Wow- school lunches have been in the news a lot recently, huh?

It shouldn’t really come as a surprise, I suppose. Nearly 32 million kids eat school lunches everyday, and another 11 million eat school-issued breakfasts too, so it’s only natural that people want to know what is going into their kid’s mouths.

Unfortunately, though, when school lunches make headlines, it usually is not for a good reason. From Congress deeming pizza a vegetable to Jamie Oliver attempting to revamp menus one school at a time, hot lunches have gotten a pretty bad reputation as being loaded with salt (usually more that half of the recommended daily intake), full of unhealthy fats and fried foods, and lacking in healthy options like fruits and veggies (again- pizza? A vegetable? Um, no.)

Well, school lunches are again making headlines, but this time, it’s finally good news. The government recently released new nutrition standards for school meals that include dramatic changes, including slashing sodium, limiting calories and offering students a wider variety and larger portions of fruits and vegetables.

These changes raise the nutrition standards for school meals for the first time in more than 15 years.

Kids will still get pizza, but with whole grain crust.

French fries will still be on the menu, but will likely be baked and sprinkled with less salt.

And, each lunch will be required to contain bigger portions of fruits and vegetables.

T. had her first solo performance at school yesterday. She even slept in curlers the night before, so she could have real ringlets for the Big Day. Her class has been working on an "Expressions" project the past few weeks. The assignment was to pick a motto that best describes their values, write up a paragraph describing the motto, and telling why it is important to them, and then they could pick an artistic way to express themselves--through art, music, skits, dance, etc. T. saw the musical Annie (hence the wish for curly hair) on DVD over Christmas and fell in love with the story, and the song "Tomorrow." I think she loves it because the sentiment behind the song so matches her personality: think about tomorrow, look forward to the new day, and don't get weighed down by what goes wrong today. Her motto she picked was: "Don't let today take away your tomorrow" which is her creative variation on my favorite one: "Don't let yesterday take up too much of today"--advice I have to work hard at implementing in my own life. 

T. chose to sing the song "Tomorrow" for her Expressions project, and she's been practicing it for weeks now. L., in true big brother fashion, has gotten pretty good at running from the room with his hands over his ears as soon as he hears the first note of the song. I was so proud of T. yesterday for sitting nervously through over an hour of other children's performances, before she got to stand up on that stage on her own. I was so proud of her for having the courage to sing out the words of the song, without any background music, in front of an audience of her peers, and way too many grown-ups and teachers. I'm not sure I would have had the courage to do that at her age.

We just love to compare ourselves to the French (case in point: the best-selling book French Women Don't Get Fat). Now a new book coming out next month, Bringing Up Bebe, highlights how parenting in France is superior (or at least a lot less "fussy" and "stressy") to that in the States.

While yet another book comparing the French to Americans sounds like one more great opportunity to pour a glass of wine, curl up in a cozy chair, and hate ourselves, I think this book might offer some amazing insight.

This article teasing the book mentions some really good points (generalizations, I realize):

If you ask T. what she wants to be when she grows up, she'll tell you "a scientist!" Then she will go on to qualify that and say, more specifically, that she wants to study marine biology. Awhile back I remember telling both kids that I had wanted to study zoology in college, but was held back from my aspirations because of math. To be fair, it wasn't math that held me back, but my reluctance to get my mind around it enough to push through the harder courses.

Math gives me a headache. I think I do have some type of learning disability when it comes to numbers, because I have trouble making sense of them in ways that go above and beyond simply not liking the subject. In school, math made me feel badly about myself. It made me feel thick-headed, and slow, and extremely frustrated. English, or language arts-centered classes, however, made me feel on top of my world.

When I teach developmental writing classes I always tell my students the story of my math challenges. I tell them I had to take the "remedial" math class in college, before I could move on to the first semester freshman math course. I tell them how I found myself caught in that avoidance cycle I see so often in my own students: I skipped class because I felt bad, which led to my poor grades, which led to more bad feelings, and more skipped classes. It was only with the help of my sister and a sympathetic and all-around great math professor that I was able to finally make some progress and turn the corner on my math anxiety.

A very quick and easy tip for this week’s Tuesday’s Tip, one that will help you get the Refried Bean Tacos from yesterday’s post to your table even faster than fast.   Here is the post, in case you missed it.

This easy, super-fast recipe uses fresh, ready-to-eat ingredients to make a quick taco dinner.  But did you notice something unique in my picture I posted yesterday?  Check out the taco on the left, at the bottom of the shell: