Having grown up helping my grandparents tend their farm, I have a healthy respect for a good kitchen garden. I know exactly how much work goes into putting a garden together, how much time it takes to keep it going and how frustrating it can be when weather, bugs, and marauding raccoons do their level best to destroy every food-bearing plant in sight.

But I also know how good a garden can be for a family.

Not only does it provide nutritious, flavorful food to a family, it also gives a bounty of other benefits.

Let’s look at just a few of them.

First of all, it builds bonds between family members and generations. This is true of any shared creative endeavor, of course, but truly, a garden is a very large project and any time a group of people come together to make something that big, they grow closer in the process. Relying on each other and helping each other strengthen our respect for each family member’s abilities as well as affection for our foibles. We work, we strive, we build, we sweat, and we laugh. We have fun. It’s fun to make something appear out of what was once just a piece of ground with grass and weeds covering it.

Sometimes I think that living in the city as most of us do these days has made us forget how much fun all that work is–it’s satisfying in ways that putting together pre-fab furniture–something most urbanites do regularly–just isn’t. With the manual work of gardening, it’s all you. Garden plots don’t come with step-by-step instructions. It’s just you, your shovel and the ground, and when people work together like that, there is problem solving involved, and creativity. And that is good for minds of all ages.

It builds physical strength and endurance. This should go without saying, but I’m saying it anyway. The best shape I have ever been in my life has been when I have had a garden to tend. Until my Grandpa grew too ill to work in the last two years of his life, he kept a great big garden, and he worked in it every day. He was a wiry, skinny fellow his entire life and pretty darned fit. Morganna’s father’s grandfather died in his garden, near the asparagus patch. I remember when she called to tell me that and I comforted her by saying, “That garden was his pride and joy, and I think he died right where he was most at peace. There in the garden with his face to the sun and the blue sky and his back to the earth he tended most of his life.”

She said she knew I’d know what to say to make her feel better.

But both of those men were well past their eighties when they died and I cannot help but think it was those years of labor in the fields beneath the sun and in the fresh air that kept them so spry for so long. The same goes for my Gram who tended her beloved flower garden until the last year of her life. Caring for living things-plants, animals and people- and tending them–keeps us strong and healthy.

Gardening exercises our brains, too. It’s all problem solving, thinking on the fly, watching the signs in the weather, the birds, the earth itself, as we try and figure out when to plant. It gives us something to think about as we work–how many beans should we plant here? Will those tall tomatoes shade the lettuce enough in the summer so it won’t bolt? What are we going to do about those rabbits coming in and eating our baby peas? What are we going to do with all of those radishes?

Working in a garden gives children of all ages mental stimulation, too. It’s enough for the little ones to plant seeds and then watch in wonder as they grow from itty bitty inedible rock-like thing into a full-blown, tasty carrot. Kids get to see and experience so much in a garden. They get to see worms at work, ladybugs feasting on aphids, praying mantis hiding, camouflaged among green pea vines, and ants marching in endless parades. They get to smell the scents of newly turned earth, rain, and squash blossoms, they get to touch the prickles of an eggplant stem and the velvety softness of a haricot vert. They get to hear the song of the bluebird, the raucous call of the crow and the chopping sound of the hoe.

All of the sensory inputs make connections in a child’s brain, connections that will serve to teach the child so many things that will serve them well in later life. not to mention stimulating the growth of essential neural pathways. I personally am of the belief that humans can have no better classroom for a young child than a garden.

Gardens give us peace.

I can attest to this my own self. A few months ago, my blood pressure dove up precipitously. Stress was the probable reason, stress and a genetic propensity for high blood pressure. But, it was weird because it went up so quickly, and for decades my blood pressure had been on the low end of normal. I’m on medication for it, and the medication is working, but I also vowed to exercise, give up drinking coffee all day (now it is one cup in the morning and truly, I feel better for it), and try and meditate.

With the exception of the giving up the coffee part, working in the garden has provided what I needed to help control my blood pressure. Digging and clearing, hoeing and weeding, lifting and toting, all have helped give me lots of physical exercise, while planting and weeding, tending and just -being- out in the sunlight among the bluebirds and neighbors, has done wonders for my mental state. I feel more peaceful, less anxious and less angry the longer I work in the garden.

