MONDAY: Fruits and Vegetables

Classified by most as a fruit,  coconuts were a mysterious plant to my kids. We never buy packaged coconut, and I don’t think they had ever tried a real one. 

When I bought it, I wasn’t even sure what we would do with it, I just wanted to have a family experience exploring it.

My husband literally took a hammer and a chisel to open it.  The kids gathered around the counter to watch. Once broken, the juice spilled out onto the counter.  They grabbed straws out of the drawer and tried to slurp up the coconut milk straight off of the counter.  It wasn’t as flavorful as we imagined it would be. 

He chopped the coconut into manageable pieces and we started shredding the meat with a cheese grater.  This was somewhat difficult and tedious. Then we tried a potato peeler and started peeling slices of coconut off the shell. This worked much better.

We all ate some.  It wasn’t very sweet, and didn’t have too much flavor.  After we had a whole bowlful of coconut slices, and no one wanting to eat them, we decided to add them to our favorite oatmeal cookies!  This is now my favorite way to eat coconut.   It may have tasted pretty good in smoothies though.

Exposing your kids to new plant foods opens their minds to trying new things.  All my kids were curious and anxious to try coconut, and although we didn’t love it raw, it was a great learning experience.

Wednesday: Nuts, seeds, legumes

My poor kids are cursed with a mother who grew up in the 80′s, low fat, no fat, Susan Powter generation.  Their dry skin could be the casualty.  On the same note, I am vehemently against adding saturated fat in the form of butter and hot dogs to their diet.  They need fat, but not at the expense of clogging arteries.  They need nuts and seeds.

Each morning for the past two weeks, I have been grinding some flax seeds and sprinkling an entire teaspoon onto their cinnamon toast.  I have told them what I am doing and why, and they dutifully eat it because they have agreed there is really no taste to the ground flax. 

This has made a remarkable difference.  Whereas two weeks ago, even their eyelids were getting flaky, today they look smooth.  Coincidence? I don’t know… I have loads of food theories, but Its a cheap and easy experiment that I will keep up with.  Regardless of the impact it has on their skin, there are a million other reasons flax is good for you and your kids.

We’ve also added flax to baked goods like muffins, French toast, our peanut butter balls, pancakes, oatmeal, etc.

MONDAY: Fruits and Vegetables

 The vehicles that help you add vegetables to your kids diet I call the 5 S’s. Soups, Salads, Stir-Fry, sandwiches, and smoothies.  Tonight, I chose Soup.

I literally took all the vegetables left in my fridge, chopped them and made into soup.  I used green onions, carrots, onion, garlic, potatoes, some yellow squash I puree’d and froze last summer, and celery.  Then with a some cooked chicken, cheese, and a packet of ranch dressing, (to make it appetizing for my little guys)  it turned out great. Here is the recipe.

The two older kids thought it was delicious. They ate everything I served up to them.  My Ketchup boy (who turned 6 on Friday) ate only 6 bites so he could have leftover Ice cream from his birthday. 

My secret vegetable tip of the day is to shred rather than chop.  Shredding the carrots in this soup recipe make it hard for the kids to pull it out.  The texture is also more preferable to me. I don’t care for mushy, chopped carrots, but shredded carrots I’ll gobble up!

Monday:  BBQ Chicken Pizza on Whole wheat crust. (I have about 4 bottles of BBQ sauce with about 1/2 cup left in each one on my fridge door. This will be a good way to polish at least 3 of them off.)

Tuesday: Rice and Beans

Wednesday: White chicken chili

Thursday: Tortilla Soup (Thanks Mary Kathryn)

Friday: Cafe Rio Sweet Pork Burritos

Saturday was a success for me.  I was helping (testing cholesterol) at a health fair for the Utah State Board of Education.  I knew before going there would be tables of delicious food like fruit, muffins, pastries, and cookies. I’ve done these before.  So I decided before I got there, I would not eat any of their cookies or pastries, just fruit.  That is exactly what happened!

PRODUCT REVIEW:  Lightful Fit

While not sold in my area yet, these smoothie drinks are better than most.  They taste good, there is no HFCS, no artificial colors, they are only 90 calories, and have 5 grams of fiber. 

