Your kids need more beans!  They are such a perfect food.

After a conversation with some friends last night who declared “My kids would never eat beans!”  I got to thinking…. Is it the kids, or is it the parents  (You know who you are!) bad attitude towards beans that leaves them uninterested.  Maybe a little of both.

My kids were such picky eaters before I started this blog.  However, I wasn’t exposing them to a variety of foods like I do now.  Now, when there are no other options, and since children don’t like to starve… they eat!

So, onto my bean dish.

I want to start using my $50 Costco blender more.

I posted this recipe for Black Bean Burgers moons ago.   But this time, I put in my blender

• 1 can of black beans
• oats (because I was out of bread crumbs)
• salsa and an egg!

I know it looks gross, but, it is what it is.

Then I added the cooked rice separately because I wanted it a little chunky.

Then I poured about 1/3 to 1/4 cup on my cast iron skillet.

And then of course put the patty between some delicious whole wheat buns (with a bunch of ketchup).

Then TJ added more ketchup to the TOP of his bun. Such a strange kids sometimes.

We topped it off with some homemade french fries, and the kids Gobbled it up.  Most kids won’t notice you used black beans instead of beef.  You will notice, but its still delicious.

More beans our in my blog future!!! They are cheap, low fat, good for you, high in protein, high in THREE kinds of fiber, and did I mention CHEAP!!  Way cheaper than ground beef.

Other awesome bean posts!

Beans 101

Did you know 5% of children age 2-5 were obese in 1980, and today that number has grown to 12.4%!  While I don’t like to spend much time on this blog focusing on the problem, this blog post (sent to me by Lisa) offered many solutions!

Runnerdude said, “Another big culprit is our busy, non-stop lifestyles providing much less time for meal planing and preparing meals at home where you have better control over content and portion size.“

Are we too busy as a family that we don’t have time to make a decent meals for the ones we love?  If so, some things need to be cut from your life.  I am currently guilty of this one.  (which may get worse because I did not do well on my first chemistry test!)   On busy days, I simply don’t take the time to prepare healthy food for my kids or myself.

Second solution:

Exposing kids to a variety of fresh foods and eating them with your kids will help. Kids watch what you do. If they see you eating healthy foods, they’re more apt to eat healthy foods.

Couldn’t agree more!  Kids should be exposed early and young to a variety of foods!

And here is my favorite one:

Take a walk with your kids each afternoon before dinner (even if it’s only 15 or 20 minutes). This also provides you time to talk to your kids about their day.

I am going to do this!  I think this is the best way I can get away with my kids and connect with them after we are away from each other all day.  There are so many things at home that distract me.. the phone, email, dinner, etc. that my kids don’t get my full attention.  If I can’t spare 15 minutes to walk with my family, then we really have too much going on!

Remember: Teach healthy habits to your kids young.    Kids overweight by the age of 8 will most likely become overweight adults.

Related articles:

Childhood obesity with Jared

On Cathy’s blog I noticed her taking part in Meatless Mondays! What a great idea.  My spouse is not on board with becoming vegetarian, but I want to reduce my family’s consumption of meat.. and save money in the process, Meatless Monday is a perfect compromise.  (or any one night a week)

I guess our garden isn’t a total waste.  My daughter and her friend spent Friday night searching for the ripest tomatoes they could find, and they actually came out with about 45 small Roma tomatoes.  Quite frankly, I was shocked.  I didn’t want them sitting on my counter forever, so I decided to make some tomato soup.

I used to not like tomato soup, until I had some at Paradise Bakery!  It was so delicious!  Tons of flavor, and thick like spaghetti sauce.  My version was not quite as thick, but it was still delicious!  Cereal boy loved it and had two bowl fulls.   Ketchup boy wouldn’t give it a chance, although I told  him, it was pretty much the same thing as ketchup!!  He wasn’t buying it.

Unfortunately, I have to post my recipes in my blog posts for awhile.  When my laptop died, I lost my web design program with it.  I’m so sad!!

WARNING:  From plant to table, this process took me 1 1/2 hours!!  It was Sunday though and we didn’t have church till 1pm, so I had some time.  But I probably wouldn’t try this during the week.

• 30 small roma tomatoes.  I plunged them in boiling water.  Waited for the skins to crack.  Then I took them out and put them in a sink full of cold water.  Then I removed the skins and put the flesh in a big bowl.  I ended up with about 48 oz of tomato flesh.
• In large pot, saute two chopped onions and 2 cloves of garlic.
• Then add about 50 oz tomatoes.
• 8 oz can tomato sauce
• 6 oz can tomato paste.
• 3 cups water with 3 chicken bouillon cubes (or 3 cups chicken broth).

Bring all ingredients to a boil, simmer for 30 minutes.

Take all ingredients out of pot and puree in blender.  Not too long if you like it a bit chunky. (I did this 2 cups at a time.)

Return to pot and add

• 2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 2 cups of milk.

Cook for 5 minutes longer.  Serve with Saltine crackers, bread sticks, or we used strips of tortillas grilled slightly on a hot skillet.