The same has been true with Morganna. The hard labor of clearing the ground gave her an outlet for her aggression and stress while the act of planting seeds and tending plants calms her down and makes her more able to slow her breath and just be.

Gardening puts urban folk back in touch with nature, with the world beyond iPods, laptops and reality television. Getting our hands dirty reminds us of where our food comes from, where all of life comes from. We are reminded that everything that humans have ever done, everything we have ever built, every concerto ever written, every novel, every skyscraper, every car and even the Mars Rover has come from one simple thing: the soil.

Without dirt, we are nothing. We depend on the fertility of the earth as much as we rely on the sun, and all of human culture is built upon the ground we walk on and ignore every day, the ground we encase in concrete and asphalt.

When we garden, when we grow some of our own food, when we get the dirt underneath our fingernails, our families are reminded of the glue that holds us together isn’t just bonds of love and respect.

It’s also plain old dirt.

Gandhi said it best: “To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves.”

A more accurate headline would be, “Why Does Lou Dobbs See a Conspiracy In The Lunch Trays of The Baltimore City School System?”

But it just isn’t as catchy, so I’ll stick with the original.

What the heck am I talking about here, I am sure some of you are wondering.

It’s like this: The Baltimore City School System has instituted a Meatless Mondays policy and, even though CNN could not find any parents in Baltimore who were against having their kids eat more vegetables and fruits during school, the whole thing is obviously a conspiracy to turn kids into socialist vegan heathens or something.

Never mind that the whole idea came about as a way to promote healthier eating habits among children. Never mind that having kids eat more vegetables might do something to curb the epidemic of childhood obesity that is supposedly running rampant in our country. Oh, and don’t notice that vegetarian chili and grilled cheese sandwiches are cheaper than even the crap-quality meat that is scraped off of the meatpacking companies floors and is sold to school systems. Yeah, and never mind that our country is deep in a recession and nearly every school system in the US is strapped for cash.

Dobbs ignores all of these inconvenient facts and decides that the school system is pushing a political agenda just because PETA gave them one of their Proggy Awards for being the most progressive school system in the country because of their Meatless Monday policy.

I don’t know if you know this, Mr. Dobbs, but blaming the recipient of an award for having a political agenda just because the organization giving the award does have an agenda, is pretty twisted and screwed up logic. Yes, PETA has an a very definite agenda, but just because they recognize the Baltimore school system for being progressive does not mean that the aforementioned school system has the same agenda.

Watch the clip and then tell me the reporting isn’t slanted and bizarre:

I love the little banner on the bottom that reads, “The Food Police?” while the Baltimore school officials are on the screen. That is so–slanted.

And who does CNN get to talk about how it is a bad idea for any school system to do this?

A spokesperson for the American Meat Institute, a trade organization of meat packers and processors. Is this an unbiased source? Um, no. And did you notice that the reporter also was careful to point out that the spokesperson was also is a mother of two children? Why is this mentioned? Does CNN regularly tell us how many kids every spokesperson they have on their shows is blessed with? No.

No, they mentioned that mother of two children bit so as to make the viewer think that this woman is speaking more as a concerned mother than as a paid shill for the meat packing industry, an industry, which, by the way, keeps selling meat tainted with E. coli to the public, including to schools. You know, the very same industry that lobbies against tighter food safety regulations and more mandated health inspections.

You know, those trustworthy creeps.

And what does this paragon of unbiased information have to tell us? What does she say?

She points out at the end of her statement that 75 percent of American schoolchildren are deficient in protein, and for many of them the only protein they eat is what is in their school lunches.

Um, yeah.

Has no one ever pointed out to this highly credible and well-paid spokesperson and concerned mother of two that beans, grains, nuts, and dairy products such as cheese and milk all contain protein? So, the truth is that the kids we see in this news segment who are eating the vegetarian chili with rice or the grilled cheese sandwiches are not being deprived of protein as the American Meat Institute would have you believe. They are actually eating plenty of protein.

It just happens to come from somewhere other than meat.