My kids like drinking yogurt smoothies.  I didn’t even ask them to try these.  They drank them as soon as we got them.  The note said to refrigerate first, but it was about 10 degrees the day they came and they sat on my porch for a few hours, so I think they were sufficiently chilled.   They loved the flavors strawberry, chocolate, mango, and peach.

You can use their website to order these, or to find out if they are sold in your local stores.

I’ll have to dub this week, “do it yourself, cause you don’t need no grocery store to feed your family! Your a pioneer.  You can make it better, healthier, cheaper, and faster!” So what else besides bread crumbs can you stop buying from THE MAN?

Refried Beans! The Man will sell it to you for generally $1.00 or more for maybe 12 oz of cooked beans, and the other 3 ounces some oils, salts, and other flavorings. I can get 1 lb of dried pinto beans for $0.49, and then after soaking and cooking, its really around 2 lbs of refried goodness. All bean, all pure, vegetarian, fat free, and no Hydrogenated fats in it.

I once had a conversation with a sweet lady who told me she cooks beans in her crock pot every day.  You don’t have to worry about soaking overnight or cooking time.  Just beans, water, and a few hours later your beans are tender enough to eat or mash.  She was right. It’s never been easier.  And according to Dr. Fuhrman, we should be eating 1 cup of beans a day!!!!

For refried beans take as many dried pinto beans as you choose (I used half a lb)

I added onions (that I chopped and froze in baggies over the summer!)  Salt and garlic powder.  You can add any seasonings you think your family would like)

At this point, you can put the beans in a food processor if you like them smooth. I actually like the chunkiness.  Although my sister was here during this adventure and she is pregnant and the sight of the mashed beans made her want to throw up!  I added a small amount of water, more salt, and a little vinegar (because my can of refried beans had vinegar in it…so I complied)

Tomorrow I’ll post my homemade whole wheat tortilla’s.  There are so many things you can make yourself and do not need the food manufacturers to poison your family with.  A friend of mine just got back from Peru and she said they eat TONS of food, but since the make it all from scratch, they do not have the disease and weight crisis we do here.

I had no idea it was neccesary to check!  My only concern had been price.  I assumed they were all created equal.  One ingredient was neccessary.  To my surprise, there was 25 items listed in the ingredient list.  Among the many salts and chemicals was HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP!  I should have known better.  I should have checked.  They added HFCS to my container of bread crumbs!! 

These bread crumbs will no longer pass the lips of my family again.  Luckily, I have bread, thus I can have whole wheat bread crumbs, 100% salt-free, sugar free, HFCS free, with a price almost free! 

I laid out the heels of our loaves of bread.  If you leave them in the bag, they will probably mold before they dry out.  If you want soft, fluffy bread crumbs, you don’t even need them to dry out. 

Then I used my mini-food processor.  I have used this thing almost to the death.  It was only $25 and worth every penny.  I can only grind one slice at a time because of the size.  By the time I afford a large food processor, my kids will be out of the house and I won’t need it anymore.

Then I poured my crumbs into a jar for future use.  At this point you could add ground flax, ground nuts, or wheat germ to increase the nutrient density of your bread crumbs.

We use bread crumbs for chicken fingers, breaded vegetables, or stretching hamburger meat.  This process definitely passes my requirements of healthy, fast, and cheap!

My friend Cathy has an entire blog devoted to her family eliminating HFCS.  You can follow her ideas here.  She uncovers other surprising foods that contain HFCS and why this sweetner does not belong in our diet.  Good Job Cathy! Keep it up!

Tonight’s salad can be made with practically any fruit you are trying to use up.  And it was super good, high in fiber, and loaded with flavor.  I let the kids pick which fruit they wanted.  We had grapes, pineapple, and apples. For some reason grapes have been a really great price the last few weeks.  I made some brown rice ahead of time (remember, we like the sweet brown rice), and then put it in the fridge so it could be chilled.  Then we mixed it altogether.  I added some extra pineapple juice from the can of pineapples (no sugar added).  Then I added a squirt of honey. It actually didn’t need this, and I think it would have been better without the honey.  The more brown rice you use for this, the further it will go for less money.  My kids weren’t too keen on more brown rice than I used, but they ate it the way we made it.  

