Thursday, November 19, 2009 at 06:55 AM
When I was setting up my new blog, I decided to divide my recipes into Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and Snacks. This categorization quickly made me realize that I’ve been remiss in giving you some good lunch recipes. This is probably an indication of my lifestyle. In my life B.C. (Before Children), there was time for lunch. I could make a great salad in my company’s cafeteria, head out with some co-workers, or even better – when I worked in Manhattan – shop on Fifth Avenue. Those were the days. Fast foward to now. Working Moms do not eat lunch. They work through lunch. They type with one hand while balancing a quick sandwich in the other. And Stay-At-Home Moms suck down a Campbell’s Soup in Hand while driving from here to there. It’s pitiful. But with the daycare deadline looming (and some of them charge by the minute if you’re late), most working moms (and dads!) have no choice. I’m asking you all to step away from the keyboard, take a few minutes and warm up a nutritious lunch this winter.
One of my favorite lunchtime recipes comes from Robin Abrahams. Robin has become a virtual friend of mine these past few years and I credit her with being the first Blogger to whom I became a devotee. Robin is also known as Miss Conduct, the witty author of the Sunday etiquette (well, she calls it social advice) column in the Boston Globe Magazine. Robin can help you with all your etiquette dilemmas, such as should you say “Bless You” to a sneezing atheist. She also has a great book, Mind Over Manners, and I am the proud owner of an autographed copy. Now and then, Robin throws a little recipe into her blog and I’ve been making her Easy Greek Casserole for a few winters now.
1 1/2 cups cooked brown rice (or other whole grain)
1 T olive oil
1 small onion
1 bulb garlic, chopped or one T minced garlic from a jar
1 bag baby spinach
herbs
1 pint grape tomatoes, sliced in half, or one can diced tomatoes
1/4 to 1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese
1/2 block firm tofu, drained and pressed
sliced black olives
I also add chopped roasted red peppers out of a jar
Cook rice or other grain. Preheat oven to 375. Heat olive oil in skillet and add onion and garlic. Wash the spinach and squeeze dry. When the onion has become limp and tractable, add the spinach and whatever herbs you like (Robin uses dill, oregano, basil and black pepper – she advises against adding salt since it’s already in the feta). While that cooks, spray the pan with non-stick spray and spread the rice or other grain evenly across the bottom. When the spinach mixture is jsut barely cooked, put that on top. Put the tomatoes on top of that, cover in foil and bake for about 20 minutes.
Squeeze the tofu between your fingers and into a bowl. Add feta cheese. Mix together until it’s all just crumbly white stuff.
Remove the casserole and add the feta cheese & tofu topping. Add sliced olives and chopped roasted red peppers on top
and baked uncovered until topping browns, about 15 more minutes.
Robin says – and I quote – if you like your casserole servings to have neat edges and structural integrity, you should add a beaten egg or two somewhere, probably in the spinach. I’m a control freak so I go for the egg.
How Does It Score?
Pretty Darn Good! Baby Spinach scores a 100 on the NuVal scale. Remember 100 is best. Brown rice scores an 82. I often use a pre-cooked brown rice from Trader Joe’s to save time. This time, I used wild rice which gets a score of 91. Wow! The olive oil gets an 11 (hey – it’s better than the butter in yesterday’s recipe). Garlic gets a 91 and the grape tomatoes, a 96. As for the tofu, we have not yet scored it. NuVal is scoring all products in grocery stores (more than any other nutritional scoring system out there). We just haven’t finished tofu yet. I used Athenos Mild Feta Cheese crumbles which score a 24. If I I had left off the final toppings (kalamata olives, 10 and Pastene’s roasted red peppers, 7), it would have been healthier. But that’s how I like it!
So, enjoy your lunch and look for more high-scoring lunch recipes to come!
Question of the Day:
What are you having for lunch today?
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Uncategorized
Tags: baby spinach, Greek Casserole
Wednesday, November 18, 2009 at 06:45 AM
If there is one thing I’ve learned at NuVal is that vegetables are Rock Stars. They get incredible scores – almost all of them fall somewhere between 91 and 100 on the NuVal scale (100 is best). Most processed foods don’t even come close. Take bread, for example. The median score (half of the scores fall above and half fall below) for bread is a 25. The median for milk is a 52. Crackers? The median score is a 14. So, yes, vegetables rule the food kingdom. And fruit is awesome too. It’s like Michael Pollan says: Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants.
