Lunch Box News

I vividly remember the politics of my school cafeteria. Lines were drawn as to who sat with whom and at which table, and every day, we judged what was inside each other’s lunch boxes.

Two decades ago, bland was better: cold-cut sandwiches, soup from a can or a pack of Lunchables were benign and therefore acceptable. Most of the foods that I love – curries with aromatic spices, slow-cooked pork hocks, or Chinese sausage with rice – were deemed, well, gross.

But with every passing year, the country is becoming more culturally diverse, bringing the lunchbox along with it. Canada welcomed more than 250,000 immigrants in 2009, compared to just under 190,000 a decade before. In Toronto, 51 per cent of the city’s 2.7 million residents were born in another country, and newcomers settle everywhere from the prairies to the Maritimes. The 2011 census reported more than 200 different languages spoken at home. Read More...

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New York City is known for putting many items on the culinary map, and one of our favorites is Jewish deli food. Nothing beats a classic pastrami or corned beef sandwich on rye with mustard.

We’ve already tried the hot pastrami sandwich from Deli & Dogz (which used to be called Katz & Dogs, until Katz’s Deli objected). Next up was the corned beef sammie.

Deli & Dogz charged $12 for the sandwich, but it was piled high with meat, and came with a pickle and side of cole slaw, potato salad or macaroni salad.

We were thinking of getting 1/2 sandwich, a knish and a soda for $11.75, but were a little disappointed they only had those square potato knishes. Last time we went to Deli & Dogz, they had kasha knishes, but not anymore. You can see their ful... Read more

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I always bring my lunch from home to work and I always have. Growing up, I brought my lunch to school pretty much every day, even when I was in college. I was never a fan of school cafeteria lunch so I grew accustomed to making and packing my lunch at home and bringing it along with me. Buying lunch, especially in NYC, gets expensive and I rather save the money I would have spent on lunch and put it toward something else. However, making lunch for each day requires a tiny bit of effort, but I promise anyone can do it. Here’s a lazy girl’s guide to bringing lunch to work!

First things first, buy yourself a lunch box. This way all your food is in one bag and if something spills/leaks it won’t ruin all your stuff. Then buy the appropriate containers and Tupperware. There are containers these days to hold everything from soup to salad dressing to cereal. You definitely don’t want your handcrafted lunch getting smushed on your way to work! Read more...

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A group of children, a bunch of chairs (one fewer than the number of children playing) and music.

How to play: The chairs are arranged in a circle, facing outwards, with the players standing outside of the circle. Once the music starts, players begin walking around the circle. When the music stops, the players must sit in a chair as fast as they can. The person left standing is out of the game, one more chair is removed and the game continues.

The rules: Any pushing or shoving by players to get to a chair when the music stops will result in that player leaving the game.

How to win: Be the last person left sitting.

What else you need to know: Chairs also can be set up back to back, forming a double line, facing outwards. In another variation, you can play this game without chairs - the last person to sit down on the ground or floor is eliminated.

It's hard enough to find cool people to hang out with, let alone cool people who happen to have kids your kid's age and who have the same Saturday afternoon free that you do. (Adult conversation! In your very own home!)

But instead of relaxing in the backyard over glasses of wine while the kids swarm the swing set, you keep having to get up and police.

Grrrr. Why can't they just get along?! Can't they see Mommy is socializing???

The good news is if you invest some time teaching the kids how to work things out, you may be able to get your dream afternoon back -- at some point in the future, says developmental psychologist Nancy S. Buck, Ph.D and founder of Peaceful Parenting Inc.

Her advice:

Make a playdate plan with your child in advance.
"Ask her to imagine it and tell you the story of how it will go, so she has a sense of creating the plan," Buck says. "Ask, 'how shall we handle it if there's a disagreement?' Listen to her idea, and if it's too 'magical' give her a reasonable solution." Read more...

