This year, and every year, I have so much to be thankful for---a healthy body, a fridge full of food and the opportunity to see one of my life dreams literally built before my eyes--- the Good Food Gardens.

As I'm counting my blessings, I don’t care to count the pounds of butter or quarts of cream that go into the Thanksgiving meal for my family of 12 (My husband, my Mom and Dad, my three siblings, their spouses and kids) at our family home in Rockford, IL. It’s not a day for discussing RDA (Recommended Daily Allowances)!

But if there is one thing I’m good at, it's looking at the bright side. So I'll be the first to tell you that despite its downfalls (calories and cholesterol, to name a few), the traditional thanksgiving table is also loaded with nutrients.

Here’s a lineup of the good stuff you may find at your holiday table.  

Fresh Cranberries: Low in calories, high in vitamin C, and known to promote urinary health, new studies show cranberries may also promote gastrointestinal and oral health, lower LDL (bad) and raise HDL (good) cholesterol, and aid in Cancer prevention.

Sweet potatoes: These little sweeties are off the chart for Vitamin A, and also include dozens of other valuable nutrients like vitamin C, vitamin B6, magnese, copper, fiber, potassium and iron.

Pecans: Most heralded for their protein, energy producing carbohydrates and healthy fats, pecans also contain iron, calcium, vitamins A, B, and C, potassium and phosphorous.

Potatoes: Vitamin C, B6, copper and potassium are all good reasons to have a heaping helping of potatoes, preferably with the skin on. Easy on the butter and salt!

Green beans: The abundant list of vitamins in green beans—from abundant Vitamin K, to Vitamins A, B1, B2 and C—and nutrients—magnese, potassium, folate, iron, copper and calcium, to name a few— is enough to be thankful for on its own. And those little green pods also host protein, omega 3s and very few calories.

Whatever is on your holiday table, just go easy. Too much of a good thing is still too much! That goes for cooking time too—don’t let those nutrients get lost in translation!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Good Food is all about fresh, seasonal, and local foods, but as investment banks tumble and my garden is about to hibernate for the winter, my pantry earns a new place in my kitchen. Here are five healthy pantry staples I’m finding new love for as they keep my kitchen in business and my body at its best!

•    Nuts and Nut Butters: Packed with protein and vitamins, nuts make healthy snacks by the handful, but are also great tossed in salads, into trail mixes and on top of weekend waffles. Natural nut butters have many of the same health benefits as whole nuts (watch out for extra sugar), and can become a toast-topper that sticks with you all morning long.

•    A nutty, seeded, Whole-Grain Bread (like Ezekiel 4:17 brand): This staple can be quickly transformed into the base for sandwiches, croutons for soups and salads, crostini, or French toast. Look for 100% whole-wheat flour in the ingredient list and breads without corn syrup.

•    Extra Virgin Olive Oil: Full of healthy fats, olive oil gives everything from toast to canned tuna a healthy glisten and great flavor. Paired with a little vinegar it can turn anything from canned corn to whole wheat pasta into a perfect salad or side

•    Popcorn: The perfect healthy snack food, plain popcorn is whole-grain even your kids won’t mind munching on. Pop up a bowl of the plain stuff and season it yourself – the “butter” flavoring is anything but!

•    Low-Sodium, Organic Chicken Stock: Chicken stock can quickly become your favorite soup or stew with freshly chopped vegetables, pastas and orzo, or canned beans. A simple, satisfying solution for supper on the fly!

•    Canned tuna, sardines or anchovies: Pick your pleasure, these fish are packed with flavor and lean proteins, and sardines and anchovies deliver a healthy dose of Omega 3s.

Happy October!

Around here, I always know it’s fall when I see the crates of pumpkins stacked outside every corner grocer—nature's signal to start loading up on extra nutrients for the cold months ahead. But just inside on the grocer's shelves are rows and rows of Halloween candy tempting you with sparkly wrappers. Who doesn’t love the occasional miniature peanut butter cup, or a handful of candy corn? But what about all those good for you goodies nature intended to be its own treat---pumpkin, squash, apples and kale?

Well, perhaps vegetables can’t live up to candy corn's addictive reputation, but when it comes to nutrient value, these fall veggies are full of treats! Take pumpkin seeds, for example. Pumpkin seeds, which are also fun to eat by the handful, are one of the most nutritious, and flavorful seeds on the planet. They have about 50% of the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) of manganese and magnesium in just one-quarter cup, and are also loaded with iron, copper, vitamin K and zinc.