I have always been a big veggie fan. A die-hard fan. Like if I come back from a trip where vegetables were scarce, I need to have a big green salad or a bowl of asparagus. For more on my veggie-loving background, see About Me. So it is with this new knowledge of how amazing vegetables really are coupled with my innate love for all things green that inspired me to start a new feature on my new blog: Incredible Vegetables. Each week, expect to hear about a new vegetable, how it scores, and how you can prepare it.
So, let’s get going! Here’s my first Incredible Vegetable Post!
Butternut Squash
The bummer about being a veggie lover is that you have to find time to prepare them. This is not always easy. I have a hutch in my kitchen where my non-refrigerated produce sits just waiting for my attention. Right next to Finn, our Betta Fish, my trusty Ipod player, and a bottle of red wine. The pineapple, canteloupe, and tomatoes on the vine hang out there until I have time to hunt down my chef’s knife and a cutting board. And that’s where my butternut squash hung out – for a while.
The beauty about late fall/winter vegetables is that they have some staying power. This particular butternut squash I bought from Beth at Flint Farm in Mansfield, MA. It just seemed like one of those autumnal things you have to do. But somehow, by the time I finished with work, dinner, homework, bathtime, story time, and bedtime, the bottle of red wine was a little more inviting than my peeler and that butternut squash. Finally, after weeks on the hutch, the guilt got to me, and I did it. I went to Allrecipes.com, plugged in Butternut Squash, and voila – I found an enticing recipe for which I had most of the ingredients in house.
Squash-Apple Bake
Ingredients:
1 medium buttercup or butternut squash, peeled, cut into 3/4 inch slices
2 apples, peeled, cored and cut into wedges
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1/4 cup butter, melted
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground mace (this I did not have in house, so I used nutmeg instead)
Directions:
Arrage squash in a 12-in. X 8 in. baking pan. Top with apple wedges. Combine remaining ingredients; spoon over apples. Bake at 350 degrees F for 50-60 minutes or until tender.
It was delicious. My husband and I both loved it. My kids, not so much. They suffered through their mandatory two bites. All the more for Mommy!
I took it for lunch for the rest of the week, throwing in some walnuts for protein and satiety.
How does it score?
Butternut Squash gets a 100 on the NuVal score. Rock Star!
Apples score a 96 - not too shabby!
The Walnuts I threw in to make it lunch-worthy scored an 82. Worth the calories & fat.
But the Land O’Lakes stick butter scores a 2. Well, what did you expect? :- )
I definitely plan to make this recipe again and if I’m feeling lazy, I can always buy the pre-peeled, pre-sliced butternut squash in the produce section.
The Breakfast Trade-Up Bag GiveAway
Thanks to everyone who commented on my first Tuesday Trade-Up post. I was blown away by all your stories! It’s great to see that people are learning about NuVal and using it to make nutritious choices. Congratulations to Laura from Backstage Pass to Health and Happiness. You’ve won!
Question of the Day
What’s your favorite autumn or winter vegetable?
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Uncategorized
Tags: Butternut Squash, Incredible Vegetables
Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 05:00 AM
How do you like my new place? Pretty spiffy, huh? I packed up all my NuVal scores, my kids, my recipes, and all my old blogposts and moved on over here over the weekend. Many thanks to Blain Smith of 13-infinite for designing my new space and to all my friends at NuVal who put up with me helped me as we planned a new name and design.
New here? Let me catch you up. My name is Melissa and I’m a working mom to 2 kids: a boy, age 6 and a girl, age 4. Oh, sorry, that’s 4 1/2, she reminds me. I also happen to work for a great new company called NuVal. NuVal is a nutritional scoring system that rates foods from 1-100 (100 is best) based on their nutritional value. NuVal scores are on the shelf in Price Chopper, Hy-Vee and Meijer stores and they are coming to United Texas Markets in early 2010. I work with these supermarkets to implement NuVal in their stores. NuVal may not be in your neck of the woods yet, but here on my blog, you can learn about some scores. I love my job and I love being a mom too. Oh, and I love food and cooking and all things healthy, so it was only natural for me to start blogging about how NuVal has helped me to make better choices about what I’m putting on my kitchen table.
