What’s the difference between fruit salad and fruit salsa?  Not sure? The only thing I could come up with is how finely you chop the fruit.  Another difference of course is eating fruit salad with a spoon, vs. salsa you have permission to dip other food into it.

My kids would be eating all day if I let them.  But when I have a snack on the table, at a predetermined time, they are pretty good about going for what I prepared, as opposed to pretzels and granola bars (their go-to snack of choice)

Tooty Fruity Salsa!!

We love fruit salsa with fresh fruit of course, but fresh fruit get’s eaten pretty fast around here, so many times I have to resort to my stock pile of frozen goodies.

This frozen bag had

• mangoes,
• pineapple and
• strawberries. Then I added a few
• frozen blackberries. 

I microwaved for 2 minutes at 30% power.  The fruit was still a little frozen, which I liked better for chopping.

For a mix-in for flavoring, we used

• drizzle of honey
• coconut
• grated ginger

We have also used mix-ins like

• Orange juice
• lemon juice or lemon zest
• agave nectar
• granulated sugar
• a little corn starch to thicken it up
• fruit preserves (like jam)
• Vanilla extract
• Yogurt

Then, we used whole wheat pita chips, sliced and baked with cinnamon on top.  We’ve also cinnamon baked some whole wheat tortilla’s in the past.

Great recipe for an after school snack, or anytime eating.

Related recipe: Tropical Fruit Salad with toasted coconut

Giveaway today! Chiquita Swag bag!

Last week we spent 10 hours in the car from Lehi, Utah to Newport Beach, CA!  I knew I didn’t want to not stop along the way for food, so I planned accordingly.  It’s not that I think we couldn’t get healthy food ON the road (a post for tomorrow), but my husband and I really don’t like to stop once we get going.  You know, we’d rather get there! So we plow through, full steam ahead and bring our food instead.  Here is what we brought to eat, that I felt worked for us.

The plan was: 

• Breakfast: Hard boiled eggs, homemade muffins, yogurt, apple slices.
• Lunch: Bagel sandwiches, string cheese, pretzels, carrots.
• Snacks: Trail mix, oranges, dried fruit

So, here is our new “Top Ten Healthy Food for a Road Trip”

1. Hard Boiled eggs- I don’t know when my kids started loving these things, but they can’t get enough of them!  They were perfect for the road.  The protein and the good fat in them make them a filling way to start the day. 
2. Pre-sliced bagged apples!  Lucky for us, Chiquita had just sent us some vouchers for their bags of fruits or vegetables. I redeemed them for this trip, and they were perfect.  As with bringing whole apples, the bagged variety never got bumped around and bruised, they were easy to eat, and left no core behind. Loved these (Head over to the giveaway page for today’s CHIQUITA giveaway!!)

   

3. Frozen water bottles-  My husbands idea really, but it worked great!  If my kids are holding a water bottle, they will literally drink it all in one gulp, and then have to pea every 20 minutes.  And since we don’t like stopping every 20 minutes on the road, freezing the water and letting it slowly melt, self regulated the drinking! They could hold their bottle, and take sips as it melted.  Genius!
4. Baby carrots-  My kids have slowly been weaned off the NEED for dipping their carrots. Don’t get me wrong, they love to dip, but they will also eat them plain.  And with long car drives, the boredom and mindless eating sets in, and baby carrots are the perfect cure.
5. Trail Mix- (single serving sizes).  You can make these yourselves, or buy trail mix in 1 oz bags.  I bought them this time, but we’ve done both.  I prefer the single serving because in the car, with everyone dipping their hands in a big bag, it tends to get messy.  And I love portion control!
6. Bagel Sandwiches- I finally figured out the problem with bringing sandwiches on road trips.. THE BREAD!! On the road, bread gets squashed, limp, stale, whatever.  So I bought some pretty hardy whole wheat bagels, some deli meat, lettuce and provolone cheese.  The bagels held up well. I put the fillings on (we didn’t even need spread the bagels were super moist), and we ate!  I will never bring bread for sandwiches again on a road trip, only a hearty bagel!
7. String cheese- Nice little source of protein, a little calcium.. and kind of a treat to my kids.
8. Pretzels- While pretzels aren’t that special, and completely devoid of nutrients, they do make a clean snack, and after all.. we like clean snacks when it comes to road trips.
9. Dried fruit (in little boxes). Remember when you only used to be able to buy raisins in little boxes?  Now you can buy anything.. dried apricots, dried craisins, dried apples.  And if you really feel like forking out the money, you can get these boxes of dried fruit with Sesame Street Characters on them
10. And our tenth best , healthy, road trip food,  Cuties!  While oranges get pretty drippy and messy, we’ve had good luck with the cuties.  And if you are my kids and are thirsty because your parents froze your water bottle… cuties are thirst quenching!

