Kids need to play outside! That’s obvious to my readers, I know.  But we are always looking for ideas.  This is what we did to get outside this week.

Last summer my husband bought some inflatable rafts.  I had no idea when he spent $20 on them, how much we would use them.  I thought they were overpriced and would spend too much time, deflated in our garage.

However, with the kids super bored yesterday, he took the kids to a pond behind our house.  Generally, we don’t even get near this pond.  It’s simply a drainage ditch for irrigation water.  But with the park area being literally deserted, we set out to put our rafts on the water.

  So, don’t be picky! Don’t think you have to spend the day at the lake for some good outdoor time.  See what opportunities are literally in your backyard!

I’ve been thinking about the importance of getting outside after seeing an article in the paper on Sunday.  And also, checking out the book from our library titled:   Last Child in the Woods, Saving our children from Nature Deficit Disorder, by Richard Louv.  Such a great book! He explores the psychological and social problems associated with children NOT being outside!

The newspaper article also pointed to a website where you can Sign the pledge with the National Wildlife association, and they will email you a "Summer Survival Guide" full of things to do outside.

From the Deseret News article:

Equally important is what the outdoors can do for the mind, she says. "We cite research that shows that the attention span is increased in kids who spend a lot of time outdoors." … Research that shows outdoor activities can help reduce stress, can encourage social behaviors. And let’s not forget that it’s fun.

Plus: 52 Great Outdoor Activities

This is the perfect weekend to get outside and celebrate Independence Day!  Happy 4th of July to all in The United States!!

Tip #3 for getting your kids to eat beans: Turn beans into something familiar, like chicken nuggets.

Did you happen to see the Jamie Oliver episode where he put a nasty chicken carcass into a blender and shaped it into chicken nuggets?  The kids, knowing what was in it, still ate it!  They ate it because it looked like chicken nuggets!  Our falafel had the same idea, except with CHICK-peas, instead of a chicken carcass.  lol, get it??  My kids didn’t know what was in it, but they loved these!

I started with this recipe from Allrecipes, omitting things I didn’t have.  My final recipe was this:

Chick-en Nugget Falafel

(printer friendly)

• 1 can garbanzo beans (chickpeas), drained

Mash into bowl. I use a pastry blender.

In a food processor, I put

• 1/2 onion
• Parsley (from my kitchen window…mmmm)
• 1 clove garlic

Blend the onion mix with the mashed beans:

Then in separate bowl combine:

• 1 egg
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 dash pepper
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 TBL olive oil

Mix with bean dip, and slowly pour in 1 cup bread crumbs.   Mix enough bread crumbs until your dough is not too sticky to shape.

Shape into chicken nuggets and either bake or fry.  I “grilled” in a cast iron pan with a small amount of olive oil.  Then I made that Origami Fry bag.

WE LOVED THESE!!  Just so you know!

Still need Ideas to get your kids to eat their beans?

• Tip #1  Add pureed beans to baked goods
• Tip #2  Use beans as dip
• Tip #3 Chicken-En Nuggets
• Tip #4 Roast Them!
• Tip #5 Mixing in the beans

Day 2 in getting your kids to eat more beans is to make the beans a dip.  Of course there is hummus, which we love, but since I’ve spoken of that before, here are two other healthy bean dips that my kids like.

The first recipe has no comparison to the second.  My kids ask for this dip on a weekly basis.  We cook black-eyed peas by the gallon.  As soon as avocado’s ripen up, Erica is begging for this bean dip.

Avocado, Bean, Tomato Dip

• · 3 tomatoes, sliced and chopped
• · 2 avocados diced
• · 2 cups black eyed peas
• · 1/8- ¼ cup zesty Italian dressing

Slowly stir all ingredients together. Served with baked corn chips, or eat with a spoon!

The second bean dip is so simple, I almost didn’t want to make a recipe out of it.  By like any good food blogger, I actually measured this time when I whipped it up.  So the final amounts are:

BEAN DIP

• 1 Cup Pureed Beans (Pinto, black, or kidney)
• 2 TBL Fat free sour cream
• 1 tsp ranch seasoning mix

Put all ingredients into food processor or blender. Mix until smooth. Serve with pita chips, baked corn chips, or vegetable sticks.

We had fun with this one and made all three beans into a different dip for tasting.  My kids liked the pinto beans best.  I wasn’t surprised.

(Printable recipe)

Any other dips from beans your family likes?

Need more ideas to eat beans?

