Park Slope, Brooklyn, has gotten a reputation in the past few years for being, well..a stroller mecca, to put it mildly. The tight-knit community, safe streets, and good schools make it a natural choice for couples looking to raise a family.

The stroller news - moms taking over coffee shops to hold "Mommy and Me" playgroups - seemed to have died down, until a January blog post by Park Slope columnist, blogger, and mom Louise Crawford. The proprietors of Union Hall, a neighborhood bar that features local bands, hung a sign that read, "No one under 21 admitted. Please, no strollers."

The owners cited liability and safety as the reasons for the new rule, saying that the bar's bocce court and open stairwell didn't mix well with kids running around shoeless.

According to Crawford, who was featured on a recent NPR story about the issue, the bartender has since loosened the ban, and now wants to start a late-afternoon group specifically for moms and their babies.

I'd imagine that the bartender had little choice in the matter, though - those Park Slope message boards can be ruthless, and one person is only so strong when they're staring down a half-dozen moms and their Baby Joggers.

The Times article had a quote from a woman who was incredulous at the "cubes, crayons, and candy" at the top of the bar. For the record, a bar I frequent in Philly, Tattooed Mom, serves up toys and Dum-Dum pops alongside PBR and shots of Jim Beam. And while I thoroughly enjoy these nods to childhood, that's all I need...a nod.

What about you? Do you think it's too harsh to ban kids and strollers from a neighborhood bar? Or is it completely legitimate to ban whomever you want from your bar, especially if you're worried about their safety?

When I was a kid, my mom would have a schedule of what dinners to make on each night of the week. It wasn't completely strict. She would be flexible sometimes, especially during certain seasons. But for the most part, Sundays were for pasta (or, as we called it, spaghetti), and either Tuesdays or Wednesdays were for The Hamburg Plate, which consisted of scrambled hamburg (side note: is calling it "hamburg" a regional thing?), mashed potatoes, and creamed corn. It was sort of a Shepherd's Pie, only all separated (side note #2: does anyone even eat creamed corn anymore? I think the last time I had it was in the 80s.) Other nights were set aside for a chicken dish, sandwiches, and another night maybe for some sort of soup/stew.

How about you? Did your family have certain nights for certain meals, and did you continue that sort of trend when you became an adult? I have frozen dinners and pizza a lot more than I probably should, but that's more about laziness and an addiction to pizza than anything else.

All the campaigns to encourage people to eat healthier are having an impact on mothers, but not necessarily in the way that you might expect. Instead of giving up fried foods or other things deemed to be unhealthy completely, some mums are not changing what they feed their kids - they're just lying about it. A new survey, which was sponsored by the British Potato Council, found that as many as 93% of mothers lie from time to time about what they feed their kids, and they mostly spin the tales to their own mothers and other relatives, since they make up the group that is most likely to criticize parenting choices.

The most commonly made claim is that the kids are not allowed to eat fried foods, followed by telling people that their children "eat mostly fresh food at home." Other untruths include assertions that the kids are only allowed candy at weekends, are never fed frozen food and get all the required servings of fruits and veggies every day.

Some are confused as to what foods are healthy, or simply give up due to lack of time or energy, opting for a TV dinner instead of frozen fish sticks with some fresh veggies. Fortunately, the kids aren't as confused as the parents, so it is possible that the "little white lies" won't be necessary any more. The study also showed that 58% of kids would question their parents about whether given foods were healthy or not, demonstrating that they are becoming more aware of healthy eating issues at a young age and will hopefully want to make better food choices as a result.

Irritated by Jamie Oliver's sometimes preachy stance against junk foods and desire to keep kids eating healthy, some Yorkshire mothers are getting revenge - by "smuggling pies, burgers and fizzy drinks to their kids, as well as their children's friends, at a school." The foods are handed off through the fence at the school boundary.

A better, more logical way to get "revenge" would be to feed the children healthy foods, proving that neither mother needs Jamie's apparently unwanted help and advice to keep their kids fit and healthy. But the mothers seem to feel that trying to make their kids, who are about 11 years old, fatter, is the best course of action.

Hopefully the kids will figure out that this isn't necessarily in their best interest, since the mothers don't seem to be taking that into consideration.

Lunch is often overlooked by busy, working adults, but school-age kids have time in their day set aside to make sure they eat. Sometimes they might buy lunch, but the best lunch is always going to be a homemade one. Making lunches day in and day out can be challenging, especially if you don't want to make the exact same thing over and over again. Most cookbooks are not set up to offer recipes that would be appropriate for school lunches, though they have plenty of lunch recipes. These books are, on the other hand, geared only towards brown bag lunches are a great way to get some ideas - for your own lunches, as well as for kids.

Brown Bag Lunch Cookbook is packed with healthy recipes that can be prepared in advance with easy to find ingredients and minimal fuss. It's as good for kids as it is for working adults.

Brown Bag Success has lots of menus to help you plan and creative ideas to put twists onto old favorites to make them more appealing and add some variety to lunch.