What not to bring:

1. The muffins! Complete mess! They got squished, the bag tipped over, and then the kids stepped on them! Never again!!
2. Candy- just makes the kids cranky and more thirsty!!

So, now you share… What works on your vacations or road trips?

Related post: Our last road trip

I plan menu’s in two ways. First and easiest way, is sit down with my list of our favorite meals, and simply assign them a day.  When I’m rushed, this is my preferred method.  Second method is take out a cookbook, and randomly choose meals I want to try to make, or that sound good.  If I stick to one cookbook per week, then I get less confused as to where I found a recipe.

But now I have a third way!! Instead of one cookbook for the week, I am using ONE WEBSITE!!!  I chose to spend a lot of time browsing Meal Makeover Mom’s!  These ladies are amazing!  Not only do they put out great recipes that my kids will normally gobble up, they test the recipes before they are put out to the public.  They are professional and smart, and I completely admire them!

So, every single recipe in this weeks menu is from Meal Makeover Mom’s! You must check them out if you haven’t already.

	Breakfast	Lunch	Snack	Dinner
Monday	BLT with More	Ham and Cheese wrap	Baked apple with walnut and dried fruit	Chicken Pot Pie Bundles
Tuesday	Raspberry Breakfast cake	Peanut butter swirl sandwich	Goji raspberry frosty	Tuscan Minestrone Soup
Wednesday	Little Monkey Muffins	Crunchy Quinoa with almonds and apricots	Crazy Face Fruit Kabobs	Sausage Mushroom and Cannellini Pesto Pizza
Thursday	Pineapple, applesauce, pumpkin muffins	Turkey and cheese pretzel sticks (to assemble at school)	Krispy PB and chocolate treats	BBQ Pulled Turkey Sandwiches
Friday	Berry Good French Toast	Mac & Cheese and Carrots	Fruit with peanut butter dip	Broccoli bean, and cheddar soup. Whole wheat rolls

Don’t forget the BIG GIVEAWAY LATER THIS WEEK!

A friend of ours at a recent soccer game had a bag of sunflower seeds.  She offered some to my kids who readily accepted the offer.

I had not realized that I had never purchased sunflower seeds still in the shell!  This became apparent when my 11 year old began eating the whole seed! Husk and all.  He even thought they tasted OK. I couldn’t wait to get to the store to teach my kids how to eat sunflower seeds!

Now I take them to every soccer game.  What a great little treat. My friend Kristins 2 year old was enthralled with the seeds for the entire hour.  He kept coming over to me, asking for a specific number of seeds.

“I need one seed.”  and then he would walk to his grandpa sitting under a tree, and his grandpa would teach him how to open it. Then he would come back for more.  It was so cute!

Plus shelled seeds are cheap! I got a bag for 1.99. They’ve lasted me 5 soccer games!

SHK news: I’ve added links to my sidebar for all the Super Healthy Kids social media links.  Become a fan on facebook, subscribe in a feed burner, or keep track on Twitter! I hope to update at least once a day with general healthy living tips.

Looking ahead: GIVEAWAY TOMORROW!!!

