I think I’ve mentioned before that I have a love of puppets.

And when most people say “love”, I think they mean, “casual like” and “ehh, I don’t hate it”.  But when I say LOVE OF PUPPETS?  I mean that I can still be easily amused and laugh till I cry over inanimate objects being personified.  And it doesn’t have to be a professional puppeteer .. I could just be Bryan voicing a stuffed animal from across the room.

We finally sat down without children at eight-thirty last night, both of us exhausted and wiped out and not really wanting to start anything that would require any sort of mental acuity, and we turned on the TiVo Now Showing menu.

“What’s that?” I asked, pausing at a PBS recording.

“OH, HOLY HELL, I FORGOT I RECORDED THIS.  Sarah, you are going to LOVE this.”

And we spent the next hour fully engrossed in a children’s show featuring Mona, her Nana, and Nana’s dog Russell (although Mona pronounces his name “Russer”).  I laughed till I cried.  My sides hurt after it.  Mona is done SO perfectly, with child-like movements and vocalizations, and Russell is hysterical.  It’s apparently filmed/created in Canada, but it was so heartwarming and loveable that we immediately set a season pass for whenever it would come on again.

Here’s a little clip from our new favorite show that hopefully Tony will like so we have a reason to watch it:

NANALAN

On Friday night, as I was exhausted and cranky from having a crap day with food and sleep, I reminded Bryan that Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution was scheduled to premiere that night.  We flipped over a few minutes into the first hour (it was a two-hour premiere event) and already, I could see that this guy was speaking my language.

I might have talked about how we’re revamping food in my house once or eleventy times already; we’re trying to get back to cooking our own food (vs. eating out) and making organic, smarter choices about what we put into our bodies.  I started on this path because of a movie called Food, Inc, and if you haven’t seen it, you should .. it will make you rethink everything about food.  Once we started down this path, it was easy to stay there (for the most part) because.. we liked it.  We feel better.  We’re not nearly as sick as often.  Our energy is better.  All in all, we’ve seen nothing but good things from it.

Now.  Having said that, we’re not forceful about our children adapting to it.  Sure, the only milk in the house is organic, whole milk.  And instead of goldfish, we’ve switched to Annie’s Organic Cheddar Bunnies.  But for the most part?  Tony lives on “BARS” (Nutri-Grain or generic cereal bars), and Jack lives on .. well, Jack lives in a different house altogether most of the time, and I don’t know how/what they eat there.  Bryan is a notoriously picky eater, so I’ve got to be very selective about what new stuff we try.

But Food Revolution kicked even the pickiest eater in my house into overdrive.

Perhaps the most jaw-dropping was the man-behind-the-curtain inside our school systems.  Jamie went into the elementary school of Huntingdon, West Virginia, known as the Most Obese City in the US.  And although the findings were appalling and intriguing at the same time (they serve pizza for breakfast AND it counts as two servings of grain/bread), this school is not alone in the creation of its menu.  The USDA dictates these standards, and ALL SCHOOLS must live up to them.  This means chicken nuggets using filler and not even Grade D meat, mashed potatoes formed entirely of “potato pearls”, and milk that contains more sugar than soda does.  That’s just the caloric concern; can you IMAGINE the processing that must take place to even CREATE that food?

And the most eye-opening was that when Jamie walked into a kindergarten class, the children sat with blank stares as he held up a potato and asked, “Who can tell me what this is?”.  Same thing with a tomato.  Corn.  Lettuce.

Jack had joined us in the tv room by this point, and he scoffed.  “That’s a potato,” he laughed.  “Duh.”  But by the time the cauliflower or eggplant came around?  He had no clue.

There was a moment that contained the creation of “school lunchroom” chicken nuggets and .. I feel comfortable saying I will never let my child eat them.

How can we do this? How can we allow our children to eat this way and sentence them to a lifetime of health problems?

Dude, not only does Jamie have a loyal viewing household in us now, he has even made our children rethink how they choose their meals.

When I was little, there was a movie that I loved more than ANY OTHER MOVIE IN THE WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD.  Jim Henson is a God to me, and yes, I mean to capitalize that letter, because I really do think he was on this earth for no other reason than to promote wholesome ideals through humor and compassion.  And felt.

And he was such an AMAZING maestro at his craft; worlds he created were very tactile, vivid, and worth losing yourself in.  I bought this movie for Jack when Bryan and I were first dating, and it was so awesome to watch him take to it as quickly as I had.

You can imagine my utter elation at finding this amazing redub on YouTube.  Bryan and I literally quote it ALL THE TIME.  I would venture a guess that we watch it every other night before bed, because it is STILL funny.

.. and NSFW.  BUT FUNNY.

Enjoy.