MONDAY: Fruits and Vegetables

Have I told you lately that I love you?

Have I told you, there’s no one else above you?

You fill my meals with sweetness

You make my snacks into treat-ness

Ease my hunger that’s what you do!

There are very few things in this world I am brand loyal to.  However, I make complete exception to DOLE!!! Dole has better canned fruit and better frozen fruit than any I have tried.  Dole frozen strawberries never clump together in a big unbreakable ice cube like other brands.  Dole canned pineapple is so much sweeter than the store brand, and I haven’t found anyone else that makes YUMMY YUMMY frozen cherries other than Dole.  In fact, my last grocery trip proves my love for Dole:

Frozen fruit and canned fruit are a great way to get your fruits in.  In fact, picked when ripe and flash frozen actually preserves the nutrients from the fruit.  Make sure you are not buying frozen fruit with added sugar.  Same goes for canned fruit. Check your labels and purchase canned fruit canned in its own juice.

Dole sent us some of their Fruit Parfait.  Its chopped up fruit in a delicious sea of yogurty parfait.  This was particularly exciting for my kids, because I never send a treat in their lunch to school. But when we got the parfaits, considering there is sugar in it, I put it in their lunch for dessert.  They loved it! We all loved it.  While there is 22grams of sugar in this dessert, I checked the Little Debbie treats at the store and some of those had 30 grams of sugar  (without any fruit of course).

More reasons to love Dole: 

1. Their site dedicated to SUPER FOODS. Find out what foods boost immunity, support bones, good for your skin, etc.
2. Their Super Kids Cookbook!!  All kid friendly recipes using my favorite foods, FRUIT!
3. They are sponsoring a giveaway.  Enter a comment on your favorite canned fruit, and I’m giving away one DOLE fleece jacket (size L), 5 coupons for FREE Dole fruit cups or fruit parfait, and $1.00 off Dole Frozen fruit.

Hurry, hurry, contest will end Wed. Night.

My kids (and I) love canned pineapple.  Each one of us can eat an entire can in a single sitting.  I do check labels and get pineapple without added sugar, and it is still super sweet.  I keep canned pineapple around for snacking, for meals, to add to fruit salads, to skewer and dip.  We love the pineapple chunks the best.
This afternoon I stumbled on ketchup boy peeling open a can of pineapple with a fork.  Flip-flopper got a cut on her wrist just the other day for attempting the same thing.  First he took off the label. He must have assumed that was part of opening it. Then with the fork under the pull tab he pulled up and started sawing his fork under the lid to pry it open.  Can’t yell at the kid for trying to eat something healthy.

Canned fruit can be part of a healthy diet.  Make sure it’s canned in it’s own juice and not added sugars and you have a great source of vitamins and nutrients.  Plus canned fruit is available year round and you can keep in your food storage for a very long time.

I got risky and cooked it up with our BBQ chicken (very quick meal idea).  It was received surprisingly well.  The boys liked it, the flip-flopper didn’t.  They tried it though and that was all I asked.