I have a bad habit of “starring” links in my Twitter feed to share later, and then never getting back to them. (Surely someone out there could create an app that reads those links and sends you back a cliff notes version, right??) So I thought I’d try sharing a few favorite things with you on Fridays, with the caveat that I may not get to it every Friday. But I hope you find it useful and will share anything interesting you’ve come across during the week, too, okay?

• Health Note of the Week: A new study gives hope that some of the negative effects of exposure to BPA (you know, if you used plastic baby bottles pre-2009, or ever eat food or beverages from a can, or use toilet paper, or … ) may be offset by eating leafy greens and soy. Bring on the miso soup!
• Food FAIL of the Week: New York City schools have decided that kids can buy pre-approved packaged snacks like Doritos and Pop Tarts at school bake sales, but not homemade treats with all those frightening real sugars and non-trans-fats. It would almost be funny if it wasn’t just so flat-out maddening.  Speaking of bake sales, remember to save the date for the National Food Blogger Bake Sale on Saturday, April 17 — coming to a city near you!
  
• Lunch Bite of the Week: Moms are getting fired up for Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move initiative, and particularly for getting healthier food into school lunches. Here’s a great post from Ilina at Dirt and Noise.
  (Have you emailed your Congressman/woman yet?)
• Recipe of the Week: The Jewish festival of Purim is this weekend, and I promised the husband homemade hamantaschen this year. Anyone got a favorite recipe to share?
• Blog Find of the Week: One of my favorite parenting blogs, Simple Mom, has launched a new food site, Simple Bites. Even better, Simple Bites is edited by one of my favorite foodie mamas, Aimée of Under the High Chair. (Why do I love Aimée? Check out the adorable Pat-the-Bunny cake she made for her younger son’s first birthday.) And there’s the new Simple Organic, too. Love.

Tonight at dinner:

Me: “How’s your spaghetti?”
FoodieTot: “Not good. There’s something wrong with it.”
Me: “What’s wrong with it?”
FoodieTot: “It has tomatoes in it.”

He did consent to eat several bites, trying to avoid the visible tomato pieces. I used a different brand of crushed tomatoes tonight, which had a more visible chunk I guess. We’ve been waging battle over tomatoes his entire 3.5 years of life (well, once starting solid foods). He’ll occasionally try one, only to spit it out. We ran into his best friend at the market one summer day and she was buying herself a pint of cherry tomatoes. He declared he did like them then, so we bought a pint as well. Once again, there was a bite quickly followed by, “eww, yuck!”

So I was relieved to read this part of (ChowMama) Stacie’s interview with Feeding Baby Green author Dr. Alan Greene:

“… on average, most kids in the US don’t like whole tomatoes but, if you have them help to chop the tomatoes (carefully, of course), they’re about twice as likely to like them. If they go into a garden and pick a tomato or get a tomato from a farmer’s market before chopping it, they’re about twice as likely again to like it. And if they plant the tomato and watch it grow, most children will actually like tomatoes, just from watching them grow.”

Since the first two suggestions have failed thus far, you can bet we’ll be planting a tomato plant this spring!

For more funny things kids say about food, check out Jenna’s new weekly “Big Words, Little Foodies” round-up over at Food with Kid Appeal.

And in other feeding kids well news, I’m sure you all saw Michelle Obama’s launch today of “Let’s Move!” — a campaign to fight childhood obesity by increasing access to healthy foods (at home and at school) and encouraging physical activity. (Watch the GMA interview with the First Lady.)

You can get involved by becoming a fan of Let’s Move on Facebook, and visit Slow Food’s Time for Lunch campaign to send a message to your legislators urging increased funding for healthy school lunches.

As Slow Food USA President Josh Viertel explains, “One in three children will grow up to get type 2 diabetes, one in three is overweight or obese, and in the last thirty years, childhood obesity rates have tripled. Fortunately, this is not a mysterious disease. We don’t need to search for a cure. We know what the cure is. Eat healthy food, in reasonable quantities, and stay physically active.”

We’re fortunate to have ready access to fresh, locally grown tomatoes, even if the boy doesn’t yet appreciate them. We have a long way to go to make sure the same is true for every child in America. I’ll be following along and sharing more with you as the “Let’s Move” campaign progresses.

Can one apple make a difference?

One fresh apple instead of a bag of chips in a kid’s school lunch is healthier for the child, obviously, and it’s one small step to fight climate change. Potatoes grown with conventional fertilizers and pesticides require fossil fuels, more are used when they’re processed into greasy chips, and still more used for packaging and shipping those little bags in bulk across the country. It’s easy to see how the carbon footprint of an apple beats that of a bag of chips.

