Ok, who knows if this is really true, but it's certainly cute. According to Victoria Beckham herself, she cooks for her family. Many moms accomplish this task, but I'd wager few are as busy as Posh Spice, who spends her time running her fashion lines of jeans and clothes as well as modeling and being a fashion plate in general. Posh also recently released yet another fragrance she's been promoting.

Posh, who is vegetarian (perhaps that is how she keeps her trim figure?) says she makes a good mincemeat pie though. Posh also says she cooks dinner every Sunday for her family, which consists of husband David--international soccer star and megahottie--and three sons, Romeo, Cruz and Brooklyn. The menu includes Yorkshire pudding and Dora the Explorer cakes--I'm guessing those are David's favorite???

Victoria was under recent speculation that she might be adding to her family but has done her best to quell those rumors by wearing tight fitting clothes and telling everyone she is too busy to consider another child at this time. Part of the reason she is so busy is spending some time suing magazines for claiming she takes dieting pills. Maybe she just doesn't like mincemeat pies!

Kate Moss seems to have a few tricks up her designer sleeve when it comes to getting her daughter to eat her vegetables. The supermodel tells Glenn O'Brien in September's Interview magazine that she bribes her child into eating the less desirable foods by promising her access to her wardrobe when she's older. Seems ironic for the woman who was constantly at the center of a rumor tornado surrounding her alleged eating disorder.

Moss freely admits she "blackmails" daughter Lila Grace, 5, into eating the vegetables by telling her she'll get what Kate no longer wears when she's older. Can you imagine what this woman's closet looks like? I'd eat broken glass to get even a fraction of it! Moss tells her daughter if she doesn't eat her vegetables and finish her dinner she won't grow and she won't get the clothes. It's a deal I guess Kate can easily afford, being one of the most famous of the supermodels out there. I certainly couldn't promise my children much more than a couple of hairy dogs and a lot of well-loved maternity wear.

Both bloggers and commenters have long debated whether or not it's appropriate to bribe children into doing things that are good for them or that we want them to do. Eating vegetables is no exception. I'll tell you right now that, if I could, I would immediately bribe my seventeen-month-old into eating his vegetables--well, into eating anything other than fake sausage links and pirate booty. I can easily see how parents give in to it as a last resort. Question is, if it starts out as a last resort, how long before it becomes the standard?

As helicopter parents are starting to discover, doing everything for kids stunts their ability to function and leads to the development of college students who aimlessly wander through grocery stores thoughtlessly leaving carts in the middle of aisles whenever something shiny (or beery) catches their eye, driving harried mothers, just trying to grab some milk and bread and get on with their lives, to use their own carts to smash clear a path while their children watch in slack-jawed horror a safe distance away. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

One way to combat this sad scenario is to get kids comfortable in the kitchen at an early age. Making brownies and cookies are a fun introduction to the magic of baking, but sadly, you can't live on baked goods alone. (But oh, how I have tried!)

An easy way to get children acquainted with cooking on a stove top is to start by showing them how to prepare a simple dish. Scrambled eggs are easy enough for even preschoolers to make with a little adult assistance. Cracking eggs, whisking, seasoning, and using a spatula to help stir the final product as it cooks (with shredded cheese or other fun add-ons if you're feeling fancy, like diced ham or crumbles of leftover bacon!) gives youngsters experience making a protein-filled dish that will serve them well for future brunches or lean years.

Personalized pancakes are much more fun than plain old round ones and are nearly as easy to make. Using a spoon, trickle batter from a box mix (or try this homemade baking mix that can increased to make as many pancakes as you have hungry mouths in your house: 1 cup flour, 1 TB sugar, 2 tsp. baking powder, 1/4 tsp. salt. In another bowl, whisk together 1 egg, 1 cup milk, 2 TB oil and add to dry mixture. Stir until smooth.) onto a hot griddle with a spoon to form the initial of someone you'll be feeding, only make the letter BACKWARDS. (Your helper might have to practice on a piece of paper and use it as a guide to make sure they get it right.) When the bottom side of the letter starts to brown, use a soup ladle to pour batter OVER the letter, covering the it up and making what appears to be a regular pancake. Bake until the batter bubbles, then turn and flip to cook the other side.

Applesauce tastes best when it's fresh from the stove, and when apples are in season, it's way cheaper too! Helpers can use an apple slicer/corer (if you don't have one, this inexpensive kitchen gadget makes slicing an apple child's play and is available at most grocery and discount stores) to section 4 medium size apples. Older kids can practice peeling the skin off the slices and then cutting the slices into chunks. Parents should use their best judgment with younger kids, who could chop the apple into chunks with a butter knife if supervised. Place apple pieces into a saucepan and simmer for 15 minutes. Stir in 1/4 cup of sugar and a sprinkling of cinnamon. Cool and serve alongside the special scrambled eggs and personalized pancakes and rest easy that when YOUR kids are college kids, they'll know EXACTLY what they need in a grocery store to make themselves a meal!

