this week.  Yum, talk about eating like a king.  I am amazed that I sometimes go off plan to eat junk because I think I'm missing something.  This food is thousands of time better.  I wish I could remember that all the time!

Here are some funny health-related things that happened to me this week (all my fault!):

On Nov. 28, the Legislature began a special session called by Gov. Chris Gregoire to address a projected $1.4 billion to $2 billion revenue shortfall in the 2011-2013 state operating budget.

To read Gov. Gregoire's proposed supplemental budget, which includes a temporary half-cent increase in the state sales tax: http://www.ofm.wa.gov/budget12/default.asp

Legislative committees are now holding work sessions on the proposed supplemental operating budget. Here is yesterday's Senate Early Learning & K-12 Education Committee work session:


Watch other hearings by going to www.tvw.org and choosing "Archives" then the committee and date you wish to view.

I got some interesting comments to my last post so I just wanted to respond to them.  Lani had a different view of the Weekend Immersion, so please read her comment if you are interested.  Wendy pointed out a great post from her blog about the chemicals in food designed to make them as stimulating as possible.  I highly recommend reading this and watching the attached video.

Then I also wanted to update you on my roasted veggie experiment.  It turned out great!  For marinate I used juice from 1/2 orange, 1 Tbsp of black fig vinegar, and a squeeze of no-salt mustard--maybe 1-2 Tbsps?  I used onions, broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, sweet potato.  About 1/4 lb each.  Tonight I will use more as I needed more food today.  maybe I'll use 1/3 lb each.  I think I'll cook it for 40 minutes with the foil, and 20 minutes without.  Yesterday I did 30 minutes and 15.  Actually that did turn out pretty good.  Maybe I will do 35 and 15.  I don't want them soggy.  or 30 and 20.  It might take me a few days to get it right.  My seasonings were fresh rosemary and sage.    It was really good!

I went to Dr. Fuhrman's Princeton Immersion last weekend.  It was a wonderful trip for many reasons!  It was a great road trip with my friend Suz.  We stopped in Pittsburg to see my best pal Gail, sadly, only for a few hours.  I worked with a student for a day at Princeton which was very productive.  We visited with Suz's parents in Philidelphia.  And the immersion was fantastic.  It was jam-packed with lectures. Dr. Fuhrman is so energetic and interesting, you really can listen to him for hours.  Even better was the food.  This is the main reason I go, though I did learn a lot from the lectures.  I thought I knew it all by now, but one thing I get out of the in-person lectures is what Dr. Fuhrman is passionate about, and what is less certain scientifically.  It helps reinforce what the most important things are to keep in mind.  But the food!  It was the best I've ever had at one of these events.  I think that was in large part due to Chef Martin Oswald's contributions.  He owns a nutritarian restaurant in Aspen, Colorado!  (called the Pyramid Bistro).  He gave a talk on the last day and I have been having fun putting his tips into practice!  We got the recipes from the immersion and slides from his talk.  They are worth a lot!

So today I'm back from the holidays and putting some of my new knowledge into action.  My soup today has Indian spices and I cooked up the onion as Chef Martin described:  first you heat up a stainless steel pot until hot, then put the onions and garlic in.  They sizzle up, slightly brown, and then release their juices.  You don't need oil, and they still gain a nice flavor.  Fun, it worked!  I did that with the leeks, celery, collards and kale too.  Then the pot was looking pretty burned and I thought, this will take forever to clean up.  But then I did the mushrooms the same way.  Well, they release so much liquid that it just ended up cleaning up the pot.  When they were done, the pot was clean.  ha!   a nice accidental discovery.  My soup was just my usual pile of things that I found in the co-op or my freezer.  I soaked beans, red himalayan rice, lentils, and purple barley overnight, and started cooking them in the morning.  Then cooked up the onions, garlic, celery, leeks, mushrooms, even the collards and kale, like Chef Martin described.  Added them to the pot one by one.  Oh I cooked up a festival squash in the oven, then added it to the soup after it cooled.  Oh yeah, and while cooking up the onion and other veggies, I added some graram masala and curry powder as they cooked.  Add the end I added some currants and fresh ground ginger.  It made for a nice hearty soup.  I froze most of it in single-serving containers.  yum.  I think I'll have it for breakfast every day.   I'll be doing my food prep at night this week.

