I’m always searching the grocery store shelves for something new, healthy, and fast.  So when I saw these “Fruit Crisps” at Costco, I was more than a little excited.   They are 100% natural Freeze-Dried Fruit.  They truly are healthy.  Each pouch boasts one half cup of fruit and there is nothing added! 

Well, maybe they should have added a little something.  The taste leaves a lot to be desired.  I hate to dis any thing that has no added sugar and is 100% fruit, but my kids didn’t love them.  So a thumbs UP for ingredient, a thumbs down for child likeability.  Cereal boy said they were good, but didn’t want the whole bag.  He said mom, “the first apple slice was pretty good, but they got worse and worse as I kept eating.”  The flip-flopper said they were OK, but would only eat one.  They just aren’t as sweet as actual apples, and they dissolve in a strange way in your mouth.  My husband gave them a thumbs down.  Truly the best way to eat fruit is still the easiest and tastiest.  Fresh fruit.  Plus the fruit crisps came out to about .70 cents per pouch.  Which is way more than I would normally pay for a snack. I try to stick between 15-30 cents per snack.  Some better ideas for quick snacks: string cheese, pretzels, popcorn, grahm crackers, small boxes of raisins, whole fruit, applesauce, 100% fruit leather, chopped vegetables, hard boiled egg, mini-whole wheat bagel, etc.  If you have other ideas your kids eat on the go, or that don’t have to be prepared list them in the comments.

So, if you have bought a whole 20 pouch box of these and your kids won’t eat them.. they would make a great addition to your food storage.  It has a 1 year shelf life.

Tip of the day:  Add zucchini or other vegetables to hamburger meat.

I get a lot of questions about hiding vegetables in kid’s food.  My opinion on this trend as stated in a previous post is that as long as you are also serving vegetables with the meal, it’s OK to “increase the nutritional value” of a dish by adding vegetables to it. In fact, I would encourage it.  Dr. Oz on Oprah commented that kids don’t care for the bitter taste of vegetables because they have so many more taste buds than adults.  The key is to get them familiar and acquainted with vegetables so they will grow to like them.

So, I decided to take some shredded zucchini I had in the freezer from our garden this summer.  I defrosted it, drained some of the excess water, and added it to some ground beef.  It’s ideal to buy the leanest ground beef your budget can handle.  I added a little flax meal and some seasoning and made hamburger patties.

Was it a success?  Well, they ate it if that’s your definition of success.  But after draining the water, there was a little under 1 cup of zucchini.  When I make zucchini bread I use two cups, and they usually have several slices of zucchini bread.  I put mushrooms, tomatoes, and lettuce on mine, while they prefer theirs on the side.  I did point out to them that I was eating my vegetables on my hamburger instead of on the side, but tried not to make a big deal out of it. While Cereal boy and the flip flopper ate most of their burger without incident, ketchup boy’s ended up looking like this (last picture, no bun, just cut up meat with ketchup) and it still took him 3 hours to finish it.  And the only reason he finished it was because he wanted a piece of licorice leftover from his grandma for Christmas.

P.S. Let’s not forget that potatoes are vegetables too! Mashed, baked, sliced and cooked. Potatoes are a good source of Vitamin C and potassium.

Idea of the day:  Healthy peanut butter balls

I wish I could give credit to whomever came up with this recipe, but I have no idea where I found it.  It sure is tasty though.  I will search the world over several times to find healthy treats, not only for my kids but for me!  I love dessert!  So this one is easy, and it was a huge hit.  They keep coming back for more.   1 cup oats, ½ cup honey, ½ Cup Peanut Butter, 1 cup dry powdered milk.  Mix together and roll into balls.  No cooking required.  This is also one of those recipes the kids can be involved with making.  The dough is a bit stiff to stir, but they enjoyed grabbing a handful, and rolling it themselves (and then I try to no to eat the ones they rolled because somehow they got a little less appetizing to me.)  

