Welcome! I am a mom of a busy 8 year old and an adventurous 6 year old. I also happen to work for a great company called NuVal. NuVal is a nutritional scoring system that rates foods on a scale of 1-100, based on how nutritious they are. We are implementing NuVal in grocery stores around the country.
NuVal may not be in your area yet. But I see the scores while they are "hot off the press" and because of that I am able to make better decisions about what to feed my family.
I am not a registered dietitian. I am just a mom who happens to work for NuVal. I am also an AFAA-certified Group Exercise Instructor. NuVal is a system designed to lead customers to the most nutritious food choices. It is not a diet or weight-loss plan. Before starting a diet, you should always consult your personal physician. The opinions expressed in this blog are the opinions of the writer and not the opinions of NuVal LLC.
In our house, Fridays have become Pizza Movie Night. I don’t know about you, but by Friday night, I don’t even have the energy to boil a pot of water. So, the pizza is takeout and the movie is something that the whole family can enjoy. Our kids love this tradition and I embrace it, knowing that the day will come when our kids will prefer to spend their Friday nights with someone other than their parents.
Maybe it’s all the high-scoring foods I’ve been eating lately, but last Friday night I had enough energy to actually make pizza from scratch. Well, from pizza dough that I bought in my grocery store’s refrigerated section – but that is close to scratch! In the days B.C. (Before Children), my husband and I used to make our own pizza on most Friday nights. It was great to have a glass of wine and spend some time together in the kitchen, rehashing our work week stories before embarking on our weekend. Now, I am hopelessly out of practice with pizza-making! It’s so much easier to reach for the Take-Out Menus. Still, the kids had been asking, “Pleeeeeeeeeeasssssse! Can we make our own pizza?” How could I say no?
For this homemade pizza, we tried out two kinds of pizza dough: white and wheat. We have not scored these items at NuVal as of yet, although we are beginning to score “recipe” items and items in the Perimeter departments of your grocery store (think deli, bakery, prepared foods, etc). A few things are key to a great homemade pizza:
A very hot oven
A pizza stone, if you have one
A pizza paddle
Corn meal
My husband does the whole dough-pizza stone-corn meal thing while I prepare the toppings. He helped the kids to stretch and roll their dough. They had no problem adding their own sauce and cheese.
At the same time, he heated the pizza stone and sprinkled it with corn meal. Earlier, I had roasted some eggplant and peppers in the oven. Yum! We prepared our pizzas on a paddle and then scooted them into the oven onto the hot stone.
The corn meal can smoke a little, so our smoke detectors went off quite frequently during our pizza making session.
Health and nutrition experts will tell you to add veggies to make your pizza more nutritious – and we grown-ups love that. But my kids want nothing more than sauce and cheese. So, I try to make theirs as nutritious as possible.
Tomato sauces really vary in their NuVal scores. Check out the difference between these two Francesco Rinaldi products:
Francesco Rinaldi Original Traditional Pasta Sauce – NuVal score of 34
Francesco Rinaldi No Salt Added Traditional Pasta Sauce – NuVal score of 82
Some of my favorite high-scoring tomato sauces include:
Classico Spicy Red Pepper Sauce – NuVal score of 68 (too spicy for my kids)
Rao’s Homemade Marinara – NuVal score of 66 (expensive – almost $10 a jar)
Pastene Marinara – NuVal score of 66 (what I’ve been buying lately since it’s not too spicy and it is under $5 a jar)
One thing I’ve learned from working at NuVal is to be wary of health claims on labels.
Ragu Light Tomato Basil Pasta Sauce – NuVal score of 30
As for the mozzarella cheese, I found that store brand items often score higher than national brand items.
Kraft Low-Moisture Part Skim Mozzarella – NuVal score of 18
Price Chopper Shredded Mozzarella Low Moisture Part Skim – NuVal score of 23
The kids loved their plain cheese pizzas.
We loved making our very own unique pizza with whole wheat crust, roasted eggplant, roasted red peppers, minced garlic, onion, kalamata olives and a few pieces of pepperoni (hey, it was Friday night after all – you’ve got to live a little).
Question of the Day
What would you most like to put on your home-made pizza?
