Instead of giving a Chanukah holiday gift with a limited lifespan, give a gift of a personalized succulent garden. Lula’s Garden is a succulent gifting company founded by Israeli native Liraz Birnbaum. Read on to learn more about this wonderful holiday gift idea and receive a 20% OFF Chanukah coupon code.
Read More
Editor’s Note: My 7-year-old son wrote this piece with me about why natural resources are important. ThIs is a topic about which he is very passionate. The piece has been lightly edited for syntax and grammar.
I use natural resources when I drink water. I use them for building toy robots out of cardboard, which is made out of wood. I wear clothes and shoes made out of leather. And I eat fruits and vegetables that are grown in soil.
I wrote this article because I was curious about why natural resources were incredibly important and how I could learn about them. Without these things, we would have a hard time living on this planet.
I wanted to write this on my dad’s blog, Consciously Kosher, because it is all about showing respect for the resources we use and how we use them.
Natural resources are resources on our planet that were not made by humans. Natural resources include: clean air, fresh water, wind, trees and forests, animals, plants, coal, oil, soil, natural gas, phosphorus, minerals like bauxite and metals like iron, copper and gold
Renewable resources are natural resources that get replaced in nature over time. Some are remade all the time, like fresh water, or grow, like trees.
But some take a very long time to make again. We need to be extra careful with them. For example, coal and oil come from animals that died millions of years ago. These are not renewable. We will eventually run out of them.
They enable us to breathe, feed ourselves, keep warm and get from one place to the other.
They provide us with soil to grow plants, grass to feed animals and sunlight to make solar energy.
We use natural resources:
To build houses
To create paper
For food to feed ourselves with fruits and vegetables
As energy that comes from fossil fuels, wind and solar power to move cars and elevators and to power our devices and to cook
For keeping warm with firewood
For dressing ourselves with plant fabrics and animal skins
Some resources like coal and oil, come from plants and animals that lived many years ago. So these take millions of years to form. Other resources like sunlight and water are always available.
Some of them, like sunlight, air and water, are renewable. This means that they are created by nature and we can use them over and over again. But others, like coal and natural gas, are not renewable, which means that they will run out if we keep using them.
Once we use up the resources that are not renewable, they are gone. So we need to be conscious of how we use them.
My dad says that we should always be mindful of what we use and give back something when we can. That means planting new trees, like they do in Israel all the time. It means not wasting food. And it means finding new ways to build machines and devices so we don’t use up all the resources on our planet.
tule river, sequoia national park
“Unless we are willing to encourage our children to reconnect with and appreciate the natural world, we can’t expect them to help protect and care for it.”
For many young people, interacting with the natural world is virtually a lost art. Children may experience nature on a hike, a camping excursion or a field trip to a local farm. But touching nature is not an activity that occurs regularly.
To touch, feel, smell and taste the natural world is getting harder and harder as cities grow denser and the natural outdoors becomes more difficult to reach. Increasingly, both we and our children are preoccupied with digital devices, social networking and virtual reality. We live in artificially lit environments, eat packaged foods and breathe perfectly-filtered air conditioned air in antiseptic buildings. All these impediments preclude us from taking off our shoes and walking in a truly natural environment.
There is a disconnect. Many kids are not even familiar with what common plants look like. And if the kids don’t recognize them, then how can they have a connection to them? How can they protect and care for them?
Luckily, there are many urban oases to explore with your kids in and around Los Angeles. Here is a sampling:
The Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine in Pacific Palisades
The Virginia Robinson Gardens in Beverly Hills
The Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens in San Marino
Abalone Cove Shoreline Park in Rancho Palos Verdes
Tree People (temporarily closed)
Japanese Gardens in Van Nuys
You can even take the kids to visit a local farm, where they can learn how to pick their own fruits and vegetables! The most popular is Underwood Family Farms. Underwood has two locations: Moorpark (the larger one) and Somis.
It is essential to talk to children about showing respect for natural resources and for the flora and fauna that inhabit our local environment.
Once our children become familiar with plants in their natural environment, they are more likely to become stewards of the land, to respect and protect it. They are also far more likely to want to seek it out at a farmer’s market, a local farm or in our own backyard garden.
For children in the 21st century, to become conscious of your natural surroundings is not automatic: it is a gift that must be consciously sought out.
Revised on March 31, 2021
Judith Jones is the publisher who championed Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”. She was a tour de force of cooking literature and an advocate for home cooking.
Cooking is a very grounding process, an opportunity to connect to the source of your nourishment. There is a certain sanctity in being able to trace the origin of your food through the cooking process and onto your plate. It is a very different experience from popping open a package of factory-prepared and -processed food made from 20 ingredients and to which you have no emotional connection. Cooking is also the one act of food that is beyond nature, the process of transforming a food into something else.
I recently took my family on a camping trip to Sequoia National Park. My two young boys learned how to catch, clean and cook a fish. It was a powerful learning moment for them and a reminder to pause and reflect on what the earth had given us.
As an observant Jew who eats only kosher food, I have been taught that raw ingredients and the ability to consume are both provided by God. Having food, and being able to eat it, are not a given. Therefore, we say blessings both before consuming specific foods as well as after the meal, to acknowledge from where our food comes. It is our way of giving thanks.
The one area of food preparation in which we do exert control is the cooking process. By cooking our food, we act as partners with the Creator in molding something new – like bread, soup, quiche or crackers. There is ample reason to give thanks.
With these thoughts in mind, we should savor our food rather than devour it. We should commit to eating purposefully rather than instinctually. And we should approach cooking with intention, to elevate our food from the earthly to the sublime.
Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver wrote that “I'm probably a bit romantic about it, but I think we humans miss having contact with fire. We need it.”
And indeed we do. My wife and I cook at home on a gas stove and oven every day. But I had forgotten the amazing sensation of cooking in an open fire – and of sitting around it afterward.
We went on a family camping trip to Sequoia National Park in July and got to do just that.
Sending my kids to collect branches of firewood to feed the fire…
Watching my brother-in-law kindling the 🔥…
Wrapping the 🥔 🍠🍆 before placing them in the 🔥…
Listening to the snap-crackle-pop of as they roasted on the open fire…
Marveling as the flames licked the cool nighttime air…
Holding still as the embers briefly pierced the space between us…
And after the fire had gone to sleep, there was quiet under the stars by our 🏕.
Those moments were very surreal.
Kosher food can be both tasty and nutritious. It need not be filled with cheap refined carbs, sugar, salt, preservatives or filler. The purpose of Consciously Kosher is to teach people how to eat a kosher diet rich in nutritious, predominantly unprocessed whole foods. The recipes and meal hacks are simple and quick, to accommodate parents juggling careers and multiple kids.
Articles | Nutrition | Health & Wellness | Recipes | Workshops
Consciously Kosher © 2023 Michael Tanenbaum