One local apple keeps local orchards from being converted to housing developments. One local apple — or jar of fresh-pressed apple cider — supports local farmers in their efforts to preserve vanishing apple species. Buying fresh apples instead of apple juice — 80% of the world’s apple juice now comes from China — saves American farms. Protecting farmland fights climate change.

One fresh, local apple can save the world. Send your kids to school tomorrow with an extra apple and encourage them to share with a friend. Together, our many small acts will change the world!

This post is my contribution to Blog Action Day 2009: Climate Change. It’s also our 2nd anniversary here at Foodie Tots, which was founded in part to help save the world one family’s diet at a time. Read our previous Blog Action Day posts here and here, or click over to the official site for live posts and tweets from around the world.

Virginia’s home-grown farming hero Joel Salatin rocked the big screen this summer, appearing in not one but two food blockbusters, Food Inc. and Fresh. Okay, maybe they weren’t blockbusters in the traditional sense of the word, but if you care about what’s on your plate, and where it comes from, they are required viewing. And if you’re in DC/Northern Virginia, you’ve got another chance to see a special screening of Fresh here in Alexandria with local food samples from our town’s best gourmet providers and a panel discussion with Joel Salatin himself. Here are the details, hope to see you there!

Alexandria Gets “Fresh” On October 20th, Flavor Magazine, a number of local businesses and Councilman Rob Krupicka will host a screening of the movie Fresh. The event will be held at the GW Masonic Memorial.

6-7PM is the “Sample Hour” where we’ll have local food samples from Kingsbury Chocolates, Grape + Bean, Cheesetique, Food Matters, Mom Made Foods, and more.

7-8:15 PM We’ll watch the movie

8:15 – 9:15 We’ll have a panel discussion with Joel Salatin, the owner of Polyface farm, Melissa Harris, the editor of Flavor magazine, Bernie Prince from Fresh Farm Markets, Dr. Ruby Lathon from PCRM, Tom Przystawik from Food Matters and Robert Wiedmaier of Brabo. Councilman Rob will be moderating the discussion. Please come and please invite others to come.

There is a voluntary contribution of $10 that will go to support the Alive Food Bank and to provide it with locally produced, fresh food.

Please RSVP so we can have enough food!  Send RSVP to:  white_tortoise1@msn.com

(Thanks to Jasmine at Knitting 40 Shades of Green for the tip!)

All politics is local, they say, and nothing is more political these days than local food. FreshFarm Markets announced last night that they are, in fact, opening their ninth market on Vermont Ave. in DC, just steps away from the White House. The vendors, as identified by Capital Spice, are familiar to anyone who shops DC’s existing markets, ranging from organic and quasi-organic produce to bakeries, dairy and meat producers. The White House involvement was downplayed in the news release, and reportedly seems to be limited to a “hope” that assistant chef and food initiative coordinator Sam Kass will appear for cooking demonstrations. The press release, did, however, invoke the symbolism of the new market’s location saying, “This is the culmination of a long journey for FRESHFARM Markets, which has brought farmers into the center of Washington, DC, where policy is made.” Intrigued by the suggestion that perhaps FreshFarm was opening this market as a volley into political advocacy in support of increasing access to fresh foods*, I obtained this follow-up explanation from founder and co-director Ann Yonkers:

“We think the farmers presence in the center of Washington, DC, is the best answer to many policy questions about how we should eat.  There’s no need to talk, one bite of the delicious local food and the argument for fresh and local is made.”

No need to talk? Maybe members of Congress won’t shuttle across town, bite into an apple from Spring Valley Farm & Orchard, and suddenly be inspired to rush back to the drawing board to come with an extra billion dollars to double the funding for school lunches. But perhaps tourists who drop by the new market will be inspired to go home and write their legislators to urge their support for farm-to-school and healthy lunch programs. If so, then the market will achieve more than just symbolic change. We do need to talk, and loudly, to change our food policy for the better.

I love farmers markets, and I agree they are powerful for creating sustainable local communities. I commend FreshFarm Markets for the work they’ve done to grow the local foods movement in DC. I just continue to hope that the White House will work to extend their reach into the communities in Washington who still don’t have access to fresh produce. Let’s make the White House farmers market more than just a symbol.

*Note: As with several of their existing markets, FreshFarm Markets will double the value of Food Stamps, WIC and Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Coupons at the new market and offer a gleaning program to benefit Miriam’s Kitchen.

P.S. Don’t forget it’s Fight Back Friday over at the Food Renegade – go check it out!