Television and film star Rebecca Romijn has opened up about her pregnancy cravings. The Ugly Betty actress recently announced she and husband Jerry O'Connell are expecting twins, and the cravings brought on by them can't be ignored.

According to Romijn, she is craving lemonade and, of all things, soy cream cheese. Says Romijn, it can't be regular cream cheese--it has to be the soy version. This makes total sense to me only because I am pregnant too. The things your body desires when you're with child have no bearing on rationality! At least lemonade and soy cream cheese are relatively healthy options, compared to, say, cupcakes and pork rinds.

Romijn is among the latest celebrity parents expecting twins. Perhaps she can get in touch with Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Lopez and Julia Roberts to figure out whether it's best to fight the cravings or just give in to them! I say give in, especially with the lemonade. In fact, there is some lemonade in my fridge right now. I have that SAME craving.

It's 6:00 on a weeknight -- do you know where dinner is? Or where your sixth grader's homework is? How about the clean laundry? Or your sanity?

Weeknights can be a nightmare, especially when the kids are in school, because suddenly there's so much to get done and so little time to do it. And if you're trying to get it all done at the end of a long work day, it can be even harder. So how do you keep your weeknights from becoming one big blur of not getting things done? By using your weekends wisely, of course.

Take a minute to think about what causes you the most stress during the week: the cooking? the laundry? the homework? Use the weekend to get ahead, if it's at all possible. Cook big meals and freeze leftovers, or shop for easy-to-assemble meals that you can pull together in less than 20 minutes. Get all the laundry done and put away, and identify what it is that you're running out of during the week; if everyone is always out of underwear by Wednesday, for example, it might be time to buy everyone some more underwear.

For things that can't be done ahead -- homework, for example -- create a routine and stick to it. Have kids sit at the table and do their work while you assemble dinner. If your kids are at after care or with a sitter after school, start the evening by looking through their homework to make sure it's all done. Create a specific place in your house for kids to drop notes and forms that have to be signed and returned; check this space every day and deal with things as they come in.

Finally, make a commitment to sit with your kids and hear about their day. The laundry can wait, we promise.

We're pretty new to the lunch packing thing at our house, just having survived our first week of kindergarten. But so far, my five-year-old eats her whole grain sandwich, her side of fresh fruits or veggies, and brings home the very small treat I've stuck in her lunchbox each day because she's "too full." All things parenting should be this easy.

But I know it won't always be so easy. The CDC's recent national Youth Risk Behavior Survey found that a whopping 80% of teens aren't meeting their fruits and vegetable goals for the day. Young children, I think, are easier to feed because the outside influence is kept to a minimum. But when they get older, there's potential for battles over snack foods, sodas, and the vending machines at school.

The management of the Oulton Hall Hotel near Leads in the UK have an odd sense of humor. They thought they would have a 'bit of fun' and make parents pay for their children's Sunday dinner based on weight. Not the weight of the food the child consumes, but the weight of the child. A kid who weighs 5st (70 pounds) would be charged £5, with the price increasing along with the weight of the child.

Child obesity expert Professor Paul Gateley isn't laughing and believes the public weigh-ins would be humiliating for a child . "What child wants to be pulled on to scales and judged? The undoubted outcome is that they will feel bad. It's especially likely to upset girls, who tend to become aware of their weight as early as seven."

Oulton Hall spokesman Nigel Massey thinks Gateley just needs to get over it. "There will no doubt be people who say it's not politically correct and have a grumble about it. Well, frankly they should get a life and stop being so miserable." Ah, that 'screw you' attitude is so refreshing in the hospitality industry.

Massey goes on to say that the pay-as-you-weigh program is entirely voluntary and was conceived as a way to help parents save a bit of money when dining out. If a child declines to be weighed, the regular kid's meal price of £11.25 will be charged, which is half of the adult meal.

I am not all that great with math and less so when it involves converting weights and monies, but it does seem like this would be a good deal for parents with young and small children. But the program is open to kids as old as 15. Do you think think Professor Gateley is being overly sensitive? Or should he, as Massey suggests, stop being so miserable?

School's a busy place these days. It's a long stretch between lunch and the day's last bell. School kids are hungry when they get home, and they need a snack to give them energy for extra-curricular activities, homework, and chores. If chips and cookies are what's in the cupboard, chances are that's what they'll reach for. But a healthy snack will not only satisfy their hunger, but give them the energy and nutrition they need.