• Day 1 Hiding Beans
• Day 2: Bean Dips
• Day 3: Chick-En Nuggets (vegetarian chicken nuggets)
• Day 4: Roast Them
• Day 5: Mixing in the Beans

Last week, reader Kendra asked for suggestions on getting her kids to eat beans!  What a great idea for some posts.  So this week is BEAN WEEK! I’ve got 5 ways to add more beans into your families diet.  Today will be #1.

First, why more beans?

• Beans are healthy! In fact, Joel Fuhrman recommends a full cup of beans PER DAY!
• Beans are cheap!  Food is not cheap, but dry beans can help you get control over your food budget.
• Beans last a very long time!  Besides having 50lbs of oats, we probably have 150 lbs of different dried beans.

So, Tip #1 Add them to baked goods

Are you still substituting applesauce for the fat in your baked goods?  I think bean puree turns out a better result.

The Journal of the ADA reports when pureed cannellini beans were substituted for shortening in Brownies for 25% and 50% of the fat, no difference was detected. (You can read the abstract here) “Yielding an acceptable and more nutritious product”.

So, while this practice is best when you replace 50% of the fat in cake like baked goods, we replaced 75% of the fat in a cookie (because I love cookies!).  They also turned out pretty good.  They were eaten at least. 

First, I used

• 1 can of white beans (I used Great Northern Beans).
• Placed them in a food processor (remember, mine is just a $25 Cusinart from Costco)
• Blended until smooth (I did not add any water).  It turned out the consistency of shortening

Then, I used the puree in this cookie recipe, replacing 75% of the fat for white beans.  So, the original recipe used 1 cup of butter.  I used 1/4 cup of butter and 3/4 cup of the white beans.

Printable recipe

White Bean Chocolate Chip Cookies

• · ¾ Cup Pureed White beans
• 1/4 cup butter
• · 1 Cup brown sugar
• · 1 Cup white sugar
• · 2 Eggs
• · 1 tsp vanilla
• · 1 cup whole wheat flour
• · 1 ¼ cup White flour
• · 1 TBL baking soda
• · 1 tsp baking powder
• · 2 ½ cup Ground oat flour (put regular oats in blender or food processor until the consistency of flour)
• · Chocolate chips

Mix pureed beans, butter, brown sugar, white sugar, eggs, and vanilla thoroughly. Mix dry ingredients together. Pour wet ingredients into dry and mix softly with wooden spoon just until all flour is mixed in.

Drop by TBL onto cookie sheet. Bake at 400 for 6 minutes.

Makes 3 Dozen cookies

So come back tomorrow for Tip #2 for getting kids to eat their beans!

• Day 1: Pureed Beans in Baked goods
• Day 2: Bean Dip
• Day 3: Chick-En nuggets, Falafel
• Day 4: Roast them!
• Day 5: Mixing them in

Inspired by a class I attended at CBC#10 (which was fabulous), I decided to simplify our meals for awhile.  Sarah (my amazing sister and the Home Organization guru) along with Marie Ricks (House of Order) spoke a bit about meal planning and using a consistent pattern.  It will probably take your kids and your husband at least 5 years to notice there is a pattern at all, but will make your life so much easier.

So, this is what I came up with to simplify the meals and be more organized.

I’ll have this outline on the meal plan archives page.

So, with that menu as my template, this is our meal plan for the week.

Well, that’s it for today.  I loved the blogging conference. Met some awesome ladies.  And I’m excited all over again about blogging!  So, thank you readers for visiting my blog and sharing your ideas. I couldn’t do it without you all!

How do you get kids to exercise?  Make it fun, right?  My husband found some fun activities for Pack Meeting the other night (he’s the cub master).  The kids had so much fun.  TJ (not a cub scout yet) wanted to re-create the events at home because they looked so fun.

EVENT #1 (Most Popular)

Newspaper boy- We set up a bowling pin (Yes, we own ONE bowling pin), a basket, and a tin container.  The kids would ride by on their bike, take a newspaper out of their bag, and try to hit the targets.

EVENT #2

Weaving- We set up cones for the kids to ride in and out of, weaving through the cones.

EVENT #3

Slow bike race- This one was hilarious.  It’s so hard to ride a bike AS SLOW AS POSSIBLE!  The last one to make it to the finish line was the winner.  It takes quite a lot of balance to ride SLOW!  I thought this one was hilarious to watch.

So, grab your kids, grab their bikes, set up a course, and spend some time outside this holiday weekend! 

