Why we love everything coconut

Coconut is a staple in our home, we love it "in" and "on" our bodies.  Hope this inspires you to include this wholesome superfood in your lives too.

Life with a baby

Alhumdulillah  for older siblings and their tiny helpful hands.  Mashaa-Allah every  morning AR volunteers to feed baby S while I do some kitchen work.  And for some odd reason S is always more excited to eat with bhiya then Mama anyways.

I wanted to share some nutritious quick and easy baby food recipes ideas and tips. I puree fruits and veggies weekly and freeze them in ice cubes trays. I don't freeze any grains or seeds. Baby food is a great way to involve kids, they love blenders and pouring.

Every morning first thing I do is in a small pot I put 2 tablespoons of either organic brown rice, hulled millet (I use hulled because it's a lot quick and easier to cook), quinoa or brown rice flakes. While I prepare breakfast for the rest of the family the seeds are fully cooked. I just add a cube from the freezer of the puree while it's still warm, and it's ready to be served to our little man.

As he is getting older he is not interested in puree foods, he wants more texture and boiling fresh grains  and seeds adds that.  Sometimes I toss fresh fruit or veggies while the seeds still boiling and just mashed it slightly with a potato  masher.

I have done this all three of my kids and all of them have different reactions and tastes. So it important  to change things around depending  on individual  child's needs. These are no just easy to make but frugal too.

Here's our fresh pear and organic millet breakfast with a dash of organic cinnamon powder from this morning.

Organic versus conventional food

A few weeks ago AR asked me "Mama what is the difference between organic and not-organic?" before going to bed. So I told him we learn about it tomorrow inshaa-Allah. So At night I looked up some simplified information that a 6 years old can understand. I knew and had a lot of resources and information but but not at a child's level. I didn't want to give him unnecessary information that he doesn't  need to know at his age. Of course some things are necessary and need to be known.a


Here is what we found for kids to learn about their food, where its coming from and what are our alternatives.

We read these 2 books Meet Pauly and Organic Farming. Alhumdulillah since it is getting slightly warmer here now we prepared our organic seeds for planting in our good soil. We also watched the following Youtube videos.

What is Organic?

Epipheo TV - What is organic? Fresh versus Processed

(I love Epipheo TV videos)

Organic in Ontario Canada

11 year old organic food activist 

Jamie Oliver

What Farmers can use instead of Chemical sprays

A day in the life of a farmer

 Potato Experiment 

We watched these two documentaries Home and Food inc. There are many more but for his age these were enough, even these I supervised and skipped some parts. Inshaa-Allah as the weather gets warmer we will be visiting and doing some hands on learning in the local organic farms.

If you know of any other resources please share with us.

Memorable time at Fresh

One of the things we did this summer was, we had some one on one husband and wife time. One of the things we did was I took my husband to this restaurant in downtown for iftar. Alhumdulillah my mother-in-law was free that evening, so I asked her if she could watch both the kids for a few hours, it was my first time leaving H for this long. It was great for everyone. The kids got some one on one time with their Dadi without the parents. I think grandparents need to have some 'unsupervised' time with their grand-kids, so they have the freedom to do what they want with the kids without the parents always monitoring the grandparents. After all, all parents wait to be grandparents and truly love their grand-kids, ,I also believe that grandparents should respect the limits parents have set for the kids.

On the other hand, hubs and I had a wonderful dinner and walk by the lakeshore :) Although the food was vegan (not my hubs favorite thing) but he admitted that he felt full but light. He was sort of ready to try it since I had tested some of their recipes from their eBook I had in the last few years. Alhumdulillah, I coincidentally found a fairly new looking copy of 'Refresh' at the garage sale in summer for  50 cents!!

It's a great cookbook to have with some great recipes straight from the Fresh's kitchen, in downtown Toronto. They have great recipes for shakes, elixirs, sauces, marinades, soups, wraps, veggie burgers and more. These are recipes for the same food you will find on their menu. Click here to checkout their website.

If you are interested in having a copy of this wonderful nutritious vegan cookbook 'Refresh' by Ruth Tal, please email me at rawdahs@gmail.com

Nutritious Summery treats

Frozen fruit and veggie bars for a hot summer treat for the little ones and the adults. I made 3 different flavors, they are a great option for parent who choose not to give sugary store bought Popsicle to their little ones. Also a great way to get those fruits and veggies in our bodies.

They also make great yummy summer desserts!

Here are the recipes

1.  Strawberry and Mango frozen bars

• Half a mango
• 5 Strawberries
• quarter cup Almond Milk
• 2 tbsp of honey or agave nectar.

2. Creamy Avocado frozen bar

• Half Avocado 
• 3 drops of lemon juice
• 3 tbsp honey
• less then a quarter cup of water

3. Pineapple & blueberry frozen bars

• Half cup of freshly cut pineapple.
• Coconut Milk
• 2 tbsp of honey or agave nectar
• Blend the 3 ingredients together, put the blueberries in the molds and pour the pineapple puree on top. (This one looked really nice because of the contrast of yellow and navy. Even the Grandparents enjoyed them lot, my father in-law is diabetic, so it was a nice, sweet and healthy treat for him)

Blend the ingredients of 1 & 2 seprately and pour them into the Popsicle molds.  Let it freeze for 6 to 8 hours and serve. You can even freeze them in layers.  

Food Theme

For our food theme these are some of the things we did.

We did the Montessori lacing activity with wooden fruits

Next day we learned about Patterns

We had bought these for our little Chief (H)

So when we were opening them I saved the container and thought I could use it as puzzle for AR for his food theme.

I got these cards from Samko and miko before I moved here to Saudi....this was a fun activity although Alhumdulillah he knows his colors very well but he really enjoyed it. I love the way he has them all soo nicely lined-up!!

We did a lot of fun baking and cooking!

We learned in detail about the food groups. We did an activity for the food groups... I wrote the food groups on a piece of paper and put it on a tile and then he had too put the food of that category in the tile. e.g fruits---> so he picked up all the fruits and put them in the fruit tile.

We also learned about different food people eat around the world. I made dinner from different cuisines around the world during the week, Chinese, Italian, Pakistani, Mexican, American and Arab to go with the theme.