Welcome to Cart Confessions, a new feature here on A Better Bag of Groceries, where I confess my grocery sins. Today’s topic is Frosted Flakes with Reduced Sugar.
It all started with regular Frosted Flakes. I’m really not sure how they landed in my grocery cart. My husband and I tend to buy food and hoard it. We have shelves in our basement that are loaded with canned goods and unopened boxes of crackers, pasta, and, of course, cereal. If we ever have a natural disaster or national crisis, we could probably survive a month or two with what we’ve got stored. Cereal has a pretty long shelf life, so it is quite likely that my initial Frosted Flakes purchase pre-dated my start date with NuVal. Anyway, at some point, my children (ages 4 and 6) got their first taste of Frosted Flakes and fell in love. Who wouldn’t? I remember loving them as a kid too.
Last week, on our usual shopping trip, my daughter clamored for Frosted Flakes. It was then that I spotted the Reduced Sugar variety. Cool! Now, I do not yet have NuVal scores in a grocery store in my area, so I have to shop blindly. But I figured that a product with reduced sugar must be better.
I was curious to see if my kids would prefer the regular Frosted Flakes or the Reduced Sugar. So, we held a little taste test.
So, interestingly my kids found that they taste exactly the same. My daughter was pretty adamant about it, in fact. How can a product with reduced sugar taste the same as the regular version? Simple. They need to add something else. Since I am not a dietitian (and I don’t even try to play one on my blog), I turned to Rachel Rodek, MS, RD, LDN, Manager of Nutrition Communications for NuVal to give me the answer.
Rachel says: “When manufacturers reduce an ingredient in a food to make it “more nutritious”, the taste changes. So what do they do to have people still like it and buy it? Add more of another ingredient! And in this case, the culprit is sodium. Reduced Frosted Flakes has 140 mg sodium whereas Reduced Sugar Frosted Flakes has 180 mg. Interestingly enough, the difference in sugar is only 3 grams.”
That added sodium affects the NuVal score. Reduced Sugar Frosted Flakes actually score lower than the regular version.
Regular Frosted Flakes: 24
Reduced Sugar Frosted Flakes: 22
And that is one of the many, many reasons that Dr. David Katz and his team of scientific experts founded NuVal!
Question of the Day
Do you have any cereal sins you’d like to confess?
My friend and co-worker, Tina, who also has a NuVal blog, focuses on how to eat healthy on a budget. Today, I’m taking a page from her book. When I am feeling the need to keep a close eye on our family budget, I look for meals that stretch, without compromising on nutrition. One of the best ways I know how to do that is to make a roast chicken, and follow it up with my famous chicken soup.
For this project, I bought a 7.5 pound roast chicken and planned to make it on a Sunday. You don’t really need such a big chicken, but my grocery store had their store brand whole chickens on sale for 99 cents a pound. No need to splurge for the $12 Perdue Oven Stuffer Roaster. The store brand will definitely do.
I like to make roast chicken using a Reynold’s Oven Bag. My mom introduced me to these many years ago. They are great for whole chicken, turkey, or roasts. If you are afraid of roasting something for fear that it will dry out, try out these oven bags. They are fool-proof. While I needed a 2 hour window for roasting, once it is in the bag and in the oven, I’m free to do other things. There are so many things you can do with roast chicken. One of my favorite Martha Stewart recipes calls for placing a lemon and sprigs of thyme right inside the cavity. On this particular Sunday, however, we were cleaning out the kids rooms and the downstairs hall closet, so I kept things really simple. I removed the giblets from the chicken, rinsed it, and patted it dry. I brushed it with a very light layer of canola oil and sprinkled it with black pepper, thyme and paprika. I prepared the oven bag with 1 Tablespoon of flour and put the chicken in. I closed it with the little tie that comes with the oven bags and put it in the oven. Done!
Growing up, my mom always put vegetables right in the oven bag with the chicken. And I’ve done that too: potatoes, parsnips and carrots. The downside to that, however, is that the vegetables absorb a lot of the chicken fat. So this time, I made my vegetables separately. My kids don’t like potatoes (weird, I know), so I reheated some while parboiled rice (NuVal score of 82) for them and made a Dream Dinner side of roasted baby potatoes for us (they go right out of the bag on to a cookie sheet and are done in 25 minutes). I also made a nice pot of steamed carrots (NuVal score of 99). Dinner #1, Done!
