Fun Ideas to Connect Kids With Food from Rocky Mountain Flatbread

Fun Ways to Connect Kids with Food

There are lots of fun ways to connect kids with food – below are a few ideas and web sites to get you going. To keep in touch with the freshest ideas, follow us on our blog, facebook and twitter (www.rockymountainflatbread.ca.)

Growing Food with Kids

Pick your own strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and more on one of our many farms in Ladner, Richmond or The Fraser Valley. Visit www.pickyourown.org.

Grow your own food. It’s easy and a great way to get kids to appreciate the cycle of growing food. Snap peas, tomatoes, salad, herbs, potatoes, and strawberries can all be grown in pots or small spaces in your garden. Visit www.gardenwiseonline.ca for lots of useful tips. And pick up a free copy of West Coast Seeds magazine (from your closest garden center) for all the knowledge of what to plant when.

Take your family on a community garden tour in Vancouver. There are now over 40 official community gardens in Vancouver – local people having fun growing their own food. Visit www.vancouver.ca.

Visit UBC student run working farm to buy your fresh veggies, visit or enroll your child in one of their summer camps, Farm Wonders, ages 6 – 11 years. www.landfoodubc.ca.

Compost you greens and show your kids how to create “black gold” for your pots and garden. You can get into worm composting or old-fashioned composting. Visit www.cityfarmer.ca.

Food Shopping With Kids

Shop at your local farmers market and your kids can “meet their maker.” – www.eatlocal.ca.

Buy a local food box or join a CSA so your kids can get acquainted with the foods and their seasons. Visit www.organicsathome.ca or www.cityfarmer.org/csa

Play games while shopping – look for hidden MSG ingredients (autolyzed yeast and hydrolyzed proteins), high sugar content (45grams is the daily allowance), salt content (24,00 mg is the daily allowance) on packages, and transfat content.

Cooking and Eating with Kids

Enroll your kids in cooking classes to get them excited about food preparation and to expand their curiosity about flavours, flavour combinations and new foods. Imagine your kids cooking you dinner for a change! Summer cooking camps with Julia are being held at Rocky Mountain Flatbread July 6, 7, 8 and August 3, 4, 5.

Create healthy baked goods with your kids at home. Switch refined grains to whole grains and simple sugars to complex, alternative sweeteners. Do blind taste tests to see which alternative sweeteners you like best. Try real maple syrup, brown rice syrup or turbinado sugar.

Experiment with health snacks – you may be surprised by what your kids respond to. Hummus, artichoke dip and guacamole with veggie sticks or apple slices with pumpkin seed butter are some surprisingly kid friendly options.

Choice is key when it comes to involving your child in eating healthy foods. Offer your child their own cupboard or fridge drawer and fill it with parent-approved foods and snack that your child can choose from when hungry – raw nuts or trail mix, healthy granola bars, fruit, veggie sticks with dip, whole grain baked goods or crackers, seed or nut butters are all healthy, kid-friendly options.

Recipe: Spinach Hummus , Julia Iman O Loughlin, RHN

Ingredients:

4 -5 cloves of garlic

14 oz can of chick peas

5 tbsp olive oil

3 tbsp orange juice (freshly squeezed)

3 tbsp tahini

1 cup of fresh spinach

Instructions:

Place all of the ingredients in a food processor or blender and blend until creamy and smooth. Use as a dip with rice chips or carrots.

For Earth Day - Rocky Mountain Flatbread Diners Share Ideas To Reduce Our Carbon Footprint

At Rocky Mountain we have been collecting ideas from our diners of how to reduce our carbon footprint while living and working in Vancouver.

It turned out to be a very resourceful activity and gave me many inspirational ideas on further simple actions I can personally take with my family as well as in our restaurant and I am hoping it may give others inspirational ideas too.

Join one billion people in 190 countries in taking further actions in your daily life to build a healthy, prosperous, clean energy economy now and in the future. Happy Earth Day Everyone!

Here is the list of diners’ ideas to inspire you:

Ideas for the House!

ü You can recycle all plastics at multiple locations on the 3^rd Saturday of the month. Pacificmobiledepot.com.

ü For the average four bedroom family home, if you use a low flow shower head you can pay back the investment for the shower head in as little as 2 months from the savings on water and electricity.

ü Switch from GOOGLE to BLACKLE (A black screen uses less energy.) blackle.com powered by google.

ü Reuse old envelopes for sorting and filing documents at home.

ü When shaving, turn off the water. Put enough water in the basin first to clean the razor.

ü Give clothing, household items no longer used to the Salvation Army on 4^th and Cypress.