When kids are very young, they often want to emulate what their parents are doing. For example, if Mom and Dad are preparing dinner, Junior will want to be involved. Unfortunately, while cultivating an interest in food - especially homemade food, as opposed to fast food - is a wonderful thing for a child, they can occasionally get in the way of the chef.

An easy solution is to assign your child age-appropriate tasks that they can do with little to no supervision once they have been shown how to do it in the first place. Real Simple offers a helpful list of such tasks, sorted by age, so your kids can join in the cooking process. Here are a few of their suggestions:

5 and over

• Retrieve ingredients from the pantry or refrigerator.
• Wash vegetables and fruits.
• Stir together dry ingredients.
• Smash crackers into crumbs.
• Set the table.

Apparently, some "experts" want Mother's Day to be canceled on the grounds that there "should be no such thing" and mothers should be appreciated every day. True enough, but in my experience, everyone likes to feel special sometimes, and having one day that is a little extra special is a very enjoyable thing. It's like treating yourself to an ice cream cone on a hot day instead of just having a Coke to cool down. It is possible, however, that things are getting a little out of control - especially when it comes to dining out.

Mother's Day is the most popular day of the year for dining out, followed by Valentine's Day. I've already speculated as to why this is, but that's not the issue. The issue is where people are eating. I remember walking down the street to have a pancake breakfast with my mom, or perhaps driving out to the beach to be near the water. I was definitely not paying $70 per person for a prix fixe menu, as touted in my local paper by some establishments, nor do I intend to in the future. It's not that my mom doesn't "deserve" that, it's just that Mother's Day is about spending time with your mom and appreciating her, even if it's just over a cup of coffee.

Are you taking your mom out to eat this year? Is it somewhere really "special" or just somewhere you can enjoy her company?

Breakfast and brunch are the two most popular meals on Mother's Day. It's fun and relaxing to have a leisurely morning meal and easier to schedule than a Sunday dinner out, since school and work the next day can create timing pressures. For some reason, people go out more than they eat in on Mother's Day. Maybe mom doesn't want to get stuck with the dishes, or perhaps no one else in the family can cook? I know that when Mother's Day rolled around, I always wanted to make my mom breakfast in bed. It seemed so luxurious, not to mention that breakfast foods can be easier for a kid to cobble together than other meals.

In another effort to stem criticism about their lack of concern for kids' nutrition, McDonald's has created a Global Panel of Moms to discuss issues like health, nutrition and overall well-being. The nine women on the panel come from six countries, including Argentina, Germany and China, and are a diverse group in terms of accomplishment. Four are former Olympians, one is a cooking show personality, and others include an artist, a childhood development expert and a PTA (a school parent organization) president. McDonalds says that they plan to establish additional panels for individual countries. It sounds as though they plan to use these panels to brainstorm new and healthier offerings for kids, such as the packaged apple slices that were introduced as an alternative to fries over a year ago.

Of course, it remains to be seen as to how much McDonald's will change its menu. Healthy or not, their offerings are still popular, and that is something that is difficult for a business to even consider walking away from.

For the Mom who's a fashionista as well as a chocoholic, these chocolates from Moonstruck Chocolate Co. could be just the right thing for Mother's Day. Each of the eight truffles in the ribboned box is shaped like a little bonnet. Handmade and adorned with tiny edible flowers, the adorable confections come in four flavors: raspberry frappe, summermint tea, lemon mousse and orange mousse, all of which are fittingly summery. It's $24 for eight candies, but they're so unique that it's a gift Mom will surely appreciate.

The World's Greatest Mom cookie collection is offered for Mother's Day from Eleni's Bakery in New York, though there is no doubt that Mom deserves something special more than once a year. Eleni's specializes in elaborately decorated cookies, all done by hand, that are as much a treat for the eyes as they are for the taste buds. This cookie gift set includes 21 iced sugar cookies, each one unique and mom-related. It's $65 for the cookies, which come packaged in a lovely gift tin.

Eleni's also has an I Love Mom set and a floral Mom's Bouquet collection, both of which would also be great choices for a Mother's Day treat. 

For the full assortment in the World's Greatest Mom tin and the other collections, click past the jump.

Last week I went to a reading by author Rick Moody (The Ice Storm, etc.) at Pratt Institute, where this esteemed and controversial author read a food shopping blog wherein he sung the praises of Kraft Food's amazing lunchables in the sort of satirical way that hipsters of his generation praise Showgirls and Niel Diamond. As a food blogger I wasn't smiling, no sir.  

 

 Lunchables are an easy target to go after; a miracle of modern packaging and convenience wherein a whole smorgasbord of luncheon goodness is combined in a handy, stay-fresh plastic see-thru carton, each ingredient separated for maximum freshness and so the flavors do not mix. There's an array of flavors and styles out there now, all aimed squarely at kid's lunchboxes.

Curiously, the ads on the Kraft website boast that lunchables allow your kids to "Make fun of lunch!" Is Kraft really so determined to create a generation of Rick Moodys?