Goose’s Goodies

If you find yourself with an abundance of berries this season try this kid-friendly snack. Fruit leather is a healthy treat, and children will love that you can make fruit rollups right at home. We used strawberries in this recipe, but you can easily substitute another fruit.

4 cups strawberries, stems/leaves removed and chopped 2 tablespoons honey (optional)

Preheat the oven to 150-200 degrees. (Our oven’s lowest setting was 175 degrees, so we cooked at that tempera ture.)

Line a baking sheet (we used an 11-by-15 cookie sheet) with parchment paper.

In a blender or food processor, puree berries and honey until smooth.

Pour the berry mixture onto the parchment lined pan. Spread the mixture with a spatula to a thin, even layer.

Bake for about 5-6 hours, until leather peels away easily from the parchment. Set on a rack to fully cool down for at least 4 hours or overnight.

Use scissors to cut the parchment paper into strips. Roll to make fruit roll-ups.

Store fruit leather in an air-tight container for up to two weeks.

• When spreading the berry mixture, make sure the middle isn’t too thick. Also be careful not to spread it too thin, or your leather will be crispy. • As ovens vary, you’ll want to check the fruit leather after about 3.5-4 hours of baking, and then every half hour or so. • Do not use wax paper in place of parchment paper. It will melt into the fruit.

Laurie Silva Collins, known affectionately as Goose by her grandkids, is a nurse, mother and grandmother who is happiest when she’s in the kitchen, cooking and baking for those she loves. She learned to cook from her parents, and has perfected her recipes over the years while raising three daughters… and spoiling seven grandchildren.

BY AMANDA COLLINS BERNIER I f you’re looking to get your child to eat more fruits and vegetables, look no further than your own backyard .

Years of research confirms this: if they grow it, they will eat it.

A study by Saint Louis University found that young children who were served homegrown produce were more than twice as likely to eat the recommended daily serving amount of fruits and vegetables than kids who rarely or never ate homegrown produce.

In addition, children who grow up eating fresh-from-thegarden produce prefer the taste of fruits and vegetables to other foods. "Whether a food is homegrown makes a difference,” said the study. “Garden produce creates what we call a 'positive food environment.'"

If you are thinking of starting a garden this summer, or expanding your annual plantings, you’re not alone. Fruit and vegetable seed sales have jumped worldwide and an interest in gardening is booming this season.

With families hunkered down in their homes and shortages in grocery stores, many are turning to their backyards for a family friendly hobby and access to fresh food.

Across the country, home garden installers told USA Today that they have seen a rise in demand for their services. And at nurseries, planting supplies have flown off the shelves, the newspaper reports.

For Paula Bernier, of Webster, it was all about timing. After recently taking down an aboveground pool, she was left with a giant patch of yard to fill.

“I couldn't think of a better time to bring in fresh vegetables in the middle of this pandemic we are in,” she said. She and her husband built an eight-by-ten foot raised garden bed to plant tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and string beans this summer. “It will be a bonus for when our grandson visits; spending quality time picking veggies.”

For others, it’s not so much about the harvest as it is the hobby.

“We’ve done gardens in the past and they always seem like way more work than they are worth,” said Worcester mom of two Joyana Farnsworth. “That said, my kids really enjoy doing it so we’ll do it again this year, more for the experience than the actual crop.”

Aside from expanding their palette, gardening has some immense benefits for kids. It combines the general perks of being outside with the opportunity to tackle a project, which can improve children’s mental and physical health.

Plus, getting dirty can be a good thing. Research has found that playing in the dirt can actually boost the body’s immune system, that digging in the dirt (and even ingesting a little bit of it) actually can help decrease a child’s risk of allergies and asthma.

But perhaps the greatest benefit to tending a garden with your child is the opportunity to instill some real-world life lessons. A garden requires responsibility and patience, but also comes with the gamble of disappointment if things don’t go as expected. What better place to offer these lessons than right in your own backyard?

If your children prefer playing video games or scrolling their phones over getting dirty, make sure you present gardening as fun, not a chore. You can make it into a game, such as who can grow the tallest sunflower or the heaviest zucchini.

