Tuesday, November 30, 2010 at 06:53 AM
Welcome to Trade-Up Tuesday, everyone’s favorite day here at A Better Bag of Groceries. Every Tuesday, I blog about a Trade Up I’ve made since learning about NuVal scores and I give away something for free. It doesn’t get any better than this. Two areas where I’ve traded up majorly (gosh that sounded so ’80s), is in the peanut butter category and in the hot cereal category. Not only that, but I now put the two together for a totally awesome energy boosting breakfast (not sure why this post is sounding like a Valley Girl today!)
So, let’s talk about the peanut butter first. In the days B.N. (Before NuVal), I used to buy Jif Reduced Fat Peanut Butter. Because, like, you know, I thought that reduced fat was better. Well, Jif Reduced Fat gets a wicked low NuVal score of 7. Even the regular Jif gets a better score (it gets a 20). But what I found by shopping the NuVal scores is that there are some peanut butters and other nut butters with totally awesome scores – and Teddie Smooth Unsalted is one of the best peanut butters you can buy – with a score of 49. So, I traded up. And my kids did too. No more Jif in our house. It’s All Natural, all the time!
As for hot cereal, I used to be an Instant Oatmeal Kind of Girl. I mostly dabbled in the Quaker varieties, since I grew up on them. Back in my crazy traveling days, I would always bring instant oatmeal and make it in a coffee cup because it was way better than the wicked bad croissants and danish they offered at the hotel buffets. But here’s the thing – instant oatmeal is like, omygod, kind of grody – at least when it comes to NuVal scores. Like Quaker Instant Oatmeal Maple and Brown Sugar only gets a 25. And even the Quaker 100% Whole Grain Maple & Brown Sugar Instant Oatmeal only gets a 25 too. That’s right – same score – even though one says 100% Whole Grain on the Box! Isn’t that kind of lame? So, I quickly traded up to some better oatmeal, like the kind you make in a pan (Quaker Old Fashioned Oats score a 57). But I love these Hodgson Mill brands. They’re totally gnarly:
- Hodgson Mill Multi-Grain with Oats, Milled Flax Seed, and Soy: 82
- Hodgson Mill Oat Bran Hot Cereal: 58
Now, what’s really The Bomb is when you put the two of these together. You take your favorite hot cereal and mix in some delicious peanut butter (or any nut butter really) and it is totally awesome.
Today’s Totally Awesome Giveaway
You can win both boxes of Hodgson Mill Hot Cereal and the Teddie Smooth Unsalted Peanut Butter (which is wicked hard to find in some areas of the country, by the way) just by leaving a comment below. Since I somehow went all ’80s/Valley Girl today (seriously, I don’t know how that happened – I will blame it on the sleep I lost on Black Friday – I’m still catching up), we’ll make this fun. You can leave me two comments (and be entered twice).
- A trade up you’ve made since learning about NuVal (this is a NuVal blog, after all)
- One of your favorite things about the ’80s (a song, a saying, a group, a show, oh the possibilities are endless)
I’ll select one winner at random at 8 am on Wednesday December 1st Eastern Time, so don’t delay. And have a Totally Awesome Day!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Hot Cereal, peanut butter, Trade-Up Tuesday
Tags: Hot Cereal, peanut butter, Trade-Up Tuesday
Monday, November 29, 2010 at 07:10 AM
OK, everybody, lace up your running shoes! The race begins today! Less than 4 weeks until Christmas and it’s officially the Insane Season. It’s all about survival and that means that even those of us with the best intentions are going to go for some short-cuts now and then. So the morning after your office holiday party, you might not be up for making your kids whole wheat pancakes and fresh fruit. Perhaps you only have time for (gasp) a hand-held breakfast that they munch in the car seats while on the drive to school or day care. Hey, it happens. So, for those of you who toss a box of toaster pastries into your shopping cart from time to time for Mornings Like These, I thought you would find these NuVal scores very interesting.
I shopped the toaster pastry and tart aisle at Big Y Supermarkets and here is what I found. First, there are Pop Tarts, the brand we all grew up with (well my Mom didn’t buy them, but my friends’ moms did!).