Other things to do with all your tomatoes:

Deal of the Day

Photo: Laurel and Me

We had several amazing people talk to us today in Chicago about Tropicana’s history, the process of making the juice, and their carbon footprint, which I am happy to answer any questions you may have about those topics.  But the one topic of course I am most interested in is the nutrition information of 1 glass of juice. 

Joy Dubost, Ph D., R.D., spoke to us and answered questions.  Here were some highlights.

• 8 oz glass of juice equals two servings of fruit.
• Vitamin C important for tissue and red blood cell development, and healthy immune system.  one OJ glass 8 oz provide a full day’s supply.
• Only half of US adults don’t consume enough Vitamin C
• Potassium is found in every cell in your body.  OJ 8oz contains as much as a medium banana.  Potassium may reduce risk of high blood pressure and stroke.
• Folate: B vitamin required for normal cell growht and maintenance.  OJ has 15 % of recommended daily intake.
• Calcium: 35% and 25% for Vitamin D
• only 50% of the adult pop consume the recommended amount of calcium needed to maintain good bone health.
• American Pediatrics Association says 4-6 oz juice can be appropriate in a child’s diet.   Its all part of a balanced diets.

Reasons Juice can be part of a healthy diet

• Juice can help increase fruit intake
• Fruit juices are a valuable source of certain vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients.  (to help defend against free radicals)
• Breakfast skipping is associated with other health indicators, and juice is a great part of breakfast.
• Breakfast eaters tend ot have more success with maintenance of weight loss than skippers. 
•  Breakfast help build body, nourish brain, jump start your day, manage weight.
• Americans are short on calcium, potassium, fiber, magnesium, vit A, C, and E.

Trop 50 (Tropicana’s newest product) marries the good things in OJ, with less sugar and calories. 

Although still full from our amazing breakfast, we had lunch! I was not hungry at all.  Seems like in conferences and workshop things you are always eating.  The day goes so fast for me, pair that with sitting all day, and it didn’t seem like time for another meal. 

This afternoon, without 2 hours to burn, I decided to walk around town.  I walked down Michigan Avenue, which must be some sort of shopping district, with these really high end stores.  There was people EVERYWHERE! I saw Street performers like a really flexible guy putting himself in all sorts of contortions.  Then I watched 5 guys play amazing music on 5 gallon buckets they turned upside down. 

Then I found the Hershey store.  I got my kids a little souveneir.  Don’t worry though, I didn’t get chocolate!  I got a Reese’s bat and ball, a Reese’s football, and a Reese’s teddy bear.  My kids will love it.

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.

I can’t believe how busy we have been this summer.  Which is why this tip is so important!  When you have too much produce, freeze it! 

My mom gave us a HUGE bowlful of cherries from her neighbors tree that they needed to pick right away.   They were all ripe, and I knew we wouldn’t eat them all before they went bad.  Immediately, I kept a bowlful out for snacking, and the rest I washed and spread onto a cookie sheet for the freezer.  I put the cookie sheet in the freezer for a few hours, and then bagged the cherries (pit and all) into freezer bags.  Freezing on a cookie sheet first, prevents clumping that would occur if you threw all the cherries into a bag at once, and then froze.

The frozen cherries, EVEN though pit is still in tact, have been a perfect snack.  They are not rock solid.  They are kind of like grapes.  We can take one cherry out of the bag and eat it immediately, and its this slushy, delicious, refreshing snack. 

Other things I have been doing with the frozen cherries:

• Chopping for smoothies.
• Topping on salads
• Mixed in with plain yogurt.
• And taught my kids how to have a cherry spitting contest.  Truly a lost art!  Even the kids who were, not so interested in having a cherry, ate several just so they could spit the seed.

Freezing is so much faster than canning or other methods of preserving.  I probably will never can something again!   Other things we have frozen when there was a great sale, our garden produced it faster than we could eat it, or a neighbors tree was overflowing:

• Zucchini (I store this shredded and used in bread)
• Summer squash ( I puree and then freeze to add to baked goods, macaroni and cheese, or soups)
• Onions (chopped first and then frozen)
• Strawberries (usually because there is a great sale)
• Other berries (We have a blackberry bush and this is our first year of getting a real good amount).
• Celery! (only because I forget to use it out of my fridge and its about to go bad…but it works)
• bananas! (for smoothies, because fresh ones go REALLY FAST at my house.)
• Corn
• Broccoli

WHAT PRODUCE DOES YOUR FAMILY FREEZE?

A bit of business:  CROCK-POT giveaway: Thanks to everyone for entering. We had 85 entries, and Random.org chose commenter number 28.

Mel, who said:  That is a wonderful quick change with the beans and rice. Good call! I would love a crock pot, so please sign me up.

Monday: Breakfast

Saturday was an adventure. I decided I wanted to go to the Air Force Air Show.  Little did I know, 400,000 other people ALSO decided to go.  With so much traffic, we ended up parking and waking over 1 hour, one way, to the gate.  Boy was I glad my kids got a good breakfast!