Now, here comes the more labor-intense part. The real reason I like to make a roast chicken is so that I can use it to make my Famous Chicken Soup. Well, it’s not really famous, but my mother did tell me once that she thinks that I make better chicken soup than she does – so that’s famous to me! My chicken soup is part Italian (with escarole) and part Jewish (with Matzoh balls).
First, I take whatever is left of the chicken, and put it in my big soup pot, cover it with water, add 2 chopped onions, black pepper and a lot of dried parsley.
I bring it to a boil and then reduce the heat to simmer – for about an hour (usually while we clean up the kitchen from dinner and get the kids ready for bed). Then, I turn the heat off and let it cool. While it is cooling, I take out all the chicken parts, meat and bones with a slotted spoon. I let the chicken cool on a plate.
Next comes the Not Fun part. You need to pick the chicken off the bones. However, because you’ve simmered it, it comes off easily and you can discard all the pieces that just don’t look appetizing to you. Then, I put the chicken that I want to keep back in the pot. I let the pot cool while we watch whatever has arrived from Netflix. Before we head to bed, my husband’s job is to take the pot down and put it in our extra fridge that we have in the basement.
The next day, I pull out the cold pot. The cool thing is that all the fat is now on top and I can easily skim it off.
Sorry for the unappetizing photo, but I needed to show you what I mean! Once I’m skimmed off the fat, I put the pot back on the stove and bring it to a simmer. Now, here’s where the healthy part comes in. I add a lot of Incredible Vegetables:
Escarole (NuVal score of 96)
Celery (NuVal score of 96)
Carrots (NuVal score of 99)
The only downside to escarole is that it often is full of dirt. I fill my sink with water and shake all the dirt loose – at least 2 or 3 times. Then I lay it out on the counter to inspect it one last time for dirt.
Then, I chop it into coarse pieces.
I add the chopped carrots, celery and escarole to my pot. Sometimes I go overboard with the amount of vegetables I put in!
It looks more like a salad than soup! But everything shrinks down after simmering. An hour is more than enough time. It’s during this cooking that I taste and see what I need to add: usually more parsley, more black pepper and just a pinch of Kosher salt.
Finally, right before dinner time, I add my winning ingredient: Matzoh Balls. I became a fan when my husband and I lived in Newton, Massachusetts. Just outside Boston, Newton has a large Jewish community and some great restaurants. I first started loving Jewish Penicillin at Johnny’s Luncheonette. My own chicken soup has included Matzoh Balls ever since. I make then from a Manischewitz mix – so easy. Unfortunately we have not yet scored them at NuVal (although we will!) so I can’t give you the nutritional low-down. They are a great finishing touch, though. One thing to keep in mind is that the Matzoh Balls add a salty taste to the soup, so that pinch of Kosher salt that I mentioned in my last paragraph really is just a pinch! Also, roll the mix into very small balls. They really expand. OK, so it’s a little more work, but Dinner #2 – Done!
My soup could feed an army. There’s always some to send home with my Mom and Dad, some to bring for lunch and some to freeze. It’s a great way to stretch a $7 chicken!
Groundhog Day GiveAway
Congratulations to Commenter #35, Ashley of Food, Fotos and Fun. You’ve won the hot cereal round-up – just what you need to get through the last 6 weeks of winter!
Happy Ground Hog Day! And welcome to Trade Up Tuesday, a weekly feature here on A Better Bag of Groceries, where I tell you about a Trade-Up I’ve made and give away free stuff. Today, in honor of Punxsutawney Phil, I’m giving away a Hot Cereal Round-Up. It’s a collection of hot cereals I’ve been meaning to try before the winter is out.
It seems like Punxsutawney Phil ‘most always sees his shadow. And that means six more weeks of winter. Here in New England, it’s six more weeks of winter, no matter what. However, by February, it stays light a little later, you can hear a few more birds and there’s a glimmer of illumination at the end of the tunnel. I brave the winter, embrace it at times, but like most New Englanders, I am oh-so-happy to see it go. I even have a Spring Happy Dance that I like to do on the vernal equinox. Still, at this point in the season, I begin to realize that there are only so many more weeks to squeeze in some of our favorite winter activities: we still need to go sledding, we haven’t been downhill skiing yet, and my husband and I need a good snow and a babysitter for a couple of hours so that we can break out our cross-country skis. And – I haven’t yet sampled all the hot cereal that I’d like to try. I’ve got a lot to do these next few weeks!