ü Install programmable thermostats in your home. Cutting power, bills and consumption by 55%.

ü Use cloth diapers, wash yourself and line dry. (when it’s not raining.) Plastic diapers take 1000 years to biodegrade in our land fills!

ü Have “no tech” or “low tech” days when you use no car, no phone and no computer.

ü Do all sunbathing at Wreck Beach – less laundry!

ü Hug a tree daily!!

ü Use face clothes instead of wipes for children’s meal messes.

ü Hang your laundry to dry! Dryers use far too much energy.

ü Unplugging all appliances when you go to bed and leave condo. You can save up to 10% on your energy bill.

ü Reuse your water bottles/ drink bottles.

Ideas for Shopping

ü Stop buying stuff.

ü Walking to Rocky Mountain Flatbread for local organic delicious dinner. Eat local!

ü Buy as local as possible – especially food.

ü Buy organic food only and support local farmers.

ü Use less plastic made products.

ü Be conscious of packaging your food from the grocery store comes in. Use cloth produce bags.

ü Use handmade fabric grocery bags that are washable, so you can reuse over and over and over.

Ideas for The Garden

ü Get a worm composter for your home apartment and or workplace. For info: visit City Farmer, 2150 Maple.

ü Fertilize your garden with crushed egg shells and coffee grinds.

ü Grow your own veggies!

ü For folks with no space but a balcony, start a wormery! Simple plastic storage box from Canadian Tire – order worms on-line and off you go.

ü Put tea leaves on your plants – particularly Rooibos on indoor plants.

ü Rain water collection for watering plants. (www.watertiger.net)

ü Join a CSA (Community supported agriculture): You will get the best, local produce; support organic food (which is 80% of carbon footprint of food) and save money!

ü Use garden stalks for mulch under your raspberries.

Ideas for Transport!

ü Stagger work schedules so that there’s time to walk kids to school most days.

ü Take a Staycation every year. Keep the money within the province. Save on air miles and diesel fumes.

ü Walk from the West End to Rocky Mountain Flatbread on 1^st Avenue for the best pizza!

ü Stop idling.

ü Take public transit

ü Close major streets downtown to cars on weekends – Robson and Georgia – have people take transit or a bike

ü Commute via bicycle! Celebrate living in a city where it’s warm enough to bike year around!

ü Live where you work and play so you can just walk and or take public transit.

ü Carpool to work.

Lots of Earths? - Rocky Moutain Education Society

Yes we only have one earth, so we must conserve it's resources! At the rate we're consuming, we'll need 5 earth's worth of resources to sustain our lifestyles in the West. Learn more about how much STUFF we are consuming at www.thestoryofstuff.com


Trafalgar Elementary is learning and educating their community about energy saving tips and climate change. This week they finished making mini globes as key chains and necklaces to sell for Earth day next week! Stay tuned for energy saving tips...

How much plastic do you recycle? Rocky Mountain Flatbread Green Tip

Only 7% of Canadians recycle their plastic!

Pacific Mobile Depots now have 3 Vancouver locations to drop off all of your plastic (styro foam, soft plastic, hard plastic, computers, etc...) on the third Saturday of every month. Check out their web site for your nearest location. http://www.pacificmobiledepots.com.

Growing Potatoes - Rocky Mountain Flatbread Education Society

It's potato growing season!

Students at Lord Tennyson Elementary School started growing their own potatoes in tubs on a rainy day in April.

They followed a few simple instructions and are hoping to harvest lots of potatoes in a few months time!

The simple instructions:

1. Buy some seedling potatoes and make sure the eyes (sprouting bits coming out of the potato are about 1 inch - you can do this by spreading them out on a baking tray and spraying them with a little water and leaving them near sunlight).

2. Put a layer of dirt at the bottom of a large container.

3. Put 1 - 3 potatoes in your container and cover with dirt. For a smaller container put 1 potato for a larger containers put 3 and for a super large container like a garbage bin put 4 - 6.

4. Keep the container indoor by sunlight and the soil moist - not wet.

5. When the shoots grow through the soil just keep topping up with soil. So the stem is fully covered with soil. Don't cover the leaves with soil.

6. Plant outside after about 4 - 6 weeks. If your container is big enough - you can just move the container outside.

If you are trying this in summer months you can plant your potatoes directly outside in containers or in garden beds in trenches and follow the same simple instructions as above.

We shall keep you up to date with our progress. We have already made a few mistakes - but hoping our potatoes will grow anyway! We didn't let our potato eyes sprout 1 inch and we left our poor potatoes outside on their first night.