And then, Dobbs goes on to talk about how the Meatless Monday policy is a “political storm in the making” and insinuates that it is meant to indoctrinate kids into the shadowy world of progressive socialist vegetable-eating, tree-hugging evil-doers.

Look, Mr. Dobbs, it is like this.

Kids should eat more vegetables. You know this, and I know this. The mom interviewed in your news story whose kids actually go to school in Baltimore knows this, and frankly, the American Meat Institute mother of two knows it, too.

And I think, sir, that you know this isn’t some ploy to turn all of the children in America into vegetarians, one school lunch at a time.

But you have to get het up about something and get your viewers upset so they will keep watching you.

But really, the truth is, there are people of all political stripes all over the world who eat very little meat, or who are cutting down on meat, or who eat no meat at all.

And there are plenty of socialists who eat meat. Go to France if you don’t believe me and watch them chow down on some cassoulet, boeuf bourguignon, and foie gras, goodness sake.

And for that matter, plenty of us progressives eat meat, too–just not meat from confined animal feeding operations like the ones that the American Meat Institute favors.

Eating more vegetables is not going to hurt the kids, Lou. It isn’t a vast left-wing conspiracy that is out to turn the nation’s children into elitist arugula-loving activists.

It is really just what the principal and the nutritional director from the Baltimore school system say it is–a way to help kids eat healthier while saving the schools some cash.

Stop hating on the veggies, man and chill out.

Because, dude, just because some kids in Baltimore are eating no meat for lunch one day a week doesn’t mean that PETA is coming to pry your Big Mac out of your cold, dead hands.

By now, most folks who read this blog know how strongly I feel about cooking and eating with our kids. And, for those who pay attention to the news, there have been reports several times a year for the past five years or so on research that has shown, over and over again, that family mealtimes are extremely beneficial to kids. Studies have shown a myriad of benefits to kids who eat at least one meal a day with their families: they study better, do better in school, are less apt to use drugs, drink or smoke cigarettes, have better relationships with their families, communicate better with their families and with everyone else, and they tend to eat better, more healthy foods.

Cooking with kids from an early age is also beneficial. Kids can learn physical coordination, math skills, how to follow sequential instructions, fine motor skills, physics, chemistry and biology, not to mention nutrition, history and culture, all by simply helping Mom or Dad cook dinner. Not to mention kids also learn a useful life skill–how to cook–which will stay with them and serve them well for their entire lifetimes. And need I say that a kid who grows up helping to cook is more likely to go on in life to cook for themselves, perhaps leading to a healthier lifestyle?

So, as I did with Morganna from the age of about three on, I have been doing with Kat from the age of about two upward–I have been taking her into the kitchen and cooking with her.

But while Morganna would happily stand on a kitchen chair so she could be up at the counter with me to stir batters, pick leaves off of herbs or beat eggs with a whisk, Kat is too timid. She got scared standing on chairs, because, well, frankly, our chairs are a little wobbly and just don’t feel stable enough to her. She would panic and think she was going to fall and scream to be put back on the floor.

So, unhappily, I confined her help in the kitchen to stuff I could do on the floor with her, though it never made me pleased. The floor is just not the best place to go about cooking–it is hardly sanitary.

I was thrilled to find this product–The Learning Tower–which solves the problem Kat was having with feeling unsafe standing up on a wobbly chair.

This really neat, sturdy, all-wood-construction piece of furniture is a uniquely designed step stool that completely encloses the kid so they feel secure. Not only do the -feel- secure, they are in fact secure, because the tower is very difficult to tip–I am sure it can be done, but I am pretty sure a kid can’t do it. It is made so kids can climb into it themselves, or be lifted in by a parent, and having fiddled with it, I can say with confidence that it is very, very stable. The platform that Kat stands on is adjustable in height so you can use it for short kids and tall kids, and it will grow along with your child. It is also easily put together (this is a big plus–I hate putting stuff together if the directions are badly written and there are lots of weird pieces–this thing was so easy I understood it) and it looks nice in the kitchen. We got ours in a black finish but you can also get it in various wood stains, or other colors of paint. (The black just looked really nice in our kitchen as you can see.)