By my calculations, the entire batch has 74 grams of protein, so depending on how many cookies you get out of it, divide that by 74.  We got about 3 grams of protein per cookie, which I think is pretty good.  In a future post, I’ll also have to give you my healthy granola bar recipe.  It’s too good for me to make often though, because although my kids like them, I actually end up eating the majority of the pan.  There’s even a limit when things are healthy… they still have calories.

I have thought of a name for my 7 year old daughter. I’ll call her the “flip-flopper”.  Just last week she loved rice, tonight she told me she hates rice.  But this is repeated behavior for her.  Once she loved kiwi, now she doesn’t.  You get the idea. Ahhh, the drama of a 7 year old.

Tip of the day: mix half whole wheat flour with half white flour to increase the fiber when making pizza crust, or use whole wheat pizza crust.

For dinner tonight I decided to make pizza.  It’s my opinion that making pizza dough from scratch really doesn’t take much time, but for those really busy mom’s I like Rhoades whole wheat bread dough to use for pizza dough.  The two quickest ways to make pizza dough from scratch, is follow a recipe that came with your bread maker and set it on the dough setting.  Or use a mixer like the “kitchen-aid mixer”" that has a bread dough mixing attachment.  I always test my yeast in a cup of warm water to make sure it’s still active.  I add a teaspoon of sugar to the water and yeast to help it along.  I used two cups white flour, 1 cup whole wheat flour, 1 tsp salt, and 2 TBL Olive oil. I put everything in the mixer.  Let it rise once.  Rolled it onto the pizza pan.  Let it rise a little more.  Than we topped it with pizza sauce, cheese, and pepperoni.  The great thing about this meal, is I didn’t have to start it too early.  I mixed up the dough around 3:00, and didn’t have to finish preparing it till 5:00.  You can try whole wheat flour for the entire three cups, but in my opinion using whole wheat flour exclusively gets a little gritty.

Was this meal a success?  Absolutely, no question about it.  I know I can count on my kids to have several slices.  I also feel good about the fact the crust isn’t drowning in butter (no offense Pizza Hut cause I do love your pizza)

I also added the same salad from last night.  I might as well keep offering it while they are getting used to seeing salad on their plates every night!  Cereal boy wasn’t as enthusiastic this time about the salad.  Maybe because he loved the pizza so much.  But he did have a few bites of his salad, so I still consider it a success.  So mix up some home-made pizza tonight instead of calling for delivery.  It will definitely be healthier.  Does anyone have healthy toppings their kids like on pizza?

Tip of the day:  Keep it simple

I couldn’t believe my ears!!  I had to ask “whaaaat?”, several times.  The stars must’ve been aligned exactly right, I must have said my prayers, maybe it’s good karma for writing a blog about healthy eating, but my cereal boy (9 years old) ate his salad, and ASKED FOR MORE!   I have been trying to get him to like salad for at least 8 years! It has finally paid off.  He had three helpings!  He even said, “This is good.  I like it almost as much as rice.”  He could also be called rice boy.  He loves white rice with butter and salt.  I’ll share some things that may have helped getting him to open up to salad.  

Forever they have been dipping carrots and broccoli in ranch.  They like it and it’s not new.  I only had ham for dinner because our potatoes didn’t cook quite as quickly as I thought they would, so there wasn’t a lot of competition for his appetite.  I shredded some cabbage, red leaf lettuce and carrots quite small.  Poured just enough ranch to make it palatable, and didn’t say a word as I handed them a plate with a small piece of ham and the salad.

Ketchup boy on the other hand is still sitting at the counter reminding me he doesn’t like salad.  Hopefully it doesn’t take 5 more years for him to accept it like it did for cereal boy.

Do your kids eat green salad?  Have they always?  My neighbor’s boy was over the other day talking about how he loved Spinach salad!  How did his mom do that?  I don’t know why it has been twice as hard for me.

Tip of the day: Add flavored yogurt to a low-sugar cereal.  My kids favorite is strawberry yogurt over Cheerios.  This is a guaranteed success in my home.  My kids almost ask for it every morning.  Other favorites are any flavor over “Rice Krispies”, and vanilla yogurt over “Honey Bunches of Oats”.  If you want to take it a step healthier, try plain yogurt over low sugar cereals.  My kids won’t do this, but I think it is great!