According to nonprofit group KidsGardening, to achieve maximum buy-in you need to involve kids in all steps of the process: planning, installation and maintenance. To get started, you can find a great kid-friendly guide at kidsgrowingstrong.org.

Let your child help decide which plants to grow, based on his or her interests. A cherry tomato plant will reward them with a sweet, bite-sized snack, or a pumpkin plant will offer something to look forward to come fall.

KidsGardening recommends planting some veggies that kids are familiar with like green beans or carrots, along with some more unusual choices like leeks or okra. Children may discover a new favorite they wouldn’t have otherwise tried.

Other ideas to get children into the idea is to offer them their own “plot” to take care of. Depending on the age of the child they may simply be playing in the garden or maintaining their plot pretty much on their own.

“The sense of responsibility and pride that comes with the investment of ownership leads to dedicated, enthusiastic youth gardeners,” note the experts at KidsGardening.

Older children might like the idea of gardening as an entrepreneurial project. They can sell fresh fruits and vegetables at a sidewalk stand, canned items from their harvest, or herb crafts like potpourri or scented pillows.

A theme garden is another way to get children excited about gardening. The inspiration for a theme garden can come from anywhere -- a story, a favorite food, a favorite color, and so on. Here are some ideas:

Pizza Garden: Grow all the ingredients to top a homemade pizza -- tomatoes, peppers, basil, and oregano. You can even design the garden to be round like a pizza.

Salsa Garden: Grow everything you need to make a batch of fresh salsa -- tomatoes, jalapenos, onions and cilantro.

Herb Garden: Perfect for container or indoor gardening, you can grow an array of herbs for cooking or crafting.

Pickle Garden: Plant cucumbers, dill and garlic to make a jar of homemade pickles.

Book Garden: Pick out a book with a garden theme and then try to recreate it. Try a Peter Rabbit Garden and grow the veggies in Mr. McGregor’s garden -- carrots, radishes, lettuce and cabbage.

Giant or Mini Garden: Plant varieties that will grow super big like giant sunflowers or pumpkins. Or, plant varieties that will stay really small like baby carrots and tiny pumpkins.

Rainbow Garden: Pick one color and plant a variety of fruits and vegetables in that hue. For example, a Red Garden could include strawberries, bell peppers, rhubarb and tomatoes. Or, try to grow plants with as many colors as you can, and arrange your garden by shade.

BY ERIKA ENIGK

If you're interested in growing some nice things this year, why not start a compost bin to help your plants grow?

Composting is a great way to use up materials that would otherwise go in the garbage and take up space in landfills. It’s also a nice way to enrich soil so your plants will grow. Good compost is made of three key ingredients: u Dead plant materials like leaves and twigs u Household waste like vegetable scraps, coffee grounds and eggshells (don’t use dairy or meat though!) u Soil How do I use it?

The first thing you need to do is start your compost. You can do this in something as small as an empty soda bottle or as big as a trench in your yard. If this is your first time, try the soda bottle first.

Clean and rinse it thoroughly, then cut the top until you can open and close the bottle by flipping the top.

Put some soil in the bottom, and spray it with water. Add a layer of kitchen scraps like orange peels or coffee grounds and spray with water again. Then soil. Then leaves. Then soil, kitchen scraps, soil, leaves and so on until the bottle is filled almost to where the top was cut. Each time you put down a new layer, spray it with water.

Put the bottle in a sunny spot, and roll it around every day to mix up the soil, scraps and leaves. If the soil looks dry, add a bit of water. If the bottle is wet with condensation, open it up and let it dry out a bit. After about a month, your compost will be well mixed and crumbly. That’s when you can start using it to feed your plants!

BY JOAN GOODCHILD T hanks to the state-wide lockdown forced upon us by coronavirus, many high school seniors in Massachusetts were hit this spring with the sad reality that the end of their high school experience would lack the usual rites of pas sage. Quarantine meant no prom, no graduation ceremony, no backyard barbeques to say goodbye to friends.

Now, they are on to facing new kinds of realities mired in uncertainty. The question is: what happens now? With no guarantees about quarantine levels and phasing back into normal life again, the issue of what to do about entering college in the fall hangs in the air.

