My kids have always preferred adding yogurt to their cereal than milk.  Their preference, fruit flavored yogurt on Cheerios.  Well, after this last General Mills sale at Albertsons, we have lot’s of cheerios.  I remember adding fruit to my cereal growing up.  I think it was more common because we had a lot less sweetened cereal in the 70′s , or my mom just never bought it. Not sure.  Adding sliced bananas to my rice chex or cheerios was habitual.

This morning I decided to add ACTUAL fruit to their cereal, with plain yogurt. (I love the plain yogurt).  It’s  not much different than fruit flavored yogurt, right?  It shouldn’t have been much of a stretch.  I took out some frozen blueberries and defrosted them in the microwave. The fruit was a bit too chunky for them I guess.  If I could do it again, I would chop the blueberries much smaller and mixed it with the plain yogurt, before adding it to the cheerios.  I think then, they would have been more likely to enjoy it.

While blueberries are a great source of vitamin c, eating blueberries are a much better way for your body to get vitamin C than a supplement.  The antioxidants in blueberries, anthocyanin, enhance the effects of vitamin C in your body, helping improve your vascular system and even your vision.
 

Here is my sneaking in vegetables, dinner idea number two.   We call these enchilada’s, but I am aware they aren’t really enchiladas.  Anyway, I boil some chicken breasts and shred them.  Add light cream cheese and lot’s of different vegetable combinations.  Last night I used salsa.  We rolled the filling (chicken breasts, light cream cheese, salsa) into tortilla’s (whole wheat tortilla’s if you have them), (homemade tortilla’s if your ambitious), and baked with cheese sprinkled on top for thirty minutes.  The kids love them.  They pick them up to eat like they would a burrito.  

Salsa is great to make it yourself.  In any amount all you need is chopped tomatoes, onions, peppers (if you like a little kick), cilantro (which is very easy to grow yourself), some lemon or lime juice, and a little salt.  You can grow all these ingredients in your own garden quite easily.  We grew cilantro one year and it never died! That thing came back every year bigger and bigger, we finally had to pull it out by the roots it was so out of control.

Another yummy cream cheese filling combo is broccoli, mushrooms, and chicken. 

I’ve been trying to think of real “American” food to prepare while our Japanese student has been here.  Decided on hamburgers and french fries last night.   However, I’ve been trying to use less meat and more vegetables.  I used:

• 1 lb lean ground beef
• finely shredded zucchini
• chopped mushroom. 

Mixed it all together for our hamburgers. 

There are so many meat extenders, or add-ins you can use when fixing hamburgers.  Try

• Oats
• Wheat kernals or berries
• onions
• peppers
• Seasonings such as worcesestersire sauce, garlic powder, onion powder, season salt
• bread crumbs
• Grated carrots

Sometimes I tell, sometimes I don’t.  After dinner I said, “Did anyone notice I added Zucchini to your hamburger patties?”  Cereal Boy says, “You put zucchini in our hamburgers?  I couldn’t tell.”

What things does your family add to hamburger meat to make it healthier?

Most Sunday’s I like to bake, especially cookies.  Although I love a nice chewy cookie, we decided to try some brownie-oatmeal cookies.   These cookies have virtually no fat and they include some 100% cocoa.  Studies have shown flavonoids in cocoa can help with cardiovascular health, aids in digestion, reduces tendency to form blood clots, and generally improves blood vessel function.

Here are the reactions:

• Cereal Boy, “You make the BEST COOKIES EVER!”  (he is one of my biggest fans)
• Flip-flopper, “I love them”
• Husband, “Is there any way you can make them softer??”

Really they couldn’t be softer due to the fact there is no fat in the recipe.  But here it is if you want to try it.

There are two reasons I don’t make smoothies more often. 

1. We like them with orange juice, frozen fruit, and yogurt….. but I never have orange juice.
2. We like them in the mornings, but someone is always still sleeping and I don’t want to wake them up with my Blender

Last night however, we decided to have smoothie’s after dinner for dessert.  I asked the kids what flavor we should try, and they wanted frozen cherries instead of strawberries.   I had a 1/2 gallon of apple juice in our food storage, so I used that.  So, our two ingredient smoothie was

1. Frozen cherries
2. Apple juice

It turned out great.  The kids loved it! I loved it!  These Dole Frozen cherries do not have seeds in them.  Because of cherries rich dark color, they have a super high amount of antioxidants, more beta carotene than strawberries and blueberries, vitamin C, fiber of course, and many more vitamins and minerals.

Our exchange student made dinner for us last night.  I was nervous the kids would tell her they didn’t like the food, but they were actually quite polite, tried it without making faces and even liked it for a few bites.What she made was Okonomiyaki and rice balls.  The rice balls were fun for all of us.  Apparently they don’t use brown rice where she is from.  But luckily I have a huge food storage bucket full of white rice that we used.  The kids packed the rice in their hands just like our guest showed them. They were very excited to eat those.  When I told her we liked rice with a little butter, she thought we were crazy!

Second she made the Okonomiyaki.  She had a batter a little like a pancake mix.  She added chopped cabbage and shrimp. Then grilled it up like a pancake.  She also added a sauce to the top, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.    The whole thing was pretty good, and I don’t even like shrimp.  You could hardly tell it was in there.

Cabbage on the other hand we love.  It’s a great source of Vitamin C and Fiber.  We mostly love it in salad, but now I have a new way to prepare it.