Nutrition experts recommend that we all get at least 5 to 9 servings of fruits and vegetables every day. That's nearly impossible unless you incorporate these kinds of foods into every meal and snack. Sure, you may offer kids a cookie, but serve it up next to a heaping pile of blueberries or a sliced apple. That's just one tip I discovered in AOL Health's gallery about making the most of after-school snacks. Another tip: Skip the snack food altogether and serve a mini-meal instead.

My own kids love to help in the kitchen and are far more likely to eat something they've helped create. Since they were tiny, we've been baking sweet potato muffins, and they are now a favorite snack. But it's also easy to keep washed, fresh fruit or chopped veggies in a bowl on the bottom shelf of the fridge... perfect for self-serve.

What are your favorite healthy snack ideas?

I love being pregnant, and I love having kids. I love breastfeeding. But I hate, and hate is really not a strong word compared to how I actually feel, nursing bras. They're all terrible. First of all, they're gigantic. Breasts become fuller with milk, of course, so they get bigger...and bigger, and bigger and bigger until they feel like they're going to burst. Hence, once needs a giant bra for the giant breasts. I can get behind that--it's rational and makes sense.

What I don't understand is why they have to be so hideously ugly and not actually provide the support required to tote around said enormous breasts. And while I may be funny, I'm also being dead serious. I have three or four (I think I banished one it was so awful) nursing bras from various manufacturers that were clearly designed with someone who either has never had breasts swollen with milk or who never wanted to look even remotely attractive without her shirt on. Those with underwires are uncomfortable. Those without lack any real support.

There's also the issue of the bras never quite managing to hold onto the breastpads placed in them to keep them from getting covered with milk leakage. I have had, however, quite a bit of success with Lily Pads, which are technically designed to be worn under things with which one can wear no bra or at night when one doesn't want to wear a bra to bed. Some women have reverted to wearing regular bras in larger sizes or just going braless all together.

What about you? Do you hate nursing bras, or have you found one that answers your prayers? Do you have a trick for making them more comfortable, or at least more tolerable?

Is there a downside to breastfeeding? A new report from the New York Times might have you thinking so. In a recent article, several studies monitoring a lack of vitamin D in infants might support that breastmilk is not enough to prevent things like rickets in children. The biggest fear is that the deficiency is more common than previously thought and is going undetected. Breastmilk apparently does not necessarily provide enough of the vitamin to children.

Doctors, of course, are rare to say anything at all negative about breastfeeding. Unlike perhaps even fifty years ago, women are being told that they simply must breastfeed, that they are wrong for not doing so, and that breastmilk is the ultimate wonder food for their infants. This may well be true, but the medical profession that's been pushing breastfeeding down our throats has also admitted to knowing there is a probable link between vitamin D deficiency and diseases like diabetes and cancer.

The answer, of course, is not to stop breastfeeding, but rather to augment a child's nutrition by adding vitamin drops, or, my favorite, cod liver oil (yummy!). The other pretty obvious answer is that if a woman is deficient in something, so, too, will be her breastmilk. Mothers should be getting plenty of vitamin D themselves in order to pass on the right amount to their infants. That should be good news to those of us who are committed to breastfeeding exclusively for as long as possible. Both the American Academy of Pediatrics and my own pediatrician recommend supplementing with the vitamin D drops.

Thoughts? I for one drink enough milk while pregnant and nursing to keep a small dairy in business. Is it enough? Who knows. Did you supplement breastfeeding with vitamins for your infants or enjoy a little cod liver oil?

Pic by timtom.ch [surfin' USA].

So this is a weird one. When we travel we always bring along Parmalat for our toddler. It's much easier, obviously to transport and deal with on the road as it's vacuum-sealed and doesn't need to be refrigerated (until it's opened of course). Upon a recent trip to Central Park Zoo, a friend said someone had once told her that Parmalat isn't really milk.

The friend's acquaintance who made this claim was vegetarian (as is our family) and my friend was actually commenting on how people make such strange distinctions. The acquaintance refused to drink Parmalat because it wasn't "real milk." My understanding is that Parmalat is, indeed, real milk, it's just packaged differently, and perhaps treated a little differently to ensure it's safe to be packaged in a way that allows it to not need to be refrigerated (until opened).

So what is the deal? A recent trip to the Parmalat website upped my curiosity factor. They refer to the milk they distribute as "milk products." They also call it "ESL milk" which means Extended Shelf Life--not English as a Second Language. With regard to the whole vegetarian thing, while we don't necessarily eat meat, a good deal of us do drink milk--Parmalat included. Vegans don't do any animal products whatsoever, but quite a few vegetarians do.

So what's the deal? Is Parmalat really milk, or not? To me, if it looks like milk, smells like milk, and tastes like milk, and they call it milk, it's probably milk.