So this week’s winner can help me out:
John McCann’s Steel Cut Irish Oatmeal: NuVal score of 91
Cream of Wheat: NuVal score of 25
Quaker Grits: NuVal score of 70
These are the last of the remaining hot cereals I’ve been meaning to try this winter.
Now, my dear husband and I did get around to cooking up the McCann’s this past weekend.
We’ve had a can of McCann’s in our cupboard for quite some time, but I’ve been too intimidated to try making it. Must be something about that Certificate of Uniformity of Granulation. Wow! Impressive. So, Saturday, when I had enough time for the thirty-plus minute cooking instructions, we tried it out.
We topped it with some walnuts, raisins and a sprinkle of brown sugar. Yum!
But I still need help in trying out the Cream of Wheat (which scored lower than I expected!) and grits (that one is at the insistence of my Southern co-worker, Laura).
Today’s GiveAway
One lucky winner will win all three hot cereals. All you need to do is leave me a comment telling me one of the following:
what hot cereal you’d like to try
what you most like to put on your hot cereal
what you still want to do before the winter is out
You can tell me more than one, if you in the sharing mood! The contest closes by midnight tonight Eastern time. Good luck!
NuVal is giving away a $100 Gift Card!
If you haven’t checked it out yet, go to www.nuval.com and take our site improvement survey. The direct link to the survey is here.
What is this vegetable and how did it get into my refrigerator? Good question. Another good question would be why is it starting to look a little wilted? That would be because it’s been hanging out in my refrigerator waiting for me to do something with it – for an amount of time that I am ashamed to disclose.
Regular A Better Bag of Groceries readers have heard me talk about how I’m on this quest to cook through THAT part of the produce section. You know – the part where there are lots of beets with leafy tops, unfamiliar greens, and this specimen. This was supposed to be anise. You see, I was chatting with my friend (and spinning instructor) April, a regular reader of ABBG. She was gushing about anise and how it is this awesome vegetable that tastes like licorice and how she would like to know how else she can prepare it – other than her usual method, which is steaming. Sounded like a great blog topic to me, so I planned to buy some anise.
I headed to the grocery store for my usual weekly shopping trip with my 4-year-old in tow. For the past few weeks, we’ve been trying out the hand-held scanner for our shopping. This was only our second trip using the HHS, and I must admit, it takes some getting used to. Fortunately, I can still get my long and leggy, yet flexible, pre-schooler into the child seat of my shopping cart and she is my Scanner. She really digs the whole scanning thing and promptly tells me the numbers that come up on the scanner. It keeps her entertained and contained – truly a miracle in the grocery store. My favorite part is check-out, when I can forgo the whole putting everything on the belt and bagging procedure. Woo hoo! However, the most cumbersome part of the process is shopping in Produce, because you have to weigh your items and print bar codes. I grabbed this leafy vegetable, thinking it was anise, and upon weighing and printing my bar code, I found out that it, indeed, was not. It is Chinese Cabbage. Since I was so new to the Hand Held Scanning thing, I did not realize that you can delete items from your order – easily. I figured that out later in my shopping trip when aforementioned 4-year-old scanned the same can of crushed tomatoes 3 times.
So now, I am the proud owner of a head of Chinese Cabbage. It is an Incredible Vegetable with a NuVal score of 100. All good. But I just don’t know what to do with it. I need help. That’s where you come in…
Question of the Day
What, oh what, should I do with the Chinese Cabbage?
The NuVal Nutritional Scoring System gives nutritional guidance to consumers frustrated with complicated nutrition labels and misleading packaging promises. Under NuVal, all foods and beverages are rated on a scale between 1 to 100. The higher the score, the higher the overall nutrition.
Awards
A Better Bag of Groceries was recently named by Medical Assistant Colleges as a Top 50 Blog for Understanding and Preventing Childhood Obesity. Hooray!