What’s Nu?
My new blog gives me a great opportunity to introduce some new things!
First, get ready for Trade-Up Tuesdays. That’s right, I want to hear from you about how you’re trading up for better nutrition. There will be fun prizes, so get ready to share some ideas.
Then, there’s Incredible Vegetables. One thing that I’ve learned since working at NuVal is that vegetables are Rock Stars. They are so packed with nutrients, that they almost all score between 91-100. So, every week, look to see my featured Incredible Vegetable along with a favorite recipe.
Don’t miss the BBG Awards. I’ve bestowed this honor on my favorite high-scoring foods. NuVal inspires me to try new things all the time, so there will be more awards to come.
And finally, Field Trips. I love finding new healthy and/or family-oriented places to visit. It might be a restaurant, a farm, a vacation spot, or maybe just one of my foodie friends’ homes so that we can get in the kitchen and cook together. The possibilities are endless.
So let’s get going! Here’s my First Trade-Up Tuesday Blog Entry:
The Ultimate Breakfast Cereal Trade-Up
I did it. I finally made the big Trade Up. The huge one. The Big Kahuna. That’s right. I’m eating Shredded Wheat. It is the almost perfect breakfast cereal with a score of 91. Now, let me tell you that I did not leap from Cheerios (34) to Shredded Wheat (91). No, it was more like I climbed the ladder of more nutritious cereal until I got to the top, stopping at Kashi Go Lean with Protein (47) and Special K with Protein (60) along the way. In the morning, I need something filling that I can eat quickly as I juggle getting the kids off to school and myself to work, hopefully with dry hair and at least a little make-up on. Shredded Wheat is doing the trick and I’ve given it a BBG Award. And this afternoon, my 4 (and a Half!) year old asked for some!?! We’ll see if she wants it instead of Cinnamon Toast Crunch in the morning.
So, here’s where you come in. This Housewarming Party of mine is Pot Luck. I want you to bring me your Trading Up Stories. Now that you’ve learned about NuVal, how have you traded up for better nutrition? There’s a Door Prize involved. One lucky A Better Bag of Groceries reader is going to WIN my fabulous NuVal Breakfast Trade Up Bag.
Included in the prize is a NuVal shopping bag, a NuVal water bottle, a box of Shredded Wheat, a container of Quaker Steel Cut Oats and some roasted unsalted almonds. To enter the drawing, tell me one trade up you’ve made for a better NuVal score (or one that you plan to make) in the comments below. The contest will close Tuesday, November 17th at 11:59 P.M. and the winner will be announced on Wednesday.
Thanks for stopping by and I hope you like my new home as much as I do!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Uncategorized
Tags: Shredded Wheat, Trade-Up Tuesdays
Tuesday, November 10, 2009 at 01:11 PM
Happy 40th Birthday Sesame Street! It is scary that I am almost as old as you! It has been wonderful these past 6 1/2 years, getting reacquainted with the Street. And yes, your Platinum Hits collection is on my Ipod. My Dear Son, now 6 1/2 and sadly Way-Too-Old for Sesame Street loved Oscar’s “I Love Trash” and Ernie’s “Put Down the Duckie.” My daughter, now 4 1/2, still wakes up wanting her Elmo’s World fix and sleeps with the one stuffed Elmo I could find that did not have some sort of speaking unit in it. I love watching her wake up, groping for Elmo’s eyeballs so she can give him a hug. Any parent who has had a love/hate relationship with Elmo should read Joanna Weiss’s column from the Saturday’s Boston Globe: Six reasons why Elmo went from being horrible to adorable.
I am looking forward to the big Sesame Street special tonight (Episode #4187!), with Michele Obama, Elmo and the White House vegetable garden. I love that Cookie Monster now gobbles vegetables along with his cookies. But still, C is for Cookie makes me want, well, a cookie! I haven’t talked much about cookies on my blog yet. Nutritionally, there’s not much to know. The median NuVal score for cookies is a 3. Ouch! You can see some of the NuVal scores for cookies on our newly designed website here.