Pic by allanpatrick.

If you have a box of Pepperoni Hot Pockets in your freezer, you might want to pull it out and have a look at the box. Some packages of the frozen pizza snacks may contain 'foreign objects', which are most certainly not edible and potentially dangerous.

Nestle Prepared Foods Company has received complaints from four consumers who found hard red plastic pieces as well as some clear flexible rubber stuff in their Hot Pockets Pepperoni Pizzas. Roz O'Hearn, a spokesperson for Nestle, says they suspect these pieces might have splintered off from a testing device and become buried inside the product. Some of the pieces may have sharp edges and pose a risk of serious injury should you end up with one in your mouth.

In response, Nestle is recalling about 215,660 pounds of Hot Pockets Pepperoni Pizzas packaged in the 54-ounce, 12-pack cartons. Printed on the side of each carton is "8157544614D," "EST 7721A," and "BEST BEFORE JAN2010." These were produced on June 5 and distributed to retail establishments nationwide.

For more information, call Nestle at 800-350-5016.

We almost always have dinner together with the whole family -- Rachel, Jared, Sara, Ezra, and I -- and plan to continue doing so as long as the kids are still living with us. That's the way my folks did it and I think there are definite benefits to sharing a meal together. Of course, there is the occasional exception, but for the most part, we all eat together.

Sometimes, however, that gets a mite tiresome. As much as I love my kids, sometimes I long for adult conversation. Rachel and I talk, but it seems that we invariably end up talking about the kids or other family matters. In addition, we've been together so long (nearly twenty years) and experienced so much together that we're comfortable just being together without talking.

Last night was different. I had dinner with another woman and the conversation was not about whether or not we would take them to the symphony this weekend or when we would get around to clearing out the attic. Instead, we talked of travel and of concerts and of youthful experiences. We laughed, we shared, we had a grand time. We barely even noticed that the kids were there.

Suri Cruise is nearly two and a half years old. Heaven knows you couldn't forget that if you tried. And while she has more fashion sense than pretty much any other tot on the planet, there is one thing that seems to still give us all pause. No, it's not how her celebrity parents could have actually spawned her, nor is it how much is spent keeping her best-dressed and -tressed. Nah--it's that thing where she's still carrying around a baby bottle.

Yes, still. It seems like this first made the news when Suri was more than a year old and still using a bottle. Like sippy cups are so great. Now she's making headlines again for still sporting the baby bottle--when she's not even really a baby. My question is this: what is the big deal? My kid is nearly seventeen months old and he still occasionally uses a bottle. We've tried really hard to break him of the habit, but, for a while, he simply eschewed the sippy cup. He could use one, sure, but he couldn't get the same amount of milk from the sippy as from the bottle. So, we let him roll with it. Eventually, he switched over to predominantly using the sippy.

I know there are standards and practices for how we're supposed to raise our children. I know that guidelines have been set to help us make our way through this crazy maze called parenthood. But with issues as large as world hunger, violence, abuse and immunizations out there for us to tackle, why does anyone give a rat's butt about whether or not Suri Cruise still uses her baby bottle? I feel sorry for Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes--they're busy people who are trying to raise a kid and have full-time jobs too. it ain't easy. And not every kid fits the model she's supposed to. Is it really the end of the world if Suri still uses a bottle?

Being overweight is tough for a kid. There are many options toward weight loss, but some are more (or less) appealing than others. For many, over the years, the weight-loss camp has been a dream. But, while "fat camp" is almost as American as apple pie, it's now going the way of many other American dreams--it's too darned expensive to attend. Like any other camp, weight-loss camp costs money to run and maintain. With more than nine million children who are considered obese in this country, such camp can seem like a knight in shining armor for families struggling to get their kids' weight under control. The weight-loss camps, while they can be affective, are far from free. Few to none accept insurance.

The government generally offers no more assistance than insurance companies. Instead the children rely on their essay writing skills and other means to win scholarships to attend. Yes, even weight loss camp is something only possible for the rich. Corporate sponsorship is one way to help get kids who can't afford the often more than $1,000-a-week pricetag what they need. Advocacy groups are being formed, such as the Childhood Obesity Treatment in Action. Some tax deductions are coming into play, and some insurance is starting to cover a portion of the cost--mostly in the cognitive behavior area.

But is it enough? Rarely. And financial cost is to say nothing of the emotional cost to the children, who are often left with either feeling exploited by their situation--their essays and their experiences become the property of the camp, who share that information freely with the media in hopes of growing the industry--and/or have to deal with life after camp, which can be even harder than before they found their salvation. While most children lose some portion of their body weight at the camps, few manage to keep it off after returning to the real world.

Pic by skampy.