Strawberry Pop Tarts get a NuVal score of 5
Blueberry Pop Tarts also get a NuVal score of 5
Surprisingly, Chocolate Chip Pop Tarts score higher than the fruit varieties. They score an 11.
You might think that the Nature’s Path Organic Toaster Pastry would score higher, right? Not so. It only scores a 2!
When I looked around the aisle some more, I found one toaster pastry product that stood out from the rest: Fiber One. They score a 24 on the NuVal scale. The range NuVal scores for toaster pastries and tarts is 2 – 28 and the average score is an 8, so a 24 is a very good score for this type of food product.
Like I said, we’re in the Season of Busy, Busy, Busy and there just might be a morning when you need to turn to Toaster Pastries to get your family out the door in time. And if you do, now you know which are some of the most nutritious.
Or, you could just make some toast!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Pop Tarts, Toaster Pastries
Tags: Pop Tarts, Toaster Pastries
Wednesday, November 24, 2010 at 08:07 AM
We’re hosting Thanksgiving this year. It’s not a huge affair – just 11 people in total. And they are not a fussy crowd, so the pressure really is not too bad. However, we did just move less than two months ago, so it’s been a challenge to finish getting the last of the boxes unpacked and to locate my turkey roasting pan, roasting rack and favorite serving dishes.
Enter my mother, who has come over on several occasions recently to keep the kids occupied while I unpack some boxes or iron my new drapes (from Target by the way and yes they are fabulous!)
First she and my daughter worked on place cards…
Those are my Target drapes hanging behind them, but I digress!
And then the next thing I knew, my mother and my daughter had concocted a whole Thanksgiving Day plan to raise money for our local food pantry.
You see, my daughter loves to dance. And she loves to put on a show for everybody.
So, the plan is that she will put on her show, per usual.
But she is going to charge all of our guests $1 and donate the money raised to our local food pantry.
She and my mom even made some tickets.
Now, my husband and I did spend a couple of minutes discussing whether or not it is Kosher to shake down your guests for a ticket sale when they are invited to your home for a holiday meal. We actually could recollect being guests at a SuperBowl party and at a summer picnic and being expected to tip young kids in exchange for beer-fetching. Very entrepreneurial! But our daughter’s dance is for a good cause and hey, it’s just a buck. However, I would love for Miss Conduct to weigh in on this if her holiday hosting schedule allows for some blog-reading today.
So, we will have a dance show on Thanksgiving and hopefully, we will raise about $10 for our local food pantry. I already called ahead and we have drop-off time scheduled for Saturday and they are going to give my daughter a brief tour of the operation. I couldn’t help but think what could happen if all the kids in our town put on a little holiday show for their visiting relatives at either Thanksgiving or Christmas and donated the money to our food pantry. We have a lot of kids in our town!
In the meantime, we have a lot of rehearsing to do tonight! And cooking too! But most of all, we have a lot of thanking to do.
I wish you all a wonderful, happy, healthy Thanksgiving and I’ll be blogging next week!
Yesterday’s Giveaway
Congratulations to Commenter #25 Jo-Ann. You’ve won the Food Should Taste Good Giveaway – 3 bags of yummy chips! Please send me an email at abetterbagofgroceries@gmail.com with your mailing address so that I can get your prize out to you. Thank you to everyone who entered!