For more professional advise on container potato growing visit: container-gardening-tips.com/container-vegetable-gardening/growing-potatoes-in-containers.html.

Other things you can start growing outside in April include snap peas, salad, strawberries, asparagus, chard, onions, rhubarb and herbs!! We are trying our green fingers with that too!

Share your responsible business ideas!

With a little help from Rocky Mountain Flatbread Education facilitators and big funding from Vancity, Responsible Entrepreneurs have been creating environmentally and socially conscious products right here in the elementary schools of Vancouver, BC, and Canmore, AB. Students from grades 2 to 12, have successfully developed, manufactured, packaged, marketed and sold socially and environmentally responsible products to their families and communities. This year in Vancouver, students from Lord Tennyson, Queen Victoria, Queen Elizabeth Annex, Charles Dickens elementary, and R.C. Palmer Secondary school, made some amazing environmentally friendly products. They created green cleaning kits, healthy snack bars, funky belts made from bike inner tubes, beeswax candles, potted plants, beds of lettuce, lavender bags, organic crepes, and much more!



DO YOU have any ideas of responsible businesses that kids could create? Our young responsible entrepreneurs have found ways to turn what we call 'junk', into something new; like turning bike inner tubes into fashionable belts, dog collars, and skate guards! They have also created and sold alternatives to unhealthy and environmentally harmful products, like green cleaning products. They love to incorporate what they've learned about climate change into their sales, for example, selling stainless steel water bottles to educate their customers on the harmful aspects of plastics on our health and the environment. We look forward to hearing your brilliant ideas!  

Time to get clean with green!

Thanks to funding from Vancity, this Spring, students at Queen Victoria Annex, and Charles Dickens Elementary in East Vancouver, learned about responsible entrepreneurship through successfully launching their own green cleaning businesses.

Students learned about climate change and actions they can take at home to reduce their carbon footprint. Some actions these students took were; taking shorter hot showers, turning the lights off, lowering the heat, not using plastic bags, using cold water to wash clothes, and many more. What do you do to reduce your carbon footprint at home or at work?

"Can we sell our responsible products to the whole world" was one student's response, after hearing about how harmful toxic cleaning products are for our health the environment. Here are some cleaning recipes that Queen Victoria Annex and Charles Dickens Elementary wanted to share with you! Please SHARE your green cleaning recipes!

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Essential Oil Air Freshener

~ 1 cup of water
~10 drops essential oil of your choice
- Spritzer Bottle

Mix the essential oil and water together in the spray bottle and tightly screw the cap back on. This can be spritz in the bathroom, kitchen, or any room to freshen. Also can mist on face for relaxation.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

All Purpose Spray

- ½ tsp washing soda (available in laundry section of grocery store)
- 1 tsp of lemon juice
- water
- (optional) 3 drops of essential oil of your choice (lavender, tea tree, rosemary…)

Combine the ingredients in a spray bottle and shake until the washing soda has dissolved. Essential oil adds extra anti-bacterial properties. Use this on your shower walls, kitchen counter tops, and for spot washing on the floor!
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Abrasive Tub and Tile Scrubber

- ¾ cup baking soda

- ¼ cup salt
- 2 drops of tea tree oil

Combine ingredients in a bowl and mix. Using a funnel fill the jars with the mixture. Use as you would Comet.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Window/Mirror Cleaner

- 1 tsp of lemon juice in the bottle
- Fill ½ the bottle with vinegar
- Fill ½ the bottle with water.

Test the nozzle to make sure that it sprays. Then tighten it so that it won’t leak. Use as you would Windex.

Zen and the Art of Bicycle Maintenance

This spring we partnered with Canmore Community Cruisers (CCC) to provide our Zen and the Art of Bicycle Maintenance Program to Lawrence Grassi Middle School and Canmore Collegiate High School. We were able to have have the ENTIRE Lawrence Grassi Middle School go through the program with the help of CCC volunteers and the help of the grade 8 Leadership class. Each class calulated how many Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions they were able to save by riding their bike to school, and how many kg's they could save if they were able to take 'green' transportation to school everyday. Mme. Frasers class won by having the most GHG emissions saved for having nearly everyone take 'green' transportation to school that day. The students were also taught about bicycle recycling and different eco-products you could make out of bike parts. How to change and patch a flat tire, and the ABC's of Bicycle Maintenance. The program was similar for the grade ten students at CCHS, only they got to have more then 10 minutes at each of the stations. I would like to thank all the businesses that donated prizes to the event, and to all the volunteers with CCC. I would also like to especially thank Gini Dalgas with CCC for getting this program organized with me and going above and beyond a typical volunteer position. www.communitycruisers.ca