There are only two drawbacks to The Learning Tower. The big one is its price–which is considerable, though I suspect that is because it is made of hardwood with high quality construction standards and has a satin-smooth finish with no rough spots. It is a quality piece of furniture which will last for years. The second drawback is its size–it takes up a pretty big chunk of kitchen real estate, but, that I think is part of why it is so sturdy and stable.

All in all, I am pleased with it and I have to say that Kat loves it, and we use it at least two times a day.

She helps us make scrambled eggs every day, and she has helped make dinner almost every night since her grandparents sent it to us for her birthday. She helped me mash potatoes by hand the other day and then lo and behold–ate them! She had always refused to try mashed potatoes until she actually helped make them.

On her birthday, we used it to make her cupcakes and today we baked cookies with it. (Look for a recipe for the cookies tomorrow.)

It is a great invention, one that I suspect a handy-man or woman could replicate with a good set of tools and some ingenuity.

I wish I had one when I was a kid–the step stools I stood one were pretty rickety and always made me wary when I helped out in the kitchen!

This recipe is not an original; I adapted it from a recipe I found on All Recipes a while back and have meant to make it ever since.

But, until last weekend, when I was presented with a stellar combination of summer fruits–the last of the summer’s blueberries, fresh wild blackberries, both golden and red raspberries and an unexpected windfall of everbearing strawberries that were the juiciest, sweetest, reddest fruit imaginable, I hadn’t really thought about baking anything for a while.

But then, faced with five of the best summer fruits, and the fact that this was the last time this particular combination of local berries would be available this year–I decided to mark this event with something special–but also something easy, since it was hot and I was in no way in the mood for arguing with pie crust.

Crisps are the best and tastiest way to bake with summer fruits when you are not in the headspace to deal with making pie crust. The dough is easy to put together–basically you mix together flour, brown sugar, rolled oats and some spices–cinnamon is classic, as is nutmeg or cloves–then cut in butter. The fruit is tossed with some sugar and maybe a bit of spices, and is put into a buttered baking dish, then the crisp crust is just sprinkled on top of the fruit and patted down gently. Then you bake it, and serve it warm out of the oven!

So easy!

Well, this recipe is a bit different in that it calls for half of the dough to be patted into the bottom of the baking dish, over which the fruit is dumped and spread. Then, the other half of the dough is sprinkled and patted over the fruit and the baking goes on as usual.

I was intrigued with this idea, because while I love fruit, and prefer fruity desserts to chocolaty ones any day, I also love the oat crusts of fruit crisps. And this method seemed like it would make for a crisp that was twice as good as your usual one with only the top crust. It sort of combines the best of a pie and a crisp–it has two crusts like my favorite kinds of pies and it is easy and full of oaty goodness.

I did modify the recipe a bit. I used more fruit than was called for in the recipe, in large part because I saw no reason not to, and the amount of fruit compared to the amount of crust seemed a bit parsimonious for my taste. And, there was the fact that I had a huge amount of fresh fruit to use, so why not? Instead of the four and a half cups of fruit, I used about seven cups of it, and since the berries were quite sweet, I used the same amount of sugar called for in the filling for the four cup amount.

I also added rosewater to the fruit, because all berries taste better with it, especially bramblefruits like raspberries and blackberries and strawberries are always made even more delicious with a sprinkle of rose flavor.

I added an extra half cup of oats to the dough because I like them, and used cardamom and a bit of dried ginger as well as the cinnamon to flavor it, and left out the nutmeg. (You know, I do like nutmeg, but I prefer it in savory foods than in sweet. I don’t know why, but that is the case–I feel the same way about allspice.)

Kat helped with this dessert–and if you have an older child, like a nine or ten year old, they could probably make this dish all by themselves, with you only helping to put the pan into the oven and take it out when it is done. It is really that simple.

For a nearly three year old, there was still plenty that Kat could do. She helped stir the sugar and rosewater into the berries for them to macerate. Then, she stirred the flour, brown sugar, spices, and oats together. After I cut the butter into the dough, she (with very clean hands, of course) helped me mush the butter into the mixture very well–a step the original recipe leaves out. I find that it makes a more crunchy, crispy crust if you fully blend the butter into the dry ingredients by massaging it all together.

Besides, Kat and I thought it was a whole lot of fun!

