I just finished watching Food, Inc.  Great Movie! The take home message is to buy local, and in season food! If you haven’t seen the movie yet, did you know you can download and “rent” the movie to watch from Amazon for $2.99!  I just realized this!  Right under “Buy”, you click WATCH IT NOW, $2.99 to rent.  

Although I’ve mentioned them before, after watching the movie, I was so glad we buy our meat local (beef and pork at least).  If you live in Utah and are looking for a local meat supplier, you must check out The Christiansens farm for well fed, well treated, organic, and super awesome meat!  Hollie Christiansen is my neighbors- sister.. which is how I found out about their farm. 

Last night, I pulled out our bag of frozen Edamame to snack on while I prepared dinner.  The kids devoured it! I forgot how much they liked this great snack the first time I bought it.  It’s definitely coming out more often this week.

As always, head over to the side bar, or Menu Archives to print the menu!

Don’t forget…. Monday is the last day to enter for Crest Pro-Health supplies,

and FRIDAY is the last day for the V8-V Fusion Visa $100 Gift card!

Head over to the giveaway page for Crest products.

A few nights ago for Pack meeting, my husband acquired about 20,  #10 cans from the cannery and had the boys make stilts.  Erica, in all her jealousy really wanted to recreate the activity at home.  Except we didn’t have any more #10 cans.  So creatively, she put together a plan. 

She began by announcing everyone needed to help her eat 2 cans of peaches so she could rinse out the cans and use them.  She had Wade punch holes in the side with one of those sharp can opener puncture thingy’s.  Then she threaded some nylon rope through.

What you could do next: Have a race!  (we couldn’t cause we only had one set).  My kids in just a matter of  a few days completely wear these down.  The entire can has collapsed and folded in on itself.  But they sure had fun while they lasted!

Later today, an opportunity provided by Crest. I’m interviewing Olympic speed skater, JR Celski.  My kids had a few questions about his healthy habits.  But I need more!  Any of you have questions I could ask him?

So many blogs, so little time! Have you seen this one?  Although I am the world’s worst crafter, I love to look.   I wish I could make this Christmas Advent calendar, but I know if I tried, my dove would look like a piece of felt with a spec of blue dirt on it.  So, I won’t try. I’ll just enjoy what others can do.

My pumpkin hummus flopped like many of my crafting attempts.  I don’t feel bad.  I liked it of course.  My husband thought it tasted like baby food (but he doesn’t like hummus anyway), and the kids wouldn’t try it at all.

Here is the recipe from allrecipes. (I cut the recipe in half to fit my tiny food processor). If you like hummus, I’m pretty sure you will like this.

Give it a try!  The sourdough bread made it all that much better.

And hurry, before it’s too late. Enter Cathy’s giveaway to try some organic fruit puree!

There are so many different ways to make a smoothie, your kids should never be bored.  While not packed full of fruits and veggies, this smoothie sure made a great treat. We called it the Orange creamsicle smoothie.  I’ve seen different versions on many different websites, but I kept ours simple:

• 1 Cup vanilla yogurt
• 1 cup Orange juice
• 24 ice cubes

Put all ingredients in a blender.

  And drink

(Those are sunglasses that the lenses broke out of. She loves to wear them and “trick” people into thinking she wears glasses.  She wants braces too. Remember those days?)

It’s been a great long while since I posted anything about kids and exercise.  Getting them off the couch in winter (or any cold weather) is more of a challenge, than when the sun is shining.  Lets be honest though, its usually not their fault. They would be happy running around in their underwear in a snowstorm, if I would let them.  I however was meant to live in Southern California, where you can play comfortably outside all year long.   Then OF COURSE I would be outside with my kids more often.

But yesterday, I had a reason to get moving.  We got a coupon for a free family day at our rec center pool (indoor pool that is). It expires soon, so we headed out.  The great thing about swimming  in a public pool during fall and winter, is you have the pool to yourself.  Even on Saturday afternoon.

I wish I could say I swam with them. That’s what a good mother would do.  But as soon as I get wet, I get so cold that I want to go home.  I like to blame that on my thyroid.  So instead, I brought my big, awful GRE study guide, and hung out on the side of the pool, book open, pretending to study, but really people watching.

Have you heard about the miracle fruit? My kids and I were watching the Science channel last night and they did a segment about this berry that literally changes the taste receptors on your tongue.  For an entire hour after eating a berry, everything tastes sweet… Including Tabasco sauce and broccoli!  This could literally make any child eat vegetables! Crazy huh.

Decided to mail my camera into Olympus for them to fix the lens.  I don’t need to ruin by taking it apart.

Come back on Monday for another giveaway. Do you like my rhyming hints to what the giveaway is?  Dreaming Fireflies!  You won’t want to miss it.

	Breakfast	Lunch	Snack	Dinner
Monday	Orange Creamsicle smoothie	Sweet potato Risotto	Cottage Cheese and peaches	Black eyed peas with brown rice
Tuesday	Bran Muffins and Bananas	Pita with sprouts, lettuce, tomato.	Mixed nuts with raisins	Sweet potato soup
Wednesday	Breakfast Burritos	Caesar salad and whole grain roll	Pumpkin hummus on sourdough	Pizza
Thursday	Oatmeal with craisins, vanilla and cinnamon	Noodles, broccoli and parmesan.	English muffin with peanut butter and banana slices	Chicken with wild rice and parmesan
Friday	Whole Grain cereal with soy milk and berries	Whole wheat sandwich, honey and almond butter	Veggie Tray	Chicken salad with creamy orange dressing, pecans and cranberries

Something is stuck UNDER my crappy camera lens.  I took the whole camera apart thinking I could somehow get access in between the lenses, but all I got was shocked!  And the lens never came off.   Anyone have ideas on how to fix this?