And if that doesn’t impress you, what about the soft, naturally sweet flavor of pumpkin flesh? Pumpkin is filled with betacarotene, and just 1 cup has enough to convert to 145% of your RDA of Vitamin A. And since the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory functions of these nutrients help prevent diseases like cancer and heart disease, it seems to me that a I generous bowl of pumpkin soup or even the occasional slice of pumpkin pie could do you a lot of good!

Pumpkin is also rich in vitamin C, potassium, dietary fiber and manganese. Other winter squashes, like butternut and acorn squash, work interchangeably in most recipes, and have an impressive nutrient lineup of their own. Winter squash are full of folate, omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin B1, copper, vitamin B6, niacin and pantothenic acid.

Check out what this power pack of nutrients can do for you, and load up on some of the orange stuff this season. Here are some of my favorite ways to get some of nature’s best treats—no tricks, I promise. 

Pumpkin Soup;
Butternut Squash, Apple and Onion Galette;
Sweet Potato, Pumpkin and Chickpea Party Mix;
Roasted Acorn Squash and Portabello Salad with Pumpkin Seeds

Give me an F! Give me an I! Give me a B!...

Okay, you know where this is going. Fiber isn’t just important for you, it’s key for every member of your family, including children.  Fiber is essential for healthy digestion, is known to lower cholesterol, and it helps with maintaining healthy weight, and it keeps us feeling full. Perhaps the best thing about fiber is that if you fill up with the good stuff, you’ll literally run out of space for the bad stuff, which makes one a lot less likely to eat it.

Fall foods are packed with fiber. Take an apple, for example. One medium apple (about 5 ounces), with its peel, has over 3 grams of fiber, over 10% of the Recommended Daily Allowance. The peel of many fruits and vegetable have great nutrients and fiber, but take that same apple, peeled, and you still have 2.7 grams of fiber, which is good news for parents of “peel-please” eaters.

Let's look at fiber more closely. An apple has two types of fiber. The first, insoluble fiber, works like bran, pushing bad cholesterol out of the body through digestion. Apple’s other fiber, soluble fiber, works to reduce bad cholesterol production in the liver. That sounds like two great reasons to head to the local apple orchard and start picking.

They say an apple a day keeps the doctor a way, and perhaps we have an apple's fiber to thank for that claim. But that's just a start. Experts recommend between 5 and 12 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. Luckily, apples aren’t the only fall fiber all-star. Spinach, Carrots, squash, sweet potatoes, and chestnuts are all rich in fiber.

I see a stew coming on….

Food Network recently sprouted our first Good Food Garden, our joint effort with Share Our Strength and Teich Garden Systems to provide kids with nutritious food where they live, learn and play. We showcased our model garden at Slow Food Nation in the heart of San Francisco. In a city ripe with exceptional food and sustainble food stalls, our garden seemed right at home. But just across the Bay Bridge, on Treasure Island, lies a virtual food desert – a community full of families, but not a single grocery store let alone a farm stand. And that’s where the Good Food Garden will make its home – at the Boys and Girls Club of Treasure Island with hope and faith that more projects like it will follow until access to healthy food is universal in San Francisco.

But first, we shared the magic of the garden with the thousands of families who visited Slow Food Nation over Labor Day weekend. It’s that magic that draws kids, one and all, pulling their parents by the arm inside to discover the secrets of the garden. The magic that makes broccoli growing in the ground suddenly more intersting than any toy. The magic of nature.

Inside a structure of indigenous cedar from Northern California, the Good Food Garden’s lush baby vegetables and dwarf orange trees drew curious touches, tastes and questions. At one point, there was a chorus of little voices saying “can I taste?” followed by brave little hands reaching for pea, broccoli and collard green sprouts. Even the pickiest of eaters found something to taste, like one little girl who told me she was a fairy that only ate flowers. When I offered her a handful of edible marigold petals, her eyes widened with delight.

Our garden sprouted much life over the weekend, and became a gathering place in which children and parents shared stories of their own school, community and backyard gardens. We were encouraged to hear about the programs that aim to provide healthy food to kids all across America, but there are still many communities and children in need. So while our garden gets relocated to its final home – the Treasure Island Boys and Girls Club – we’re heading back east to start plans for another garden in our own backyard in New York City.

Meanwhile, in my own garden the tomatoes are slowly changing from green to red, beans are in full production and I’m ready to plant fall greens like collards and kale that don’t mind the cooler weather. There are still a couple of months left for you to start your own garden, and bring Good Food to your table!

I’m not a parent, but I’ve spent a good deal of time with kids around a lunch table. And perhaps more importantly, I remember very well what school lunch was like. There's so much to think about---who to sit by, what to trade and what games to play at recess-- which leaves very little time left to think about things like vitamins and minerals. So while it’s great to give your little ones options at lunchtime, it helps to do some of the thinking ahead of time so they can you rest assured knowing they’ll have the nutrients they need for a happier, healthier school day.