And, of course, Kat helped eat the results of her labor. She loved it–and who wouldn’t, really? Buttery crunchy crust with lots of sweet berries oozing with brilliant magenta, blue and purple juices–it really was heaven in a bowl.

Now, if only I had thought to make vanilla chai ice cream to put on top.

Next year.

But for this year, I can make an everbearing strawberry crisp with vanilla rosewater ice cream.

Or a peach melba crisp (peaches and raspberries) with vanilla chai ice cream.

Don’t those sound wonderful?

Until then, here is the recipe–remember, you can use just about any fruits to make a crisp.

Summer Berry Crisp
Ingredients:

6-7 cups of mixed fresh summer berries, trimmed and sliced as needed
4 tablespoons raw sugar
1 tablespoon rosewater (optional)
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 cups rolled oats (not instant oatmeal!)
1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground dried ginger
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 1/2 cups cold butter

Method:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large bowl, toss together the berries with sugar and rosewater. Allow to sit and macerate while you prepare the crust.

In another large bowl, stir together flour, oats, brown sugar and spices. Cut in butter until crumbly, then with clean hands massage the dough until it is smoother, but still with crumbly bits.

Press half of the dough into the bottom of a glass 9″X13″ pan. Dump in the berries and spread them about until they cover the bottom crust.

Sprinkle the remaining dough over the berries and lightly press them into the berries with gentle pats of your fingers.

Bake for 30-40 minutes, or until the fruit juice is bubbly and thick and the crust is golden brown. (If you have a convection oven like I do–the baking will take about 25-35 minutes, depending on how golden brown you like the crust of your crisps to be. I baked mine for thirty minutes exactly and it was perfect.)

Serve warm, with or without sweetened whipped cream or ice cream on top.

Children learn best by doing.

They follow our example in all things, as I remember well from my own childhood.

I have no doubt in my mind that the reason I am a chef today is because I grew up in a family of great cooks, all of whom had no qualms about spending hours a day cooking food for their families to eat. Not only did they have no qualms–they loved doing it. And they did it pretty much every day.

And when I was growing up, where did I spend most of my time?

In the kitchens of my mother, grandmothers, aunts and uncles.

And what did I do there?

I watched a lot.

For whatever reason, I was endlessly fascinated in what went on at the stove and on the table, in the sink and on the counter. I watched from my station on the floor under my Mom’s or Gram’s kitchen tables, as all sorts of fascinating alchemy went on around me–from making noodles and hanging them on a clothesline strung overhead across the kitchen, to canning tomatoes (once while canning tomatoes, my mother accidentally scalded her hand in boiling water and our next door neighbor lady put a grated up potato on it, and wrapped it in a bandage “to pull the heat out”–it worked–Mom’s hand didn’t blister at all) to making fudge to the cooking of countless pots of beans to the rare occasions when Gram stirred up her boiled custard that no one to this day can replicate.

And I played at cooking, too, down under those tables–pots and pans, wooden spoons, plastic bowls and measuring cups that were not in immediate use were given to me, and I would “cook,” stirring and measuring and scooping under the table, out from under the feet of the women passing to and fro as they actually worked, but still close by where they could keep an eye on me and I could happily watch them.

And then, before I knew it, I was old enough to help, in ways large and small.

My little hands were quite nimble, and so I was often put to work shelling peas or stringing beans.

I was also good at picking the strands of silk from between the kernels of corn fresh from its green, fragrant shucks. I could hull strawberries and pick through dried beans and lentils looking for bits of stone or stray sticks or beans that were wizened and crinkled or off-colored and untrustworthy-looking.

Soon enough I was trusted with a vegetable peeler and could tackle piles of carrots. Before that, I remember being given the task of peeling dozens of boiled eggs for deviled eggs or those mountainous batches of potato salads that my mother made every summer for the annual family gatherings with all the cousins, aunts and uncles, all of whom dearly adored her potato salad. (And I still prefer hers to anyone else’s. No one else makes it right.)

I am certain, absolutely certain that if I had not been included in those long hours of food preparation, if I had not helped plant and harvest vegetables, if I had not been intimately involved in tending livestock and preserving the fruits of our labor for the winter–I would not be a food-obsessed chef and food writer today.