It’s shocking how many varieties of rice I have to choose from, yet I choose the same kind over and over.  It used to be Calrose or California rice, then Sweet Brown Rice.  But I’ve been eyeing the wild rice for some time, and decided to dive in.

What I found out was, wild rice, isn’t truly rice at all.  All though many varieties in the grocery store has mixed it with other rice’s (the Wild rice is the black grains you see),  it is actually the seed of a grass. It’s extremely high in protein, fiber, vitamins, minerals, folic acid, and fiber.

Did my kids like it?  They didn’t hate it. They tried it.  With some foods I have found its best to NOT to say, “It’s just like the rice you always eat!” Cause its not.  Just like I told them not to compare my Macaroni and Cheese with the kind they have tried from the grocery store, but simply we are having “Elbow noodles with a cheese on top”. 

The wild rice took much longer to cook, so start early.  It had a nutty, savory flavor to it.  Even I only needed a small portion of this rice, whereas white rice, we could literally eat a whole cup, EACH OF US!

Its a great idea to expose your kids to different varieties of similar foods.  Not only do some varieties have more nutrients than the traditional ones we eat (such as in this case) but this movie, The Future of Food, discusses the dangers of eating and growing only one variety of corn.  In other countries, they are still eating hundreds of varieties of corn.  So if one variety gets diseased, they still have 99 other varieties to consume.  Pretty fascinating.

MONDAY: Fruits and Vegetables

Springtime to me means Asparagus!  I love it.  My kids however, haven’t been so eager to try it. However, as we’ve been eating better, I have come to realize one constant thing.  The key to getting your kids to try new vegetables or other food is to KEEP TRYING! Don’t give up.  Saturday night they finally tried asparagus and they ALL loved it! They even asked me to cook some more, but we didn’t have any more. 

I can’t tell you how excited I was that I never gave up.  Parenting can be hard.  Parenting properly (by teaching healthy habits) can be frustrating when your kids resist.  But I beg you to not give up.  The foods your kids eat as children, will most likely be the diets they keep as adults. 

Our Asparagus is cooked in 3 TBL butter and 3 TBL brown sugar.  Saute for 3 minutes.  Add 1/2 or 1 cup of broth and simmer for 8 minutes.  The flip-flopper added salt to hers, and ketchup boy dipped his in ketchup of course.

Speaking on Vegetables.  I found a podcast this weekend with some great posts!  Its produced by Vegan, Colleen Patrick-Gourdreau of Compassionate Cooks.  We are clearly not vegan, and I haven’t listened to any of her shows about the treatment of animals, however listening to her ideas on getting more whole foods into your diet is nothing short of inspiring. Go here,and listen to the second show down titles, The Compassionate Kitchen, Eating healthfully in a recession.

Tomorrow is the last day to enter the latest giveaway.

Wednesday: Protein

We eat more hard boiled eggs at Easter time than the whole rest of the year.  Hard boiled egg are a perfect little pre-packaged, yet totally unprocessed snack.  My kids love to eat them straight out of the shell. 

I already posted about the benefits of eggs, so here are a few tricks to hard boiling that works for us.

• Place eggs gently in pot of cold water.
• Once the water begins to boil, cook eggs for 10 minutes in boiling water.
• HERE is my secret. As soon as ten minutes are up, immediately pour hot water out and immerse hot eggs in cold water.  This makes it easier when you peel the egg by seperating the shell from the egg white.  I even add ice cubes to the water to really cool it off quickly.
• MARK your hard boiled eggs so you know they aren’t your raw ones.
• Forgot to mark the egg?  Spin it. If it spins, its hard boiled.  If it wobbles and falls, its not cooked.

What do you do with your hard boiled eggs?  Egg salad, egg on toast, deviled egg, straight out of the shell?  I have to admit, the only thing we do is eat them straight out of the shell. 

Related posts:

Benefits of Eggs

Micro-eggs

Last years Easter Egg Post

One-Eyed Monster