Joel Fuhrman said, the headaches, fatigue, irritability, etc., that you (or your kids) experience when you get hungry is not because you are hungry!  Its because you are detoxing from inferior food. With a healthful diet, you should be able to go for several hours, without experiencing those symptoms, and merely experience hunger as felt in your throat, not accompanied by headache and crankiness.  A different sensation than most of us are actually experiencing. 

So literally after walking from 12:15 to about 5:30, and merely only eating a granola bar, my kids were actually in great spirits.  They didn’t ask for concessions, or complain about eating the whole day.  This is what they had for breakfast that I think helped them get through the day:

PUMPKIN MUFFINS:  Thanks to Amy W.  for coming up with this recipe. She used my Master muffin mix and made some delightful pumpkin muffins.  The recipe has been added to my recipe list.

Muffin tips:  I’m a busy mom.  I like to throw all my ingredients at once, in ONE bowl, and not mess up many. However, muffins do turn out better when you mix wet ingredients and dry ingredients separately, then FOLD the wet into the dry, just until moistened.  Sorry guys, one extra dish!

PLUS, I’ve been making Green Smoothie’s for my kids, and they lick their cups clean. They even like that there is Spinach in it!  Maybe it makes them feel grown-up? I don’t know.  You must give this a try.  I’ve been inspired by Green Smoothie Girls Green smoothies, and Oh She Glow’s, Green monsters… but without a high powered blender (like a Blendtec), and the fact that I’m serving it to my children, and all those veggies get pricey, I don’t use as much veggies as they do.  Our basic ingredients are:

• Any frozen fruit
• Soy milk
• a squirt of flax seed oil
• As much spinach as I can add before its doesn’t get blended in well.

Because of the crappiness of my blender, I have to use a lot of liquid (the soy milk).  Have a great Monday.  Be back tomorrow with some lunch ideas.

Wednesday: Beans, seeds, nuts, etc.

Here is a lesson in being flexible.  I made this delicious spanish beans and brown rice in the slow cooker for dinner.   When we sat down to eat, no one wanted to even try it.   But to be honest, I didn’t think it looked that great either. 

But, instead of getting offended, or mad, or frustrated by my kids, we put our heads together.  We decided it would be more appetizing wrapped in a tortilla.  “Let’s eat it like a burrito!”  So for the kids, I added a few shreds of cheese and the beans and rice.  They loved it!

Then for me, because its OK to add yummy healthy things to your own meals, even if your kids aren’t going to… I added Avocado.  I love avocado on anything.

CROCK POT GIVEAWAY

There is a new online community on Blogher called The Juice (sponsored by Tropicana Trop 50).  On the site, women can exchange practical ideas and tips on how to get more of what they want and less of what they don’t. The Juice is all about the “good stuff.”  Members will be taken on a holistic journey that touches on nutrition, fitness, time management, mind & body, relationships – the “good stuff.”  This week the focus is on meal planning and slow cooking. Check out this video about crock-potting

Now, the giveaway!!  Do you want one of these? (and PS, this is exactly the same crock-pot I have)

AND one of these?

Leave a comment, and I’ll pick a winner by Sunday, June 7th.  Also, they have offered  a coupon for $1.00 off this new Tropicana Juice with 50% less sugar and 50% less calories!    http://tropicana.com/#jointrop50tout

Tuesday: Whole Grains

I can’t stop singing this:

Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun!” 

Seems like just yesterday that 1980’s commercial was on.

Last nights dinner AWESOME!! Crock pot Sloppy Lentils from Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker. I borrowed the cookbook from a friend, but someone posted the same recipe here.  Here were the reactions:

Ketchup boy, “These are good sloppy joes mom,” And he had TWO! Two full size sloppy lentils (and he’s 6!)

Wade (my husband), “These would be really good with some pork in it.“  You can feel sorry for him. He made me promise to add animal protein to 10% of every dinner, and yet I have a tough time keeping my promise.   If anyone wants to bring this poor guy some meat, you have my blessing.

Flip-flopper and cereal boy ate a full sandwich virtually in minutes, no complaints.

The buns:  I never buy buns anymore. I use the same recipe, for buns as I do for bread. I will never buy store bought buns again.

My simple menu planning (of eating the same 30 meals each month) needed a little shaking up.   Today I chose 2 cookbooks (I used a Vegetarian Crockpot cookbook I borrowed from a friend, and a cookbook my mom picked up, written by Costco, from Costco).

I flipped through the cookbooks.  Using small post-it notes, I tagged the pages of things I want to make this week. Not only dinner, but salads, breakfasts, and snacks too.  For the dinners, I added the day of the week on the post it note so I have a menu for the week.  The whole process only took a few minutes.

Here are some things that we are trying this week.

Dinner

• Slow cooker spanish beans and rice
• Citrus Walnut Pasta salad
• Chicken and avocado skewers
• Burritos
• Sloppy Lentils

Lunches

• Berry Spinach Salad
• Avocado sprout sandwiches
• Fruit kabobs with cinnamon cream
• Apple salsa
• Harvest spring cranberry walnut salad

Breakfasts

• Smoothies
• Sweet bread
• muffins
• energy bars

Pictures and recipes will follow this week. Also, look for an AWESOME GIVEAWAY (maybe Tuesday)