I might still be a journalist or something.

Or maybe even a veterinarian. (I even was a pre-vet major for a time. The math classes killed me.)

But certainly, I would not be who I am today.

We are the sum of our experiences, filtered through our own unique personalities, talents and skills which are inborn.

But I am only a sample size of one person. Let’s look at how Morganna has turned out.

Most of her childhood memories of me are tied in some way to food. She remembers picking blackberries in the woods with me when she was about four or five.

She remembers me getting her to eat lamb by telling her it was dinosaur meat.

She remembers her Aunt Nikki making her candied carrots, which she called “Bugs Bunny Candy” and they were the first cooked carrots Morganna would eat.

She remembers being obsessed with garlic at an early age, and carrying heads of it around so she could smell them.

And she remembers, from the time she could stand on a step stool and reach the counter, helping me in the kitchen.

And in truth, she remembers helping her Grammy, my mother, as well.

And where is she now?

She’s a line cook at a fine dining restaurant here in town, and is planning on possibly transferring from OU to Johnson & Wales University to finish her BA as a culinary degree.

(And yes, Mamma is very proud of her. Very proud indeed.)

Now, I am not saying that every child we teach how to cook at home is going to run right out and become a chef.

Far from it.

But what will happen is that every child who learns how to cook also learns how to eat. And what to eat. And how to eat it. And when, and why.

Cooking lessons bring a child a sense of accomplishment and impart important skills that push that child towards self-sufficiency and independence, which, as I recall, is the point of raising a child into adulthood. Knowing how to cook is a skill that will serve any child, as well as that child’s loved ones very well for the rest of their lives. (And it is a marketable skill as well….)

But learning to cook isn’t just about cooking, because cooking isn’t just a chore.

It is a part of our cultures. It is a part of our selves, our families. It is history, it is art, it is science, heck it is even math.

It is part of what makes us human.

For it is theorized that cooking food is what enabled us to evolve these big brains which went on to create art, science, music, literature, history, philosophy and culture. Cooking then, is part of what not only makes us human now–but made us human in the first place.

So, if you teach a child to cook, you are not only introducing him or her to a useful life skill–you are teaching them what it means to be human.

Cooking and sharing food brings love and peace–so when we teach our children to cook, we are also teaching them how to be good, humane, loving human beings.

So, this Sunday, it was Kat’s turn to start learning how to prepare food and be a good little human while she is at it..

She has helped her Daddy make scrambled eggs for several months now, by guiding his hand as he cracks the egg and sprinkling in the herbs, but Sunday, I gave her her first real task–she sat down on the floor with me and helped shell horticultural beans.

And she worked at it diligently for over forty-five minutes–and was sad that we had no more pods to empty!

I had to open the pods for her–they are leathery and tough, but she would with careful, nimble fingers, pull each bean out and put them in the colander, while tossing the empty pod into the pot I had brought in for them.

She was so absorbed in the work–she commented on the beans, she counted them as they came from the pods, and she noted what color they were as she shelled them. (Horticultural beans can be pure white, white with pink stripes, white with red stripes, solid pink, solid red or red with white stripes. I am fascinated with the genetics involved in such a variable appearance.)

It was wonderfully relaxing to have her working with me, both of us sitting comfortably on the floor as we worked side by side.

I am so proud of her.

And she was and is so proud of herself–and guess what? Because she shelled those beans, even though they were an unfamiliar food, she readily tried them, tasting the broth of the stew they cooked in, and the beans themselves. She loved it. She insisted on stirring the stew with me, so I held her up to the stove and we carefully manipulated the wooden spoon in lazy circles in the pot, sniffing the delicious steam that rose to wreath our faces in the savory scents of herbs, onions, garlic and leeks.

Later, she helped me mix the dough for the berry crisp we made for dessert. She was especially fond of sniffing the cardamom jar, and she helped me pour the rosewater over the macerating berries. I taught her to put a dot of rosewater behind her ears so she could “smell like a flower,” as she said.

I think she is well on her way to learning to love food, the way it smells, feels and tastes.

And her education in how to cook has only just begun–but the photograph above chronicles the exact day and moment it began, at least in a practical, not just theoretical sense.