Two of My Favorite Things: Horizon Organic Milk and Lunchbox Notes
Welcome to Two of My Favorite Things – one of my favorite features here on A Better Bag of Groceries – where I tell you about two things that I love.
I can tell you one of my least favorite things. That would be making lunches. I think that by the end of the day, I’m just all fooded out. I’ve just had enough of touching, thinking and writing about food. So truth be told, my husband does a lot of lunch-making in our house.
So this post realy should be called Two of Our Favorite Things.
First, Horizon Organic Milks.
I love these milk boxes because they do not leak. Back when my kids first started drinking milk (around age 1), I would send them to daycare with re-useable Rubbermaid sippy containers full of milk in their lunchboxes. And I would come home with stinky lunchboxes. And then I would try to wash the stinky lunchboxes (which didn’t work out all that well). Finally, I would buy new lunchboxes. And then I would repeat the process. I always said that I wish that someone would put milk in a juice-box-like container. Thankfully, Horizon Organic did. UHT, by the way, stands for Ultra High Temperature processing. That is what makes the milk shelf-stable. Cool, huh? I like knowing that even if the ice pack in my child’s lunch box is not doing its job, the milk will not spoil.
My only wish for these milk boxes is that they would come in a Skim version. The best scoring Horizon Organic milk is the blue one on the left (Reduced Fat Milk with Added Vitamin A and D). It gets a 55 on the NuVal scale. That is what my daughter drinks. She calls it “Vanilla Milk” and we let her believe that! My son, unfortunately, only wants the Strawberry or Chocolate variety. We have not yet scored Strawberry, but the Chocolate only gets a 27. Ugh! Our hope is that we can wean him off of the flavored milk and move him onto the plain. At least twice a week, we send him to school with one of the plain milks, and they come right back home untouched. We will keep trying!
No matter what, these milk boxes are a better alternative than juice boxes and we know that they are getting the calcium and Vitamin D that they need. And the lunch boxes stay clean. It’s all good.
On to Favorite Thing #2: Lunch Box Notes
My boss loves to shop at The Christmas Tree Shops and that is where she found these Lunchbox Notes. It was so nice of her to pick up two packs for me as well. Check out that low price!
Here’s the box without the price tag:
On the front of each note is a positive message. My son loves this one because it sounds a lot like the Cub Scout motto (Do Your Best!)
My daughter loves this one, because as a beginning reader, she can read it!
And on the back is an interesting fact. My son loves this one because he is into politics and presidents.
My daughter loves all things Human Body, so this is one of her favs.
Aren’t they the cutest? You can find them at sayplease.com. They are made of pretty sturdy paper with a special coating that you can wipe off, so we do that and re-use them. I guess it makes up for the milk boxes we are throwing away!
So there you have it – two of my favorite lunch-making things. Now, if only I could find myself a Lunch-Making Maid!
Question of the Day
What is one of your favorite Lunch Things?
Posted by: Melissa 9 comments
Posted in: Two Favorite Things
Tags: Horizon Organic, Lunch Box Notes
on Apr 22nd, 2010 at 7:33 am
Ahhh! I love those lunch box notes…people are so clever!
I’m loving my reusable baggies in my lunch box these days. I feel like such a do-gooder by not using disposable plastic baggies on a daily basis.
on Apr 22nd, 2010 at 7:45 am
I just bought those notes, too! They are great!
on Apr 22nd, 2010 at 8:15 am
Fresh fruit and I used to love seeing a note written on a napkin from my Mom when I was little.
on Apr 22nd, 2010 at 10:08 am
I love those lunch box notes!! How cute and encouraging! And, that’s for telling us about the UHT. I always wondered how that milk stayed fresh and have always stayed away from it because I thought it was scary and not “real”. Very interesting! This is why I love your blog and all things NuVal
on Apr 22nd, 2010 at 12:20 pm
oh i love the notes! how fun….i do not have kids but i put little notes in my hubbys lunch
happy earth day!
on Apr 22nd, 2010 at 12:56 pm
The notes are very cute. I’m like Joanna, I reuse my baggies when I can. Have to try those milk boxes, do you know what the sugar amount is in the plain?
on Apr 22nd, 2010 at 4:10 pm
those notes are too cute! My favorite thing about lunch is lunch dessert
on Sep 14th, 2010 at 1:15 am
Can anyone tell me where I can buy the Horizon 2% low fat milk in bulk around San Francisco?
on Sep 27th, 2011 at 10:25 pm
Horizon organic reduced fat milk is processed like other low fat milk is processed. Ultra High Temperatures and that my friends destroys much of the nutritional value of the milk. The cream is separated form the whole milk and then powdered milk is infused into weakened milk that is left after the cream has been removed so the milk will have ‘body’ and enhance the flavor. Oh you didn’t know that Horizon would process organic milk this way? I didn’t either until I did some research on processing low fat milk.