Here are a few tips to keep your little lunchers coming back for more of the good stuff:  

Play Favorites: Show your little scholar you love them by paying attention to what they love to eat, and including it in their lunchbox. And finding one favorite may encourage them to explore the rest of your lunch lineup!

Count Up: Ask your child to make a list of 15 foods they will eat at lunch. Then work together to narrow it down to 10 foods you both feel are good, healthy choices. That gives you lots of variety for the week, and room to throw in your own surprises as well.

Get In Shape: Cut sandwiches into artful shapes with cookie cutters, and try packing good-for-you goodies like veggies in shapes and sizes that are fun to eat.  

Be Willing to Budge: If both parent and child have one no-budge lunchtime policy, (you insist on milk, they insist on dessert) find ways to fit both, healthfully, into the equation. Otherwise, consider being reasonable which may help send the message that you’d rather have your child choose good food than force it upon them.

Safety First: Lunchtime may not be the best time to introduce too many new foods. Pack “safe” foods that your child trusts, and try new foods on them at home, where their friends aren’t there to make judgments and influence their interest.

 Get Colorful: Encourage your child to make artwork out of their lunchbox by packing a lunch full of natural, vibrant colors--colors translate to vitamins and minerals in their bodies so encourage them to eat the rainbow every day!

Trade Up: If you know your child is trading goodies at the table, get together with other parents and agree to pack healthy and tradable items. It may seem awkward at first, but they may thank you for it.

Speak Up: We’re social eaters, and so are our kids, so talk openly with other kids and their parents about good food. Eating healthy as a group is much more effective, long lasting and rewarding than eating healthy alone.

Good Food is everywhere— in fancy restaurants and not so fancy ones, farmer’s markets, gourmet shops, and home kitchens all across America. We believe good food is fresh, local, seasonal and delicious! It celebrates culture and heritage, technique and toil on the farm and in the kitchen. But even the best food isn’t GOOD FOOD unless every growing child has access to it.

Did you know that 1 in 6 kids in America, or 12.6 million kids, are at risk for going to bed hungry? The good news is we – every one of us –can do something about it! At Food Network, we decided to do something about it by partnering with Share Our Strength. Over the last two years, we’ve joined forces on nutrition education, bake sales and food festivals in an effort to raise awareness, funds and solutions to end childhood hunger.

But we were just getting our feet wet. Now we’re ready to grow – literally – with the launch of our Good Food Gardens. Together with SOS and Teich Garden Systems we’re planting seeds for good nutrition where it begins—in the soil. The Good Food Gardens will support SOS’s goal to “surround kids with nutritious food where they live, learn and play.”

Designed to provide food deserts (like urban blacktop) with a self-contained gardening oasis, the Good Food Gardens will allows kids to plant, grow, nurture, harvest and learn in their own community. As a longtime Operation Frontline volunteer and passionate urban gardener, I’ve been dreaming of this day for a long time. For me, the gardening bug bit me back in 3rd grade, after reading how American Girl Molly’s family planted a Victory Garden in their backyard to help provide food during war-time shortages. Back then, the idea of a food-shortage was foreign to me, but I promptly turned our abandoned backyard sandbox into a little garden and I’ve been gardening – and feasting on the harvest – ever since.

I’ve since learned that anything from natural disasters (like Katrina) to rising gas prices and poverty can create big barriers to good food. And big barriers require big visionaries, like Billy Shore, Share Our Strength’s founder, and Alice Waters, founder of the Chez Panisse Foundation.

We have a special soft spot for Alice Waters, not just because she’s the founder of the Edible Schoolyard, our inspiration for the Good Food Gardens, but because she was one of Share Our Strength’s first vocal supporters. And she continues to work tirelessly to inspire, motivate and educate the country.

So it is with joy and gratitude that we will unveil our very first Good Food Garden among the expansive Victory Garden of Slow Food Nation – the largest celebration of food in American history, founded by none other than Alice Waters.

The Victory Garden, set in the heart of the San Francisco’s Civic Center – was planted last month in the same site as the post-World War II gardens 60 years ago. Its harvest will be donated to local food banks and meals programs across San Francisco. Our Good Food Garden, planted last week, will become a living classroom for the youth at the Boys & Girls Club of Treasure Island in San Francisco.

Both gardens, and all the hands and hard work behind them, stand for self-sufficiency, resilience and a healthy and victorious future.…..and lots of Good Food.

Get ready to dig in!