My food plans for the week are soup for breakfast, and salad and roasted veggies for lunch and dinner.  The salads will be micro-salads made from lettuce, cabbage, maybe some broccoli and cauliflower, all cut up finely in the food processor; and topped with pomegranate seeds, grapefruit or orange, seed mixture, and flavored vinegar.  I love these.  The name should be changed from micro-salad to high-powered salad because it is so nutrient rich.  Tonight I'll experiment with roasted veggies.  I hope I can get this right.  I'm going to follow Chef Martin's advice to cover with foil at first so they essentially steam cook (before burning on the outside), then take of the foil to roast at the end.  I'll top with fresh herbs.  The veggies available now (that I like) are broccoli, brussels sprouts, carrots, onions, leeks, and sweet potato.  I'll do a little of each.  I am just learning to do this.  It would be nice to do a big batch and eat them for several days but I'm not sure how well they will keep.  I think I'll start off by just trying to do one day at a time and hope it isn't too time consuming.  I will add some flavored vinegar and mustard as marinate.  I got some fresh sage and rosemary at the co-op and have some basil from the garden in my freezer.  I hope this works!

Well, this post is long enough so I won't go into Thanksgiving much except to say I made apple sauce for my "brother-in law."  He had two 18 lb bags of apples!  holy cow, we had all the burners going:

That's got lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, blueberries, banana, small orange, seed mixture, and d'angou pear vinegar.

whew.  time to go fold laundry, then start tomorrow's food prep.  whew!  

On November 14, DEL filed revised rules for family home child care providers. The revisions focus on health, safety and positive outcomes for children.

What are rules for family home child care providers?
DEL is responsible for providing rules for all licensed child care providers to follow, which are found in Washington Administrative Code (WAC). Child care centers and family home child care providers are subject to different rules. The family home child care rules have not changed significantly since 2004; the changes we filed yesterday are the first major update to the rules since licensing oversight became DEL's responsibility. The new rules will take effect in March 2012.

What does this mean for parents and children?

• Providers are required to communicate more information about the their child care philosophy and about each child's development.
• Enhanced safety standards for playgrounds, food service, cribs, emergency preparedness, screen time, and nurture and guidance.

What does this mean for family home child care providers?

• A streamlined background check process, through nonexpiring licenses and portable background checks.
• All children ages 13 to 16 who live in the home are subject to noncriminal background checks, as are volunteers or assistants ages 14 to 16 who work in the family child care home.
• Providers and their staff will be required to meet increased education and training standards. The new rules require, at a minimum, a high school education or equivalent. Current licensed providers have until March 31, 2017 to meet the minimum education requirement.
• DEL licensors will work with providers in the coming months to make sure they understand the new rules.

How did DEL decide on the rule changes?
DEL formed a group called the negotiated rule-making team that was tasked with developing the rule changes. The team was made up DEL staff, family home child care providers, the family home providers union, and other early learning professionals. Starting in 2007, the team collaboarated with providers, legislators, parents and early learning professionals to develop research-based draft rules. DEL presented the draft rules at eight public meetings around the state on evenings and weekends in Spring 2011. As required by state law, DEL also shared the draft rules with Service Employees International Union 925, the union that represents family home child care providers.

Read the final rules.

Watch DEL Director Bette Hyde discuss new rules: goo.gl/7OayM

More information about the rules is available on our website: www.del.wa.gov/laws/development/negotiated.aspx

Hi everyone,

I just posted two other posts below this one, so feel free to check them out.

How's your Thanksgiving Challenge going?   Mine is going fine.  To be honest, I'm not really doing a Challenge with a deadline, I'm just trying to live my life and enjoy my healthy eating as I go.  I'm concentrating on work right now.   So I'm chugging along with my healthy eating and exercise and work and play.  Note that Dr. Fuhrman is hosting a Holiday Challenge if you want to join that.  It starts on Nov. 21.