So, apparently, we eat a lot!  I kind of knew we did, but never had I realized it the way I have this week.  We have a 17 year old Japanese exchange student with us for two weeks.  This girl has the smallest portions on the planet.  And apparently this is common for the people of Japan.  She thinks I’m crazy because I often ask her if she’s hungry.  She is always patting her stomach and saying, “No, no, no more food!” One day I saw her eat 1/2 cup of rice for breakfast, some Miso soup for lunch, and a grilled cheese sandwich for dinner!  That was all.   I took her grocery shopping and she was shocked by how large our food was.  She took a picture of the watermelons.  Couldn’t believe we even had them that big.  She pointed to our Mini-mini-mini containers of Haagan Daaz Ice cream and said they had those in Japan HALF the size!  WOW.

Anyway, I get asked often how much kids should be eating.  My reply is always “You decide what they eat, and they can decide how much they eat.”  This is mostly the reason I didn’t put serving size suggestions on the plates.  But I do believe parents need a little guidance so they don’t overwhelm their children with a mound of spaghetti, and half a loaf of french bread, then have a power struggle cause little Johnny isn’t eating very well.

Truth is, children need much less food than we give or offer them.  So these are just guidelines for your average 4-8 year old

• Fruit; 1-1/2 cups per day  (Or 1/2 Cup at each meal or snack)
• Vegetables; 1 1/2 cups (Or 1/2 Cup at each meal or snack)
• Meat or protein; 3 oz per day(1 oz equals 1 TBL Peanut butter, 1 egg, 1/4 C beans, 1 oz meat)
• Grains; 4-5 oz. per day (1oz equals 1 slice of bread, 1/2 Cup rice, 1/2 cup pasta, 1 cup cold cereal)

That’s it! For the whole day.  I know some people are thinking, but my Bradley doesn’t even eat that much food in a day (Corey), but that’s O.K.  You will know if they are malnourished if they are lethargic, they fail to thrive, they aren’t growing, sick a lot, etc.

These popcorn balls included some fiber rich popcorn, dried fruit (cranberries and pineapples), sunflower seeds, and almond slices.  It’s all held together with a mixture of 1/2 cup honey, 1/4 C brown sugar, 1 TBL butter. I heated those together till they melter and added 1 tsp vanilla and 1/2 tsp cinnamon.  I used a HUGE bowl of popcorn to dilute the sweetness.  We mixed it all together, and then attempted to make popcorn balls with them. 

My kids enjoyed helping me make this treat, however, the popcorn didn’t cling together well enough to form into popcorn balls, and on top of that, they didn’t even like the taste!  It was kind of fruity, but I liked it. (once again, I like everything).  I wasn’t about to try to convince them they should like it, after all there was sugar and butter. 

For my post on pocorn that my kids do actually like, click here.

I’ve put off this project thinking it would be more difficult than it was.  However, our newspaper printed the easy steps to making your own fruit leather the other day, I decided to give it a try.  To purchase 100% fruit leather from the grocery store will run more than $0.50 a piece, but making it yourself is much more affordable.
It’s been getting HOT around here, with temperatures hitting 100 degrees this past weekend, so I knew it would be a good time to try it.  I took 14 strawberries from my bag of frozen strawberries.  Defrosted them in the microwave, and blendedthem up.

I sprayed a cookie sheet, rather than line it with wax paper, and this seemed to work better for me.  I scooped the strawberry puree and put on cookie sheet. I set the cookie sheet outside in the hottest part of the day, around 10:00.  I did try to cover the sheet with plastic wrap to keep the bugs out (which we have a lot of), but I couldn’t keep the wrap from ruining my puree, so I chanced it.

After only 4 hours, at about 2:00, my fruit rolls were not sticky to the touch any more. That is how you know it’s finished, and I scraped them off of my pan with a spatula.  They came off quite easily, and no bugs landed on the fruit in the process… hooray!

Two kids liked them, one said he preferred them a little thicker (they were kind of thin, but they were still flexible).  I thought they were great.  You can add a drop of lemon juice to your fruit to prevent browning, and of course you can experiment with different fruit depending on what your kids like.  I was surprised that this many fruit rolls only took 14 strawberries.  I thought it would take a lot more fruit.    I think it was a success.  I would try it again. It would be a great thing to add to a school lunch or bring along for a  snack in the car.

I’m not a natural born organizer, so when I find things that make me look organized, I love it.  I found these great containers yesterday for about $0.80 each.  They are easier for the kids to access some of our food that we usually buy in bulk.

We’ve tried roasting pumpkin seeds in the past, like every Halloween when we carve pumpkins, but purchasing pumpkin seeds were completely different.  They even look different.  They are tiny, flat, green seeds rather than the big white seeds that come out of our pumpkins.  And the ones I bought had so much more flavor.  The kids really liked them. 

Pumpkin seeds are high in many vitamins, protein, as well as phytochemicals such as phytosterols which stregthens immunity, lowers cholesterol, and may help fight cancer.  When purchasing in the bulk section, they were very reasonable.  I paid $1.50 for a pound of sunflower seeds and 3.50 for a pound of pumpkin seeds.

Other things you can do with the seeds if your kids don’t like them straight:

1. sprinkle on salads or cereals
2. Add seeds to cookies! (Our favorite)
3. Make granola, or granola bars
4. Make trail mix
5. Add to the main meal such as casseroles, hamburger meat, taco meat, etc.