Local Heroes Honoured

We just wrapped up our final program of the academic year, with the local heroes celebration. The party was graciously hosted by the Flatbread Company, and a HUGE THANK-YOU to all the staff that made the day a success. This semester the program was completed by the grade 7/8 French immersion class from Lawrence Grassi Middle School. I had a great time working with this class and with their teacher Mme. Provencher. The students did a great job nominating people within the community that were deserving of this title. After agreeing on the nominations we had to go through the list and identify which of people were most deserving. To see who was chosen please drop into the Rocky Mountain Flatbread Restaurant in Canmore to check out the new hero photos. I would also like to thank Micky and Emerald Lake Lodge for the greatest chocolate cake I have ever had.

Renewable Energy Program

Renewable Energy Program

We had a great program that started this year with the help of KCP Energy. The program started with Geoff Domenico- owner of KCP Energy (http://www.kcpenergy.com), and Evan Koebel- Spring Creek Mountain Village coming into the grade ten ASCENT class at Canmore Collegiate High School. Geoff taught the students about solar energy and different ways that it can be used to effectively reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and provided them with a tour of the mechanical room at the Canmore Recreation Center. Evan talked about the geothermal energy used to heat the water used in the new units at Spring Creek Mountain Village and other forms of renewable energy.
With this information the ASCENT students prepared presentations and went into all the grade five classes in the Valley to teach them about renewable energy and to make solar ovens. Each grade five student was going to make a smore that day, but due to the lack of sun light resulting from a snow storm the students decided to wait until the weather came around.
All the ASCENT students really enjoyed this program even recognizing it as one of the best programs they have been involved in, and the grade five students really enjoyed learning from older students and were able to get a lot out of it. We hope that we continue to receive funding to provide this program to future grade five students.

Gettin goin' with Grassi

From Bike Tubes to Skate Guards

We worked with Mrs. Davisons Grade 8 Leadership class to covert old used Bike Tubes into Skate Guards. The process took some work, we started out trying to think of something to make out of the bike tubes, because they can't be recycled and Canmore produces A LOT of the them. We came up with a few ideas, i pod case and cell phone cases, but the girls didn't think that black would be the most attractive colour. Then we thought of belts, bags or binders, but we didn't have a sewing machine that would work with the rubber. Then we though of skate guards, we went through a few different prototypes, but this is the best one we came up with, because it uses only elbow grease and a tube. The other samples used lots of glue and rivets, but we thought it would be better to use a no extra resources. Although the Skate guards were a great idea, they could have been better executed with the use of a sewing machine, as the students found it really hard to crochet the tubes together in order to make the guard a little stronger. If anyone has any other ideas of what you can make with bike inner tubes, plus let us know!

Responsible Entrepreneurship Program- Canmore

Mrs. Indovian Duncan’s Grade 2/3 class from Our Lady of the Snows Catholic Academy participated in the responsible entrepreneurship program this term. The program started off with an introduction to climate change and the climate change game. The students each did their part, and have been challenged to continue doing their best to reduce their footprint on the earth. The business they created made Christmas cards and decorations out of recycled materials. The cards were made out of old/faded paper products and then stamped with an image they had carved into a reused piece of Styrofoam. The ornaments started out as prototypes that the students created out of recyclables, and then voted on to decide which ornaments would be the best sellers, easiest to make and gather the materials for. Some of the ornaments included gift boxes (cereal boxes turned inside out, folded appropriately and the stamped with art they made out of old styrofoam food trays), snowman ornaments (egg cartons), Angels (juice lids, and empty toilet paper rolls), Book Trees (made out of old books). They raised a total profit of $453. All the students were blown away by the amount of they raised by selling products that they designed and created, and what they were able to accomplish when they put their minds to it. The students decided to donate 100% of their earnings to buy goats, chickens, pigs, mosquito nets and soccer balls through World Vision.

It's a wrap- Local Heroes Program Canmore

The Local Heroes Program was a success! The program was completed by Exshaw School's grade 7 class. We started the program with the climate change game and challenge. The students made a great effort doing what they could to reduce their impacts on the planet and learned about reducing their ecological footprint. The students nominated about 20 people as local heroes, then narrowed down the list to 9 different people or teams of heroes. We wrapped up the local heroes program on Thursday November 20 with a local heroes celebration. The celebration was great fun, we had nearly all the heroes come, plus we had some media show up, I will include the link for the outlook article. http://www.albertalocalnews.com/rockymountainoutlook/news/35189739.html. Geoff from the Canmore Co-op donated the space for the celebration. We made a piece of art from garbage we found at Victory Thrift, and it will hang at the Co-op along with a letter about the local heroes program.