Despite my new emphasis on work, I planned several months ago to attend Dr. Fuhrman's Weekend Immersion which is coming up next weekend!  I'm driving out with nutritarian friend Suz.  We leave on Wed.  Should be fun.  Actually I will work with a colleague there on Friday before the immersion starts so I'm looking forward to that.

I've been eating a lot of squash the last few weeks.  Okay, I went a little overboard. I think when I get back from my trip, I will just have one squash a week that I'll dump into my soup after I cook both up during my weekend food prep fests.  But I have two more of these festival squashes which are really good and they are not too big.  I will eat one today, and one on Tuesday.  In fact, I am hungry now so looking forward to digging into part of it at lunch time.  Here's a picture of it, after baking and cooling:

It's so easy to prepare this way:  just throw it in the oven, bake for 1.5 hours at 350 F, let cool, then cut in half, remove the seeds, remove the good stuff and mix it in with your soup our just mash up with some pumpkin pie spice.  It's very moist when you bake it in the skin.  The skin tastes good too.  Lost of people shared their favorite cooking techniques on one of my previous posts here.

Oh, I've also been enjoying pomegranates the last few weeks!  I've had them in my micro salads with an apple too in addition to all the veggies.  That plus a little lime juice adds a great flavor.   This post describes what I've been doing on weekdays mostly.

I've mentioned in a few past posts, I am a huge fan of Dr. Douglas Lisle, an evolutionary psychologist who helps us "nutritarians" understand why it's so hard to go against the grain.  He follows Dr. McDougall's plan, and works Dr. Alan Goldhammer at the True North Health Center.  These are all very similar to Dr. Fuhrman's plan:  a whole foods, plant based diet with no oils, very limited refined sugars, and very limited salt.   This makes us very different from everyone else!

Today after my jog, I stopped off at the garden, looked it over, and decided the collards and kale really aren't growing anymore, so it's time to harvest what's left and pull the plants.  We had a couple of hard freezes the last few weeks, and that is supposed to sweeten them up.  It appears to be the case as confirmed by my nibbles during harvest.    Here's a picture of the collards after one frosty night last week:

How did I go so long without appreciating winter squash?  Oh my gosh, my food has been so good this week.   I've been trying different squashes out.  Here's what I bought at the store:

DEL published two reports in recent weeks with the results of two important pre-K programs: ECEAP and Head Start.

A few fast facts from the 2010-11 school year:

• Total funding was $54.4 million; 98.3 percent of it went directly to local programs that serve children.
• ECEAP had enough funding for 8,024 children. The program experienced a 13.9 percent turnover rate and its waiting list held more than 4,000 children.
• DEL administered ECEAP through 40 contracts with educational service districts, school districts, community colleges, local governments and nonprofit organizations; 37 of 39 Washington counties were served at 260 sites.

ECEAP, Head Start and Early Head Start Washington State Profile, 2011

• ECEAP (described above)
• Head Start: A national, high-quality early learning program for low-income children ages 3 through 5, but not yet eligible for kindergarten, and their families. The federal government provides grants to 30 organizations in Washington for these services.
• Early Head Start: A national, high-quality program to promote healthy prenatal outcomes through services to low-income pregnant women, and promote early learning through services for low-income children from birth to 3 years old and their families. As with Head Start, the federal government provides grants to 27 local organizations in Washington to offer these services.
• Migrant and Seasonal Head Start: A national, high-quality early learning program that serves low-income children birth through 5 years old, but not yet eligible for kindergarten, and their families who are migrant and seasonal farm workers. The federal government provides grants to local organizations to offer these services. There are two grantees in Washington.
• American Indian/Alaska Native Head Start and Early Head Start: A national, high-quality early learning program that serves low-income American Indian and Alaska Native children birth through 5 years old, but not yet eligible for kindergarten, and their families. The federal government provides grants to tribal nations and organizations who provide these services. There are 17 grantees providing American Indian Head Start and eight providing American Indian Early Head Start services in Washington state.