Every picture I take has a “soft focus” edge on the bottom of the picture. I don’t know what to do. I’d get a new camera for Christmas, but I already got this laptop for Christmas.  So, I’m out of luck until next year!

Anyway, I’m in some sort of root vegetable craze.  Not only do I love Russet Potatoes, and red potatoes, but I really love Sweet potatoes!  For any meal, they are so filling.  My kids really don’t need to eat anything else.  So here is a little potato 101.

Our grocery store sells two varieties of sweet potatoes.  Although BOTH are technically sweet potatoes, they call one a sweet potato, and the other a yam.

Have you ever noticed a difference?  Here is how we use each:

SWEET  POTATOES:  (with white flesh)

• Just like a baked potato (butter, salt etc.)
• As Sweet Potato salad.

YAMS: With the orange flesh

• Sweet potato fries
• In a casserole with brown sugar.
• As a baked potato with sweet stuff on it like cinnamon and brown sugar.

Is one healthier than the other?  YES! Yams, with its rich orange color has more vitamins.  The more colorful your fruits or vegetables are, the more nutrients they have.

Rumor has it that some of you (you know who you are) don’t like reading my blog because it makes you feel guilty for not doing more to keep your kids healthy!  First, let me be totally honest and set the record straight about a few things.

• My 8 year old daughter (Erica) says EVERY SINGLE NIGHT, “Why do you have to make gross things for dinner every night”.

• My 6 year old son (TJ) subsists on granola bars, string cheese, apples, and ketchup (he even dips his apples in ketchup).

• My 11 year old son (Nate) tells people his favorite food is candy. And just yesterday he said his 5th grade teacher is The Best because she is always giving them candy!

So, with that said, to ease the guilt, lets change our intentions to SMALL CHANGES! That’s right! Small changes can make huge differences.  You don’t have to use every idea on this blog.  Of course not.  But one in 50 may speak to you and inspire you to try it with your kids.  So, here are some small changes.

• Make your kids smoothies once a week.  On that day they will be getting more fruits and vegetables than 98% of the rest of the kids in America!

• Go outside this weekend instead of going to a movie.  Plan a family walk, hike, swim, bike ride, anything!!

• Substitute!  When baking use applesauce instead of oil.  Light sour cream instead of full fat.  Light cream cheese, instead of regular.  Whole wheat flour instead of white.
• Sneak it in!  Follow the Sneaky Chef, or Jessica Seinfeld and puree some veggies to include with your creamy, cheesy casseroles.  Or, sneak in the beans.
• Replace the white bread in your house with whole wheat bread.
• Teach them something about nutrition.  Angee is doing a nutrition segment this week on preschool nutrition ideas.

So, for the love of all that is healthy and good, Please keep visiting my blog. Don’t get scared away!

Post note edit: I forgot to add: Throw out the Little Debbies.  No one needs them. And while you are at it, Toss the Lorna Doones Beth. Obama said so.

Hooray, It’s fixed! Go ahead all you Firefox browsers and feel free to browse.  My amazing Sister (who is soon to start a techie blog to help other helpless tech challenged folks like me) figured out the problem and fixed it.

I got a completely different reaction to our potato bar than I expected.  I expected my husband to make a wise crack about a potato not being a Meal, but he said NOTHING!!  My kids assumed by “potato bar” I meant I was making potatoes into a bar (like a granola bar).  BUT everyone LOVED IT!  They ate the whole thing.

Kids love the choices.  Kids love the “BAR”.

I did have to run to the store to purchase BIG potatoes. When you buy the 10lb bags, they are usually so small.  I wanted the potato to be a meal, and be filling, and it was!

Here are some potato bar topping options:  Feel free to add as many as you can think of to the comments.

1. Broccoli
2. Light sour cream or plain yogurt.
3. Green onions
4. Chives
5. Cheese
6. salsa
7. chili
8. Bacon bits

Other BAR Blog posts

• Salad Bar
• Oatmeal Bar
• Taco Salad Bar
• Breakfast Bar

I need your help.  It appears there are still some bugs to my new site, but I need to know about them. Everything looked perfect to me, then I found out my blog was displaying an entire post, one word at a time!  It also has some alignment issues in certain browsers, and I still can’t get rid of an entire paragraph becoming a link.  Plus, my husband complained of  longer than normal page loading.  So, if you would pop over and see how it looks in your browser, or if any of my links are broken, I would love to know about it!   Leave a comment or send me an email and I’ll check it out.  Thanks for being patient.

Here is a family favorite.  Apple pancakes!   I started with the Homemade pancake mix.

This time however, I added

• 2 TBL of applesauce and
• 1/2 cup of shredded apple.

Then on my cast-iron skillet, I used my pancake shaper that Quaker sent me.  And cooked until it was cooked all the way through.

These were sweet enough to not need syrup.  But some chopped apple on top or some walnuts would have been delicious too.