Bobs and Lolo performing New Years at Rocky Mountain Flatbread

Bobs and Lolo are coming to celebrate an evening of family New Year Festivities at Rocky Mountain Flatbread.

Eco festive Parties at Rocky Mountain Flatbread

Chef Oliver has put together delicious festive menus.  And when you book your party with us we promise it will be eco-friendly ... your meal will be carbon neutral and use lots of B.C. produce PLUS:

$1 for each meal ordered will be donated to World Vision.  Our aim is to raise enough to buy a stable full of animals to help a community in Africa break the cycle of poverty.

A frozen pizza for each meal ordered will be donated to the Portland Hospital Society, supporting the homeless in East Vancouver.

Share what eco-festive party things are your doing this christmas.

Rocky Mountain Flatbread Education & Bike Innertubes = Dog Collars & Belts

We want to hear your ideas of what you can do with bike inner tubes and even better send us photos of your ideas in action.

When working with grade 5 students at Lord Tennyson school they have a great idea of transforming bike inner tubes to dog collars and belts!  Our prototypes are looking pretty good.  Watch here for the finished look.  

ROCKY MOUNTAIN FLATBREAD CELEBRATES VANCOUVER URBAN GARDENERS

This is a picture of Ward from City Farm Boy one of the many fantastic urban gardeners in our Vancouver area.  

Ward grows thousands of square feet of fresh veges from early spring to the later winter months selling his produce at Riley Farmers Market.  

His picture and many more experienced and less experienced urban gardeners can be found on our restaurant walls.  Sharon Hanna, urban gardener for over 20 years & consultant for growing your own food from Hotbeds; Justin Tilson, urban gardener for over 5 years; Tim Higgs, who used to supply John Bishop with all of his fresh herbs when his restaurant first opened...  And the list goes on.

Their reasons for urban gardening are hugely diverse:  Love of gardening, food security, personal nurtrition, taste and environmental reasons.

And their wealth of knowledge for gardening tips is amazing.  One thing every urban gardener said was make sure your use soil full of nutrients and use lots of compost every year - it is black gold!!!  

So if you know of any urban gardeners in Vancouver with great gardening tips we would love to hear about them.

Canmore Educational Society

This fall the Canmore Educational Society is back in full swing. We have started two programs this term, the Local Heroes Program (grade 7 class, Exshaw school) and the Responsible Entrepreneur Program (grade 2/3 class, Our Lady of the Snows Catholic Academy). Both programs are going well, and we are looking forward to the pizza party at the new Canmore Co-op (www.canmorecoop.ca) with our local heroes on November 20th. We are still looking for a photographer to take photos on the hereos, if you are interested please contact me. For our responsible entrepreneur program, the grade 2 class is making prototypes this week of potential Christmas inspired products to sell. Look for us at Safeway and Sobeys on Sat. Dec. 6th, and at Stonewaters on Sat. Dec. 13th.

Spring at RMF

Hey Vancouver! Spring is finally here and the staff at RMF would like all to beware the random pizza delivery! It seems to be the best way to spread great word of mouth is to ambush local business along with regular people on the street with samples of our great product. So if you are in Kitsalano this spring/summer don't be surprised if one of our wonderful staff offers you a complimentary sample of our pizza. We will be out in full force this spring and summer spreading our pizza story throughout the community. For those of you who have experienced the random pizza delivery, don't worry. We'll be back to see you as well. Keep checking our RMF blog for in-store info and menu changes as well as the highly anticipated return of our red and white sangria just in time for the patio. Stay cool Vancouver. Happy spring everyone!

Going Green Students - Rocky Mountain Flatbread Education Program

Another project completed with students at Canarvon School, Kits, Vancouver - hooray!

Students and we (Suz and Isabel) learnt all about some of the horrors of household products we use everyday - candles, cotton, toothpaste, soap, face soaps.  All of these products contain man made chemicals and petroleum based products which lead to an increase in allergies, asthma, cancers and are polluting our waters and soil.

We also discovered how easy it was to make all natural alternatives which are kinder to ourselves and kinder to nature.  Toothpaste made of baking soda, glycerine, a touch of salt and peppermint.  Face soaps made of orange and rose water.  Candles made of beeswax.  Friendship bracelets made of hemp.  Thanks to all of the students who participated in our program and of course our beloved program leader Noreen - who makes all these after school programs possible.  Suz and Isabel.