Sharing Food With Friends

These days, our garden is overflowing with cherry tomatoes. Caroline is learning how to share and is practicing by sharing the tomatoes. We pick them in the morning (or sometimes in the evening) and she takes a big bucketful of them to share with her classmates that day. The kids love them and gobble them right up. Who needs brownies, cookies, and other sweets when you can have vine-ripened cherry tomatoes? When Caroline comes home from school, she says, "I sharing totatoes, Mama." This morning, my friend Anne brought over a beautiful bunch of carrots - tiny ones, long ones, short ones, and fat ones. Caroline took half the bunch to the childcare center this morning to share with her friends. She proudly grabbed them by their tops - I kept them on since many children have never seen carrots with their greens still attached - and took them into her classroom.

Update: Caroline's friends loved the carrots. When I asked one of her teachers if the kids liked the carrots, she said, "I can't believe it, but they ate them. They loved them...Do they really just grow like that?"

Caroline's Lunchbox Menu, September 18: Breakfast -100% whole grain toast, sunflower butter, Flaming Fury peach (Clearview Orchards); Lunch - marinated baked tofu, rice, zucchini (Owosso Organics), pear (Kismet Farm); Snacks - trail mix (Michigan dried cherries, O's, sunflower seeds), cantaloupe (Greenman Produce)