Our family...

We are an unschooling family living in Auckland (currently) New Zealand.

I am Shell, 34 years old, a full-time sahm (stay at home mum). I am married to Ben, who will be known as dh (darling husband...or daft or dastardly husband if you catch me on a bad day).

We both eat meat, and dh can't imagine not eating meat. I could go either way, but prefer to eat less meat for the sake of the environment.

Our ds J-Man is 10. He prefers not to eat meat, but he will sometimes eat chicken and he likes lasagne and pizza. He's fairly intolerant to wheat, but chooses to eat it for now. He loves eggs and he loves vegetables, especially lettuce- and will even eat a bowl of it without dressing!

Princess is 6.5 years, and a proper meat-lover. She says she is not keen on vegetables (green things), but loves carrots (uncooked), tomatoes, cucumber, broccoli, courgettes and Brussels sprouts. She hates eggs, and is intolerant to lactose (can east butter without any problems).

Tombliboo is 2, and still breastfed. His preference is for "Boobah", and he eats very little. He loves bananas, cucumber and chips. After watching him for 2 weeks, I have noticed that he does not touch the meat on his plate, but he loves sausages.

dh takes leftovers for lunch, and we usually cook all meals from scratch. We have chosen not to have a car through the week to be more green, and to save money. The children and I are home for lunch 8-10/10 days a fortnight, and dh is home for 4 days.

We have very little in the way of a garden, currently a courgette plant and 2 mini cucumber plants. We have fresh chives, mint, parsley and rosemary. I've planted some potatoes and a pumpkin but not sure if they will "take".

We will be moving to a small town in the next few months, and plan to have a large garden then.

We compost all vegetable and fruit scraps, pizza boxes, excess hair and nails (eeeew!), eggshells, and tealeaves. We bury all cooked food scraps, and meat fat.