World Food Day was October 16th, and today is Food Day (October 24) in the United States. How can families truly embrace the heart behind these celebrations in our everyday? Here are a few quick ideas:
Mealtime
- Involve the whole family in choosing and cooking dinner – get everyone involved in washing, peeling, chopping, and cooking.
- During dinner, talk about where the ingredients came from. Are the carrots from a farm nearby? Maybe your family has met the person who raised the chicken.
- Draw or print out a map of your province and map your meal. Put a symbol on the map for each farm that supplied food for your meal – don’t forget your own garden!
Activities
- Watch a documentary that focuses on food and talk about one of the issues.
- Volunteer at a food bank
- Take a cooking class with a friend or family member
- If you’re in the United States, there are many organized activities over at foodday.org. Even if you’re outside the U.S., you’ll find transferable ideas on the Food Day site.
- Visit a local farm.
- Grow some herbs in your home.
- Read books about food – growing it, foraging for it, cooking it, eating it…
Crafts
- Make a collage using foods cut out from flyers – group the foods according to origin, main vitamins, whether they are nutritious or not, etc. To strike up a conversation about local food, group the images according to whether they are available right in your province or state.
Tiny Peasant Pantry is a fantastic resource for your home or homeschool. Whether your children already love to spend time in the kitchen, or have the meal-time ‘blahs’, they will love this engaging food skills program that equips them with the skills to nourish themselves and those around them. Parents will love the section on age-appropriate ways to involve kids in the kitchen as well as the sanity-saving menu planning resources (also available separately).
In our Menu Planning Resources package, you will find everything you need to get your family on track with menu planning. Forget about the 4pm overwhelm once you start using this system. There are handouts with tips to get you started, as well as actual menu planners that you can print out and keep in a binder, or laminate and use on the fridge. Seriously save a ton of time, money, and your sanity!
This post was shared as a part of Simple Lives Thursday at My Humble Kitchen, Fight Back Friday at Food Renegade, and Unprocessed Fridays at Girl Meets Nourishment, Simply Natural Saturdays at The Pistachio Project, Thank Goodness It’s Monday at Nourishing Joy, and Natural Living Monday at Modern Alternative Health.