To add a little more veggies to our dinner, I prepared a lasagna, but layered the spinach leaves (uncooked) and mushrooms between every layer of lasangna. It turned out good too.  As I was preparing it, the flip-flopper said, “why are you putting leaves on our lasagna?”  I told her it was spinach, and I always have put it on our lasagna (although that wasn’t exactly true).  She said, “Oh, so you are saying, we’ve been eating spinach all along and we like it?”  Of course!! Great conclusion.

Not only are potatoes available year-round, they are also inexpensive.  With vitamin C, potassium, B6, and fiber, it’s a staple in our house.  My kids love mashed potatoes and baked potatoes, and lucky for me, they do not care for cheesy potatoes (funeral potatoes for those who know).

I made mashed potatoes the other night for dinner.  I try to include small pieces of the skin on in order to preseve some of the healthiest part of the potato.  I chopped up a raw potato.  Boiled the chunks in water until the pieces were soft (about 15 minutes). 

Poured out the water and blended up the potatoes with a mixer.  At this point many people add butter, salt, cream, milk, or whatever to make it creamier.  We are very happy with just a spoonful of plain yogurt, and a little bit of salt.

 This night I used the mashed potatoes to top my shepherds pie.  The base was black eyed peas (because we love them) mixed with a little lean ground beef to hold it together.   A sprinkle of season salt.  Then layered corn, green beans, and finally topped with the mashed potatoes.  The kids ate several helpings. The husband finished it off.  Definitely delicious and a dinner I will make again.

It’s getting hot around here.  My kids have always been good water drinkers, and now they are even better. My husband found the most adorable hydration packs for kids to take hiking. Yesterday when the kids got these, of course they wanted to start using them right away. No big deal I thought.  So they drank, and drank, and drank, and drank.  Well we went to a softball game for pack meeting last night.  The flip-flopper had drinken so much she had to pee really bad, as soon as we arrived. I made her go behind a tree.  Twenty minutes later, she had to go again!  Twice in one hour.  Then at 10:00 last night, I heard Ketchup boy whimpering in his room.  When I went in to check on him, he had stood up next to his bed, pulled his pants down and started peeing ON his bed! Like it was the toilet!  He had no recollection of the event when he woke up this morning.  TOO MUCH WATER!

People have asked me how much is enough water for your kids. And the truth is, it changes constantly. Depending on what they eat (lot’s of food contains water), depending on the weather, what activities they are involved in that day, etc.  It comes back to the good old urine test (light yellow is good, dark yellow, not enough water).  What you need to remember, is always have it available to them.  When you go to soccer games, hiking, playing outside, make sure they know where they can get a quick drink when they are thirsty. Always provide a glass of water with your meals, and drink the good stuff yourself.

Hooray, Summer is finally here for my kids. All year long I had to drag their little bum’s out of bed at 7am to get ready for school.  Finally they can sleep in. Yipee!  Yeah, whatever. My kids had no such plans.  5:45AM!  I’m not exagerating! They were up at 5:45AM.  It’s Saturday, AND its’s summer! Come on kids, when are you going to start valuing the sleep-in days. When are you going to be those kids that sleep till 11:00am every day.  I won’t complain, I promise.

Kids need sleep.  Between ages 5-12 they need 10-11 hours per night.  When my kids don’t get enough sleep, they are moody, sensitive, cranky, argumentative etc.  But they have always been good sleepers. In fact, I used to tell people “My kids have always slept through the night… since they were 3 months old!” Till one day I told someone that, and my husband said, “They don’t sleep through the night, you just don’t wake up when they do.”  I sleep so soundly at night, I don’t even wake up when our kids do.  We had them in a basket in our room until they were three months, which is why I DID wake up when they did, and as soon as they went to their own rooms, I slept straight through their midnight waking.  I’m guessing they just started sleeping through the  night, cause no one was there to answer their cries.  Part of me feels like a bad parent, but part of me is glad they are such good sleepers now.

So, as a result, I can offer no advice on getting your child to sleep better, except advice I’ve heard from other people. 

1. Follow a bedtime routine.
2. Wind down by listening to wonderful lullaby music.
3. Go to sleep at the same time every night.
4. Limit caffeine in the afternoon and before bed.
5. Do not allow the bedroom to be a place for television.
6. As we spoke about Thursday, if they need a bedtime snack, let it be a small amount of complex carbs.
7. Keep them really active during the day, so they will be wiped out at bedtime.  (This is what we do)

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