Tip of the day:  Mix your salad greens and carrots in with something sweet.  I made my own version of waldorf salad.  I used shredded carrots, chopped apple super small, shredded cabbage, a squirt of mayo, and a drop of lemon juice.  I omitted the nuts and raisins, knowing my kids wouldn’t consider trying it if they saw raisins.   I have tried so many ways to get them to eat salads, but upon hearing the word “salad” they immediately get defiant and refuse.  So I called this one “Apple surprise”.  My sweet daughter who will try most things, took a big bite without hesitating.  She must have been hungry.  She said she loved it, and even took a second helping.  She does not know there is cabbage in it.  

Ketchup boy who I know is starving looked at it and said “EWWWW”.  I picked up a forkful and  said, “just try it, you like apples”  He shook his head no furiously and his dinner is still waiting!  I know he’s going to get hungry enough to “just try three bites!”.  Then he’ll say he doesn’t like it, act like he’s going to throw up, so he only has to have the three bites.  Even if he does decide it’s not that bad, he would rather be right all night, than admit defeat and enjoy something he initially refused.  However, the old rule is keep offering an item at least 8-10 times before they will eat it, so I will definitely make this one again.

Idea of the day:  If you are going to a holiday party, bring something healthy that is irresistible to your own kids.  For my kids, who won’t normally eat the regular food at family parties, but always have dessert, I knew they would eat orange slices or 100% fruit juice.  Although it wasn’t much, I knew my kids would at least have a little vitamin C mixed in with the sugar and white flour.  And it worked, all three of them drank the juice I brought, and they all ate oranges.  Mission accomplished!

I’ve always believed if you don’t make any food forbidden to your child, they won’t go crazy when junk food is available to them. Stock your cupboards with healthy fare, and when there are parties and holiday’s they can eat fun, yummy, sugary, fattening food.  That’s what I love about parties too, it’s part of our culture after all.  

We had our annual family holiday party today which was decided to be brunch.  Although doughnuts are not forbidden in my household, you would have thought they were the way my kids dove onto the pastry table.  My nine year old, whom I will call cereal boy, took THREE dougnuts!  I made him put two back and get some orange slices instead.  Then at the end of the party, a “candy bar” was brought out complete with sacks for the kids to fill with candy.  It was worse than the last day of school candy fest, and almost as bad as Halloween.  Cereal boy of course filled his bag as full as he could get it. 

So what was good about this day and why am I writing about it.  The benefit to mostly letting your children eat healthy with indulging at parties and holidays, they were all absolutely sick when it was over.  They haven’t learned to pace themselves yet.  They see the yummy spread, think they will never be this lucky again, and then they go for it, but luckily they regret it afterwards!  The rest of the day they picked slowly at the fruit basket on the table, and drank LOADS of water to get it out of their system.  Hopefully next time we’ll all be smarter, and I can remind them how they felt when they ate more than they needed to.

Tis the season for lot’s of junk food, which means compromised immune systems.  However, for every problem there is a solution.  Being winter, very cold and snowy, and now home for the holiday break, I need my kids to have the strongest immune system possible!  And after the junk food fest yesterday that they call the last day of school, they need some extra strength immune power.  Lot’s of sugar actually depresses an immune system leaving kids more susceptible to illness, whereas vitamin C and E together makes for a healthy defense.

So a yummy vitamin C and E mix is an orange and an ounce of almonds.   The oranges were easy to give, I moved our fruit basket to the middle of the kitchen table instead of at the corner of the counter. They automatically picked up an orange and ate it without coaxing or coercion. The almonds were met with a bit of resistance.  I told the kids the benefit of eating them together.  The four year old, I”ll call ketchup boy, only ate 2 almonds.  One ounce of almonds happens to be 23 nuts, so I don’t believe he got much vitamin E.  Hopefully they don’t get sick.