Speaking of Miss Conduct…
My friend, Miss Conduct, writes the etiquette column for the Boston Globe. She also has a blog (actually two). She has a great question on there today about holiday cards (pre-printed vs. hand-written notes). So if you need a break from food (and I will be on hiatus until Monday) check her out! She’s hilarious!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: thanksgiving
Tags: thanksgiving
Tuesday, November 23, 2010 at 06:52 AM
Welcome to Trade Up Tuesday, everyone’s favorite day here at A Better Bag of Groceries because every Tuesday I blog about a Trade Up I’ve made since learning about NuVal scores and I give away something for free. This Tuesday, I bring you a new find – Food Should Taste Good Chips. I discovered this tasty, salty snack at the American Dietetic Association’s Food and Nutrition Conference and Expoa couple of weeks ago. The gals from Food Should Taste Good were at the booth right next door to our NuVal booth and they kept us well-fed! Seriously, we had sooooooo many dietitians interested in learning more about NuVal that it was nearly impossible for us to step away from our booth to grab some much-needed sustenance (kind of ironic, seeing that we were at a Food Expo!) The gals at Food Should Taste Good (who had equally long lines at their booth, by the way) were so kind as to toss us bags of their delicious chips in all sorts of flavors including olive, sweet potato, multi-grain, jalapeno, the works, and even chocolate! They even hooked me up with a few bags to bring home and they have been a big hit with my husband and my kids.
Back at the NuVal office, I did some research on these chips, and I found that they score very well within the Salty Snack Category! Salty Snack scores range from 1 – 59 and the average score is a 15. But check out the scores of these three bags of Food Should Taste Good chips that I selected for this Giveaway:
- Food Should Taste Good Sweet Potato: NuVal Score of 30
- Food Should Taste Good Olive: NuVal Score of 37
- Food Should Taste Good Multi-Grain: NuVal Score of 42
I found these chips while visiting an exciting new prospective retailer that I met with last Friday. But I’ve also found them in the gluten-free section at Big Y Supermarkets.
Today’s Giveaway
One lucky commenter will win all three bags of Food Should Taste Good chips. Just leave a comment below, telling me which variety you would choose if you were shopping (I’m curious!) and what you would most like to dip your chips in. I’ll randomly choose one lucky winner at 8 am on Wednesday November 24th (Eastern Time). So don’t delay! Good Luck!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Trade-Up Tuesday
Tags: Salty Snacks, Trade-Up Tuesday
Monday, November 22, 2010 at 07:13 AM
Welcome to Cooking With Catherine Katz, a frequent feature here on A Better Bag of Groceries. 
Catherine is married to Dr. David Katz, the founder of the ONQI algorithm which fuels NuVal scores. Catherine is the creative genius behind many of the recipes that she and David develop together and today, as a Thanksgiving gift to me, she wrote today’s post! She even baked for it and photographed her creation! What a treat! I would also like to note that Catherine tells me that this pie was featured on Good Morning Americaa few years ago and that it was a huge hit! It sure does look like it was. So, without further ado, I bring you Catherine Katz!
Typically, a pumpkin pie is made with a regular pie shell made up of white flour, shortening, sugar and salt and the custard contains molasses, salt and sometimes butter or cream). This luscious pie uses a nutty/puffin cereal base that is more like a cookie crumb crust and that adds fiber and healthy fat from pecans instead of the saturated or transfat from shortening, and of course no added salt. This pie also contains more pumpkin than the typical recipe calls for, so is even richer in fiber. The result is a delightful creamy gem of a pie!
10-inch pie
serves 8
WET INGREDIENTS:
2 ½ cups solid pack canned pumpkin (Unsweetened): NuVal Score of 94
3 eggs: NuVal score of 33
1 cup fat free sweetened condensed milk: NuVal Score of 8
2 Tbsp dark rum (not scored)
1 ½ tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp ground allspice
CRUST:
2 cups regular Puffins corn cereal(Barbara’s Bakery): NuVal Score of 29
1 cup chopped pecans: NuVal Score of 65
2 Tbsp packed brown sugar: NuVal Score of 1
¼ cup melted regular Smart Balance: NuVal Score of 6 for Smart Balance Omega Vegetable Oil Spread
- Place puffins, pecans and brown sugar in food processor and grind finely.
- Add melted smart balance and process again.
- Place the crumbs at the bottom of a lightly greased (canola oil) 10-inch baking pan and press down firmly with your fingers to make a compact crust.
- Place all the wet ingredients in a bowl of an electric mixer and beat until creamy.
- Pour the creamy pumpkin custard on top of the crust and bake in 350 oven for 40 minutes.
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Cooking with Catherine Katz, Pumpkin
Tags: Pumpkin, Pumpkin Pie