My two nutritarian friends came into town on Friday and we had quite the feast:

I made sweet potatoes topped with black beans and greens etc and a dollop of soy yogurt (a recipe from the Fuhrman site).  We made salad from Holly's lettuce and pear, my red pepper and a yummy salad dressing from the Fuhrman site.  Holly made delicious stuffed mushrooms.   Suz brought curried squash on brown rice.   I got full eating all this great food.   After our feast, we went on a walk at Olbrich community gardens, and then went, where else, to the co-op.  That was interesting as we shared many food tips about all our favorite foods, as well as the ones we have to avoid (the cowgirl cookies are sometimes a challenge for me).  I got a lot of new ideas from our discussions as we strolled through the store.

Some quotable quotes were "I'm an unethical vegan" and "I'm a vegan on weekdays."

Today I heard a great quote:  "The best way to bring someone over to your cause is to have more fun than them."   For me, the biggest difficulty about eating healthy is sometimes thinking that I'm missing out on what everyone else is eating.  It's all in how you look at it.  I just need to think of it as I'm the lucky one, having the most fun eating the best food.   Along those lines, last weekend I was out on a walk at a conservancy and a group was roasting marshmallows over a fire and making s'mores.  Well, you know how those nostalgic feelings can make you wish you were joining them.   Today I was meditating in front of my fireplace (wow, is that ever easy to meditate in front of a fire!) and I was thinking about our ancestors roasting winter squash in their fire.  Then I realized, our difficulties in eating healthy usually arise from nostalgia for eating the things we used to eat and drink with our family and friends.   Maybe we just need to go back further in time.  The last 50 years are a blip on the history of our people.  Go back further, and we are talking sweets only on very special occasions.   So just let your nostalgia go a little further back in time and you can imagine roasting squash instead of marshmallows, and relishing a good fruit instead of ice cream.

It's fall and my food choices are changing with the season.  It's winter squash time!   Here's what I'm planning to try this week:

And that's just for lunch and dinner.  I'm thinking sweet potatoes for breakfast.  I made a huge pot of soup using veggies from the garden mostly.  This has white lima beans, purple barley, onion, eggplant, collard greens, leeks, mushrooms, 2 cans of garden tomatoes, broccoli, and italian spices.  I froze it into several containers to eat during the week.  I still have some containers from my last batch of soup so I can have some variation.  Here's my plan for the week--don't know if I will like it, I'll know tomorrow--brekky will be sweet potato topped with bean soup--I'm usually hungry after exercise class.   Here's an example from today's lunch:




Here's one of my most favorite treats.  I ate this yesterday while making house mate's smoothies.  It's just frozen mango, frozen blueberries, and a little d'angou pear vinegar (optional).  I love this.  It's easy to make thoroughly enjoyable food out of simple ingredients.

hello fellow friends from around the world, welcome.

This blog has very appetizing-looking and healthy recipes!

Leaders from the Department of Early Learning (DEL) presented to the House Early Learning & Human Services Committee on Wednesday about our progress in several areas since the Legislature adjourned in May. Watch the presentation to hear the latest on the Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge grant, efforts to promote quality in licensed child care, home visiting and more.




The PowerPoint presentation DEL used is available online here.

I'm back to a busy busy schedule at work so it's hard to post on week days.  How are you doing on the Pre-Thanksgiving Challenge?   I overate 3 days on fruit and nuts, which is not good, but...I'm just observing it for now and letting myself learn the lessons I need to learn.   I want healthy eating to be a choice, not an exercise in willpower. I usually feel like eating the most healthy foods in proper quantities.  I guess I'm just letting myself be reminded of that through experience.

As I mentioned before, one of my goals for the challenge is to optimize my protein intake.  I'm trying to get stronger at the gym and want to help that with my food intake.  I'm monitoring my food intake with cronometer.  Now this is just something fun I'm doing so don't feel you should have to do this also:  Following Dr. Fuhrman's food plan will provide you with plenty of all your necessary nutrients.  But it is instructive to see what foods have the highest protein.  I can see where I can tweak to get more protein.  For example, I can cut back my raw carrots a bit and replace them with sweet peas.  I love peas so that's easy to do. The other thing that's very noticeable is that fruit has a lot less protein per calorie than green veggies (leafy or otherwise).  But fruit has a lot of other healthy nutrients so it should be part of the diet.  I find 1-1.5 lbs per day of fruit is a good amount for me.  I've been eating veggie bean soup and also putting edamame in my salads every day.    The combination of the soup, edamame, and lots of green veggies in the salads gives me about 14% protein which is good for building muscles.  I could optimize it more but I love me carrots.  Today I got some mediterranean pine nuts from Dr. Fuhrman.  He recommends these and pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds for optimal protein after a workout (along with beans and veggies).  I'll add those in to next week's salads.