There are a couple of superstars in the Cookie category. Most notable are Kashi’s TLC Oatmeal Cookies. They get a NuVal score of 40 – the best we’ve seen in Cookies to date. Of course, I prefer Kashi’s TLC Oatmeal with Chocolate cookie (it’s all about chocolate) which score a 24. Still, that’s a great score when it comes to cookies. If I wanted to forget about the scores, I might have a Nabisco Chips Ahoy instead. They score a 6. I might try to be a little healthier by choosing the Reduced Fat version of Chips Ahoy. I wouldn’t bother. They get exactly the same score as the regular version – a 6! I’ll just be sure to have my cookie with a big glass of skim milk, which gets an almost perfect NuVal score of 91.
I probably only have a very small window of Sesame Street Love left in my household. You know Hannah Montanna is going to be knocking on my door soon. My son now knows that there’s more to life than PBS. He’s quickly teaching his sister how to find Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel. So tonight, I’m going to have my cookie and eat it too, as we all Sing A Song. Enjoy!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Cookies, Sesame Street
Friday, November 6, 2009 at 11:48 AM
One of my goals is to raise two kids who appreciate good and nutritious food. When it comes to eating out, this can be a real challenge. So often, the children’s menu is filled with the same old predictable choices: chicken nuggets, grilled cheese, hot dog, etc. The Boston Globe ran a great article this week about restaurants that do a better job of offering nutritious and creative dishes for kids.
My sisters and I have a new Friday tradition that includes exercise and lunch. Since we all have very different lives and schedules, we were so excited to find one day that we could get together for a few hours. First, let me introduce you to our clan.
There’s Me, of course, Mom of two. I work for NuVal, teach group exercise part-time, and love motherhood, cooking and all things healthy.
There’s Julie, owner of Rhode Island Pilates Studio. She is married and is about to become the proud owner of a new puppy, Lily.
There’s April, busy Nurse and Mom to a preschooler and infant, both girls. 
And Kristin, newly engaged, she works in Customer support for a major retailer.
Friday Lunch takes place with two kids in tow, my 4 year old daughter and my new niece. First, we get a great Pilates Reformer workout in at RI Pilates Studio. If you’ve never tried using Pilates apparatus (chair, Cadillac, Reformer, barrel, towers), you are missing out! It’s amazing!
Then, it’s off for a healthy lunch. On this particular Friday, we went to The Garden Grille Cafe in Pawtucket, RI.
The Garden Grille serves vegetarian, vegan and raw foods. I had heard about it so I was very excited to try it out.
On this particular Friday, Kristin was unable to join us but my mom came with us too, so we had a nice big party to try out different dishes. Julie and April are always seeking out something Mexican, so they went for the Garden Grille Nachos and Burrito.
Mom and I shared the Grilled Asparagus Wrap and the Roasted Butternut Squash Quesadilla, on the advice of one of my favorite Spinning instructors.
>My niece munched on a Kashi TLC Ripe Strawberry Cereal Bar, which gets a NuVal score of 30, in case you’re wondering. April made a great choice there! That’s a great score when you compare it to Nature Valley Chewy Granola Bar Strawberry (Score of 10) or Quaker Chewy 90-calorie Strawberry Vanilla (Score of 9).
After perusing the menu, I thought that the Vegan Gluten Free Macaroni and Cheese with Broccoli would be the best choice for my daughter.
The Verdict:
The grown-ups loved our dishes. Lots of vegetables and yet, so satisfying. I would love to go back for dinner as they have a beer and wine menu.
My daughter ate all of the broccoli out of her mac & cheese and then picked at the macaroni. Instead, she really wanted Auntie Julie and Auntie April’s nachos. And then, she remembered that I had a snack pack of Cheetos in my bag (don’t ask!) So, she grabbed them and started eating Cheetos. In a vegan restaurant. With orange Cheeto cheese all over her face. Not my proudest Mommy moment.
I would love to see The Garden Grille put a few kid-friendly choices on their menu. How about a smiley face made out of vegetables? With some kind of vegan dip in the middle? The possiblities are endless and The Garden Grille is the kind of restaurant that would do it.
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Uncategorized