It appears many incoming college students are not so enthusiastic about betting that there will be an open campus to head to in September. In fact, a poll by the Baltimore-based

Art & Science Group finds nearly one in six graduating seniors says that due to the pandemic, they will likely change plans to attend college this coming year and will instead take a gap year.

This increased interest in taking a gap year is reflected in the web site patterns that Gap Year Association registers lately. Associate Director Dianna Hahn said in late April the site registered about 45 percent more traffic over the previous year. “People are going to the accredited programs section. They are looking at deferral policies at schools. They are looking in general for information about what is a gap year,” said Hahn. “There is a whole new wave of families considering a gap year now due to the uncertainty of what schools have to offer.”

Indeed, the idea of dropping the price tag of tuition for classes online may not be as appealing to some who crave the social and community aspects of attending a college on a physical campus, and that has many second-guessing the choice to enroll for fall.

But at Gap Year Association, Hahn said they do not see a gap year as simply a break. The organization advocates for and helps interested students navigate everything from travel to volunteer opportunities as a way to have a personally enriching experience before heading back into an education environment the next year.

“We consider it a year on,” said Hahn. “In many years we are reinventing what that looks like. And we’re learning as much as anyone else at this point. We are hoping to be as creative as possible and offer certainties for those that want to take a gap year.”

Hahn said for those involved in coordinating gap years arrangements, that might mean partnering with other domestic organizations to open up more opportunities that won’t require long distance travel due to the uncertainty of what travel might be like in the fall. Other motivated students have expressed interest in finding a way to help out in their local communities with COVID-19-related causes, because they want to give back by volunteering. These arrangements could also involve remote but helpful work for organizations involved with pandemic work, said Hahn.

“It could be an arrangement where they lend a helping hand to an organization with project-based work with mentorship,” she said. “We are pushing the idea of Plan A, a Plan B and a Plan C.”

At Assumption College in Worcester, Robert Mirabile, the school’s vice president of enrollment management said it is still too early to know whether or not wider-spread interest in a gap year among students will have an impact on the numbers returning to Assumption’s campus in the fall.

“A gap year can be a good fit for a student depending on the goals of the student. Some have well developed plans. A year of community service or some kind of travel or a community engagement endeavor. In cases like that we are very supportive of it,” said Mirabile.

Assumption does not have a large percentage of students who choose a gap year, and whether that changes remains in question. But Mirabile thinks those considering taking the year should consider carefully what they hope to accomplish during that period before diving in to make a decision to defer enrollment.

“Each student will have a series of trade-offs to make when delaying entering or finishing a college education,” he said. “For some students, their career and life plans when they graduate at 22 or 23 is not material. But others may have in mind “I want to be an elementary teacher” and delaying entry into the profession may be meaningful to their overall goals.”

And Mirabile also points out that colleges and universities will have solid contingency plans in place in the event that remote learning must continue. For those students who don’t have clear plans for how to spend a gap year, getting started on education may be the best bet – even if the year may not look like originally planned.

“So many instructors are highly motivated to work with students, if a student is motivated to learn. It really can be a good experience. If the student is looking hard about what they want to accomplish, if they are thinking about advancing their college career, ultimately they will be learning.”

Another factor that may play into how many students actually decide to take a gap year is the financial aid offered by the school of choice. As Mirabile notes, while the pandemic may impact families’ financial ability to pay, it could also change financial aid packages should the student defer.

Gap Year’s Associate’s Hahn said they actively encourage students from taking a gap year if they have a strong financial package that could be endangered by time off.

But ultimately, taking a gap year should be about selfreflection and growth, said Hahn.

They are encouraging students to check in with admissions counselors if it

is a consideration. But she notes that delaying entry due to COVID-19 fallout may not be a good enough reason for admissions counselors. Schools being asked to consider deferment will want to hear more about the intent of the student’s plan to take the year away from campus.

“Admissions counselors are going to want to hear about what the student is going to be doing,” she said. “If a student thinks it is the right choice for them, now may be the time to look broader and find ways to give back to the world.”