Washington state has submitted its application for a Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC) grant. The federal grant will provide $500 million in state-level competitive grants to improve early learning and development programs. The Department of Early Learning (DEL) is leading Washington’s application for the grant, which could bring up to $60 million to our state over four years to support early learning for our children.

RTT-ELC is meant to help states raise the quality of early learning programs so that children start school ready to succeed.
Governor Chris Gregoire said of Washington's application, “This application is bold and it is ambitious, but it is also achievable, and that is what the grant competition is all about. We have submitted a plan that will push our state forward in providing the kind of high-quality early learning opportunities our youngest learners need and deserve."

Washington's application lays out a plan for how to use the grant money:

• Expand the Washington Kindergarten Inventory of Developing Skills (WaKIDS), our state’s kindergarten readiness assessment, to include all incoming kindergarteners by school year 2014-15.
• Take to scale our state’s quality rating and improvement system, which helps early learning programs improve the quality of care and education they provide to young children and provides information on quality to families.
• Enhance the state professional development system by offering awards and incentives to those who work with and care for young children.

"This is an important opportunity to help Washington children," DEL Director Bette Hyde said. "Washington is uniquely positioned to move forward quickly if we win a grant because of the work we’ve already done with WaKIDS and QRIS."

DEL created a webpage to keep the early learning community informed about progress on RTT-ELC. That page includes fast facts about Washington's application.

The Associated Press ran a story about Washington's application, "State seeks $60M from feds for preschools."

Today, DEL representatives updated the House Early Learning & Human Services Committee about the RTT-ELC and other DEL news. That hearing will be available on TVW's website.

DEL will continue to tweet information about the application and related news using the hashtag #rttt (which stands for Race to the Top) at www.twitter.com/DEL_wa.

Laurenstyle lost 5.6 lbs, reached her exercise goal of working out 5x/week, even in the pouring rain!  And she reached her third goal of Learning to appreciate the journey of ETL.  I thought here wording of the last goal was inspiring:

Iam appreciating and so GRATEFUL for the journey. It’s truly become a way oflife.  It’s hard to document all that’s happenedin this area, but it’s definitely powering a shift in all areas of my life. I have a whole new work ethic and am accomplishingthings as never before. Not only my ability to focus and concentrate, but my abilityto be more efficient, compassionate, a good listener, develop creative solutions and justenjoy my fellow coworkers has just skyrocketed.

Suzette lost 17 lbs!   Here goal was 20.  That's great!  She also is helping family members adopt this eating style.

tejasjjain struggled at first (how many of us have been there?!) but got on track and her habit of late night snacking is almost gone!   She "only" lost 4 lbs.  Hello, that's great!

Lois made substantial gains:  giving up her regular glass of wine, and working on her overating tendencies.  She has the same problem as me, getting too thin when 100% compliant, and then over-reacting by over-eating, sometimes off plan.  Someone else on this challenge has this problem too.  Interesting, huh?

Linda did a lot of successful detective work with her auto-immune food triggers.  As she said, she knocked this one out of the park!  A combination of fasting and various food selections refined her food choices.   Her second goal was to expand her repertoire of recipes that her son can enjoy.  She accomplished this one too.  Finally, she wanted to get more exercise.   She still has work to do on this one--hopefully in our next challenge!

Dru conquered her date overeating tendencies and can now have them in the house again.  And she bought a new wardrobe.  She definitely wants to stay on plan so she can continue to wear her new smaller clothes!

Thanks everyone for participating.  We're doing a new challenge (no vitamix award, sorry!).  Here's the post on that.