Did you know celery was used for medicinal purposes before it was a food?  I started looking into it after my Grandma gave us this old medicine bottle.  I think it’s pretty awesome!  If you look up close, it gives all the benefits of celery (as they knew back in the day.)

It says:  A reliable laxative and diuretic.  It restores strength, renews vitality, purifies the blood, regulates the Kidneys, Liver, and Bowels.  A positive cure for Rheumatism, Blood disorders, stomach troubles, Liver and kidney complaints, malaria, indigestion, dyspespia, constipation, catarrh, Heart trouble, scrofula, neuralgia, etc.  FEMALE WEAKNESS and Irregularities promptly relieved and permanently cured.

I think it’s hilarious that FEMALE WEAKNESS is in all caps.  I love old things like that.  My husband has some very old medical books with crazy cures for everything. But this I know, once my kids start complaining of cararrh, I’ll be pulling out the celery.

Our adventures in celery:

I figured the best way to get some real benefits of concentrated celery ( the real benefits being immune support and blood pressure regulation) is to juice it!  We borrowed my sisters (Queen Bee Online Mother) juicer.

6 celery sticks gave us 1 cup of juice

Which we mixed with some pure Apple Berry Juice

They really liked it!

Something else you could do with the juice is add it to vegetable soup (like this awesome Dr. Fuhrman soup recipe).  My friend Eliece makes this and decided a good plan would be to juice a bunch of celery and freeze it in small portions for when she makes the soup.  Then she doesn’t have to get a juicer out every time she wants to make soup!  Great Idea Eliece!!

Other celery ideas:

• Add the celery juice to smoothies!
• Fruit, rice, celery, bean salad recipe,
• Peanut Butter Dip

What do you think?  Will your kids try some celery juice?

Have you tried making yogurt cheese yet?  Basically it’s just draining the extra water out of yogurt until it’s more thick like a cream cheese consistency.

It’s a fabulous substitute to all things creamy.  We mostly use it as a sandwich spread (as you would with cream cheese), but it can also be used as a high protein, low-fat substitute for mayo, sour cream, dips, or you know what would be good… mixing some with peanut butter for a creamy spread.  MMM, If you could see me now, you would see me drooling.

Here is the super easy method:

• Scoop plain yogurt into cheese cloth (double layered), over a colander, over a bowl. My only colander is super huge, so I used the steam basket from my rice cooker.
• Put in fridge till desired consistency (the longer in the fridge, the thicker it will get)  But generally overnight at least!

  Can’t find cheesecloth?  I had been to several grocery stores and they either “were all out” or didn’t carry it, or I couldn’t figure out which aisle they would keep it.  I finally found some at Bed Bath and Beyond if anyone is looking.

This time we spread it on bagels.  Plain is good, but I had some strawberries, so we mixed them in.

Arranging it to look like a butterfly is always a fun way for breakfast or a snack for some kids..  My kids think they are too old for butterfly bagels..  When did that happen??

My kids have a certain devotion to plain old oatmeal with brown sugar.  Not super exciting, but they love it.  I don’t know why I even bother messing with a good thing, but I wanted to widen the possibilities here.   So, I came up with

Chocolate peanut butter cookie oatmeal

After I cooked the oatmeal with some low fat milk (according to oatmeal directions), I added:

• 2 tsp natural peanut butter
• 2 tsp agave (only because all my honey is completely crystallized.  You could use either I’m sure)
• 1 TBL semi sweet chocolate chips.

I thought it tasted yummy like those chocolate no – bake cookies!  My kids were super hesitant to try it.  But once they did, they gave it a thumbs up.

Thoughts about oatmeal:

We love oats so much we buy it in bulk. In fact, I know we have over 50lbs of oatmeal in our home.

Quick Oatmeal Tutorial:

Steel Cut Oats:  These are the whole oat grain (called a groat), but cut into smaller pieces by steel blades.  While it contains the same nutrients as rolled oats, some people prefer the taste and texture to rolled oats.

Rolled Oats: First, the groat is cut with the steel blade, but then they are rolled flat.  This helps to cut cooking time way down, and some people prefer this texture better.

Coach’s Oats: The people from Coach’s sent some of this oatmeal for us to try, and we thought it was super tasty too.  Here is the difference from their literature. “Our patented process begins with the groats and toasting them.  Toasting the groats brings the natural sugars to the surface.  Next the oats are cracked into small pieces.  This way they have the nuttiness and texture of steel cut oats, but cook quickly like rolled oats.

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