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As a musician, music educator and researcher, parents often ask me when they should begin introducing their children to music. As with most easy questions, there's an easy answer that is incomplete and a more nuanced answer that is correct.

The easy answer is: You should begin age-appropriate music "lessons" soon after birth, or maybe even before birth. That being said, please stay with me before giving your 6-month-old a trumpet.

There is a great deal of research supporting the notion that musical ability develops during a critical period from birth through age 9 (or 10 or even 11, depending on the research). However, it seems clear that after age 11 the window for developing certain musical abilities is shut -- and shut forever.

This makes sense. Our brains seem to be "wired" for learning and processing the patterns we hear. This is most obvious in how young children develop language. They hear the patterns and inflections in their native tongue and their brains internalize them. Language learning seems natural, and they learn the language of the culture they're living in. A child can also learn multiple languages at this time and being bi-lingual seems natural. Yes, an adult can learn a second language, but it will rarely be as natural as the first language or without an accent.

The same is true with music. At its most basic level, music is made up from a surprisingly small vocabulary of rhythm and pitch patterns. These basic patterns vary by culture, (which is why Japanese music sounds different from Canadian music), but the basic principle of music being comprised of patterns is true of all music. Read more...

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All you need for this game is at least two players.

How to play: This is a word game in which players take turns adding letters to a growing word fragment, but they cannot complete the word. A player who completes a word loses that round and receives a letter of the word "ghost," as in the basketball game Horse. Each fragment must be the start of an actual word.

The rules: The person whose turn it is may challenge the previous player to prove the current fragment is actually a word. If the player can name the word, the challenger loses that round. If the challenged player cannot name a word, that player loses the round.

How to win: The first person who receives all the letters in the word "ghost" is the loser of the game.

What else you need to know: In some versions of the game, players that have gotten out of the game continue to participate by trying to distract other players and turn them into ghosts. If a player does not have all the letters of the word "ghost" and he or she talks to an existing ghost, they are immediately out of the game and become a ghost.

As the mother of three kids under the age of 3, I consider my best friend, Joanne, one of the great saving graces.

The mother of almost 4-year old twin boys Kyle and Adam, Joanne hosted innumerable play dates for Ben, my 2-year old son, when I was struggling through my pregnancy with my own twin girls.

She's brought her crew to see us weekly in the 10 months since Charlotte and Elizabeth were born, and helped me on my early voyages out of the house with all three kids (testing the claim of a few restaurants that they are, indeed, "family-style.") She's also given us more baby clothes and gear, advice and moral support than I can count.

But, though we've been friends since second grade, Joanne and I have always been different ("We'll never steal each other's compact discs or men," she used to joke in our single 20s) -- and our parenting styles reflect that.

Joanne is, by her own admission, the stricter mom of the two of us, while I am hopelessly over-permissive. Her boys frequently take time-outs on the stairs ("the naughty step") when they visit our house, whereas my son didn't even know we had a naughty step. Dinner at Joanne's house is a well-mannered affair; ours is a mess of games and songs. And her boys know they must eat the dinner put in front of them, while I'm pushing more food at my son an hour later if he doesn't eat. Read more...

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Digital life has lots of benefits -- online tracking isn't one of them.

Our online digital world lets kids connect with family and friends and consume, create and share enormous amounts of content. It also lets companies track kids and collect their personal information.

Online tracking of kids is growing.
Tracking and profiling kids online -- and selling their information to advertisers and data brokers -- has quickly become widespread. The Wall Street Journal recently found that the top 50 websites for kids and teens installed 4,123 cookies and other tracking tools on a test computer -- 30 percent more than were installed by the top 50 general sites.

It's time to take action to protect kids' privacy.
We need a "Do Not Track Kids" law. Policymakers must take action to protect kids' and teens' online privacy. Kids' online behavior shouldn't be tracked, and companies shouldn't be allowed to sell or transfer kids' personal information.

More information can be found on The Wall Street Journal article.