Help Promote Self-Efficacy

I have to write a concept paper that describes my ideas that I can put to action. I am taking a course that will help me manage health promotion programs and find funding for a collaborative research interest. It is a good thing I met some other two girls in class that have about the same ideas that I do. Not exactly, but I am confident that we can find common ground easily. If you have read some of my previous posts, my interest lies in what food, health, and gardening does for self-efficacy. What is self-efficacy? It is the belief in yourself that you are capable of attaining goals. It encompasses good self-esteem and inner locus of control, meaning you control your situation. With self-efficacy, you exhibit a positive outlook in life and have successful social interactions. I have to admit that this has been something I have wanted to improve in myself for my entire life, so it is a challenge for me to do this because part of me says, "I can't manage something this big."

I am really interested in expanding community involvement in urban gardening and these urban gardens can be in any setting. The two gals I am working with are very interested in promoting health in mid and high schools through healthy cooking programs. What is healthier than fruits and vegetables? Moreover, what is healthier than feeling the success of completing a task that is so good for you. I don't know about you, but when I was a kid, healthy food was so uncool. I remember many cafeteria quarrels about how gross someone was if they ate the fish or brought wheat bread instead of white bread. If a kid drank the white milk instead of the chocolate, that kid was weird. Conformity to food ways as children was very common, but when we give them control of what they cook and eat, it becomes cool. The organization Kids Cook does this while using locally grown food, but their funding is limited. I want to see an organization called From Playground to Table. This would involve edible playgrounds rich with pomegranate and apple trees and perhaps a corn maze.

Eventually, I am going to focus my interest on a low income community in Albuquerque that will enable them to start and maintain a community garden and provide workshops and education to those who are willing and able to plant a garden at their homes. Additionally, I also want these folks to have the ability to not only use the produce, but to sell it at a local growers market. Eventually, I would like to find funding for a truck similar to those that people use to sell fast food and have a traveling growers market. For now, we are going to concentrate expanding funding for middle school and high school students to participate in Kids Cook.

So I need to provide a mission statement with goals and objectives. I also need to find funding for this project. I have browsed Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Daniels Fund. I would also like to see what the USDA has to offer as well as some local foundations. This is so important because with our new governor in office, the schools are looking at more financial cuts. The outlook is grim indeed. I am using this blog as my own journal and an interactive way for my friends and peers to share ideas with me since I am new to this topic. I am going to leave you all with a quote that I really believe defines self-efficacy for me. Thanks for checking out my post.

"To do anything but your best is to sacrifice the gift."—Steve Prefontaine.

 

 

Happy New Year: A Review of Holiday Blues

I am going to say what you are not supposed to say at Christmas. This was a crappy Christmas. No, we did not encounter any kind of catastrophes. Instead of fun in the snow, enjoying all the grub the holidays have to offer, and playing with Christmas toys, we sat on the couch sick, sick, sick. No Christmas movies were available unless we wanted to pay $3 for them because Comcast Cable Company is run by many greedy mongers. We did not go to church for services with family. We had a ton of family here, but whenever I do that, I run into my ability of never being prepared. I was caring for a sick toddler all day.
Christmas Eve is always such a conundrum for me. Both mine and my husband's family are very demanding when it comes to time with us. Everyone maintains that we should all be together on Christmas Eve and running around like chickens on Christmas day. Of course, we all love the fare. Traditional New Mexican Christmas Eve cuisine consists of hot posole with chile colorado and tamales are available for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Let's not forget biscochitos and pastelitos, which I did not get to enjoy. Although the constant running around stresses me out, we did not get to do it this year due to illness and I was heartbroken. Unlike most Americans, who gain weight during the holiday season, I lost weight on a diet of ibuprofen, hot tea, and disappointment.
I did have some successes though. I baked lots of sweets to cheer us up and I am proud to say that I made the best batch of gluten-free sugar cookies I have ever tasted. I also made great fudge too. I have always been too busy multitasking that I could not devote the stirring time to the fudge and since sugar cookies have never been my favorite, I bake them last and typically burn them. Not this time. But my biggest success was the lentil kale soup I made to nurse our illness served with a delicious and buttery gluten-free brioche. Not traditional Christmas or New Year foods, but a great substitute for the black eyed peas and corn bread. Lentils swell and Kale is green. Here is to a healthy and prosperous 2011!

Black-eyed Peas…Maybe for Southern Folks

I went to my sister's house for a game night New Year's Eve party. She had all sorts of goodies like salad and boneless chicken wings and a rich raspberry chocolate cake with inch thick cocoa frosting covering it. She also made a black-eyed pea dish with cornbread. Why the trouble? Black-eyed peas and cornbread did not really go with the rest of the fare. My brother-in-law informed me that this dish was for after the New Year began. Well after a night of drinking, I am not sure that I would be in the mood for black-eyed peas and cornbread. In actuality, I was not able to stay and ring in the New Year, but I do remember eating black-eyed peas pretty much every year as a kid and well into adulthood.

Often my family would eat a New Year's Eve dinner which contained many of the same elements that southerners eat with some variation. There would be a ham or a pork loin roast, a salad, a potato dish, bread and the watered down bowl of canned black-eyed peas. Looking back, we really did not give these lucky gems the respect they deserved. Canned? If black-eyed peas were supposed to provide us luck then why not make them the center point of the meal? Later, my mother would make variations of black-eyed peas. I can remember one year when she put them in a pressure cooker and left them on high heat while she went out. I was in charge of them. I had no idea that they were left on high heat. While playing with my baby, I heard a huge pop and loud hiss followed by a scream from my baby. I scurry into the kitchen and find black-eyed peas on the ceiling, puddled around the stove and floor. I didn't feel very lucky that I had to clean them up.

I have also adopted this tradition over the years only to discover that neither my son nor husband liked black-eyed peas. One year, I actually thought I bought fresh black-eyed peas without the pod, but they were really a somewhat moistened mystery legume painted with the black eye. I warmed them instead of cooked them and they were really hard and gross. That also did not feel very lucky. It was that year that I decided that this tradition was stupid especially since I did not know why black-eyed peas invoked good luck.

After some minor research, I discovered that this little legume was probably cultivated in West Africa. It is an efficient crop as it is virtually pest free and can withstand warm temperatures with little water. Being that it is a legume, it has a great nutritional value and adds nitrogen to the soil. Its reputation as a good luck food has its roots in the Jewish New Year Rosh Hashana dating from 500 CE. This explains why so many of us Americans eat this. It is not just a southern food since so many Americans have Judeo/Christian roots. However, American tradition did start in the south during the Civil War, but by accident. Black-eyed peas were one of the foods not destroyed by enemies because they considered these legumes as animal food. I guess these troops were lucky that they had this humble legume to keep them alive. Later, and contrary to Jewish tradition, black-eyed peas were served up with pork and greens.

The luck part is associated with the swelling of the bean, meaning prosperity. That's it? I think I will just continue eating my beans and rice since both legume and grain swell. As I eat, I hope that I will have an abundance of black-eyed peas in the pod since that is how I enjoy them most, flavored with a little bacon of course. Here is to a prosperous New Year!