Welcome! I am a mom of a busy 7 year old and an adventurous 5 year old. I also happen to work for a great new 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.
Remember my friend Heather and her amazing marinara sauce? The recipe calls for some blending and Heather says that a stick blender works the best. Heather is a fabulous cook and I knew that her advice was something to take seriously. So, I headed to Kohl’s and dropped $50 on a Cuisinart SmartStick hand blender. And I am so glad I did! It is the coolest thing ever. I’m just looking around for things to blend. And that is how I came to be making carrot soup…
Easter is fast approaching and we are hosting my mother-in-law, sister-in-law and brother-in-law who will all be in from out-of-town. I’m starting to think about the menu and I thought it would be very Easter-y to start with a Carrot Soup. And truth be told – I was excited about the thought of blending up some carrots with my new SmartStick!
I hunted around for some recipes and found this one on the Dr. Oz site. It is sooooooooo healthy. It’s hard to believe that there is no cream in this soup. So what’s the secret ingredient? Rolled oats! And the stick blender does make the consistency simply dreamy. Check out my SmartStick in action.
1 large onion cut into medium dice (NuVal score: 93)
1/2 tsp sea salt (NuVal score: 1)
2 lbs carrots, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch rounds (NuVal score: 99)
5 cups of vegetable stock (NuVal score for Swanson 100% Fat Free: 5)
1/4 cup rolled oats (NuVal score for Quaker Rolled Oats: 57)
1 1/2 tsp ginger juice
1 tsp lemon juice
Salt and pepper to taste
Garnish with 2 tsp dill and dollop of plain yogurt (NuVal score for Chobani non-fat plain Greek: 94)
In a medium-sized pot, heat oil over medium heat. Add onions and salt. Sweat until onions are soft (about 5-8 minutes). Stir often to prevent browning. Add stock and oats to pot. Raise the heat and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer 25 minutes until carrots are tender. Pour contents of the pot into a blender. Blend the soup until creamy. Add additional stock to desired consistency. Add lemon and ginger juice. Readjust seasonings. Garnish with a dollop of yogurt and dill and serve.
This soup is delicious! It’s perfect for early Spring when it’s still cool enough to crave warm, filling foods, yet you also want something fresh and flavorful to awaken your senses. My daughter ate the whole bowl. My son tolerated it (that’s good!) and said that it “surprised his tummy.” My husband and I devoured ours and my mother enjoyed it for lunch the next day when she came over to babysit. It’s a keeper!
So, now, I want to blend more things! Asparagus soup, anyone?
Question of the Day
What should I make next with my SmartStick blender?
On Monday, I gave you my tips for avoiding the dreaded holiday weight gain. You can do it – and have fun – promise! One of those tips was to eat a light lunch when you know you are headed to a holiday party in the evening. Here’s one of my favorite light lunches of all time: The Incredible Vegetable Sandwich.
The inspiration for this sandwich comes from a cafe in Providence. Back in the early ’90s, I was working in Providence temporarily for a small consulting firm who was reengineering a Big Bank. This was just after finishing my graduate degree and just before beginning my traveling days with Big Consulting Firm. There was a small deli/cafe nearby where we often got take-out sandwiches for lunch. This steamed veggie sandwich was what I often ordered – without cheese! I was such a masochist – trying to lose the last of some leftover college pounds on Weight Watchers.
Now, it is my Go-To Sandwich when I want something warm but healthy.
Chop up some broccoli (cooked or raw – whatever you have) and grate a few carrots. Top with some roasted red peppers, also chopped. Heat in the microwave.
Top with some cheddar cheese and microwave it some more. Spoon the heated veggies and cheese into a pita, and voila – lunch! I recommend adding something with protein, such as a glass of skim milk, to help to round out your lunch.
So, how does the Incredible Vegetable Sandwich Score on the NuVal scale?
Well, the carrots score a 99 (remember 100 is best) and the broccoli scores a 100. The Pastene Roasted Red Peppers do not score as well as fresh, raw peppers. They score a 7. Last time I used roasted red peppers in a recipe, some readers asked me why they score so low. So I checked in with Annette Maggi, MS, RD, LD, FADA, Sr. Director of Nutrition for NuVal LLC. She said that these roasted red peppers have 5 calories per serving (80% come from sugar) and 85 mg of sodium, so the sodium for the calories is what is driving the score down. Additionally, while there is some vitamin C in the product, it has very little positive nutrition. Too bad! They taste so good.
I use Boar’s Head Cheddar cheese from the deli and NuVal has not yet scored deli cheeses as of yet. However, we have scored other cheeses that you would find in the refrigerated section. For example, Cabot Sharp Cheddar Slices score a 22. You might think that the Cabot Light Cheddar would score better. Well, it only brings the score up by one point to a 23. As for the pita, I use Joseph’s Flax, Oat Bran and Whole Wheat Flour Pita. These nutritional juggernauts, which made my list of Top Ten Favorite Foods, score a 65, an amazing score in the bread category. And don’t forget, if you add a glass of skim milk, it scores a 91. Fabulous!
So, if you know you have a fun night of cocktails and hard-to-resist hors d’oeuvres coming up, have the Incredible Vegetable Sandwich for lunch. With cheese!
Winner of Trade-Up Tuesday
Congratulations to Commenter #41 Emily J, winner of yesterday’s Almond Give-Away!
After my blogpost about My Top Ten Favorite Foods, I thought it would be fun to blog about my kids’ Top Ten Foods. I wanted their list to really come from them, so I pulled out my flipchart from Staples that we sometimes use to draw big pictures, put it in the living room, and had a brainstorming session with my 6-year-old and 4-year-old. They thought that this was pretty cool. I took a picture to prove to my readers that this really is THEIR list. Notice the wrinkled paper and the kindergarten and pre-school penmanship. We were too tired to bring the easel up from the basement and we propped the flipchart up on the couch, so you can see that the the handwriting is quite slanted.
So, I asked my kids questions like, “If you could eat a food every day, what would it be?” I was surprised to see that their list was so healthy! I truly expected Cheetos, Kit Kats and cotton candy ice cream to make the list since they beg for these items at our Pool Club’s snack bar. Maybe they chose real foods because we were in our own house? Like most grown-ups, they tend to eat well at home and not so well when we are at a restaurant, vending machine, convenience store, etc. We took turns (of course!) with this list, so my six-year-old son chose the odd numbered items and my four-year-old daughter, the even.
1. Carrots How excited was I that this healthy veggie which scores a 99 on the NuVal scale was the first thing out of my son’s mouth! I buy the smallest baby carrots I can find for the kids because they are not choking hazards. Sometimes, during the school year, I splurge on the small baby carrots that are pre-packaged.
2. Spaghetti This was when I knew that my daughter was taking this exercise very seriously. Spaghetti is definitely her favorite food and she loves to eat it just like the dogs do in Lady and the Tramp. Now that I know the NuVal scores, we eat Barilla Plus Pasta Spaghetti Multi-Grain at home because it scores a 91. I had tried whole grain pastas years ago and did not like them, but this one tastes just like regular spaghetti. It’s a great alternative when you realize that Prince Spaghetti gets a 49.
3. Apple Slices These get a 96 and they make a great accompaniment to a sandwich. When you can get your kids to eat something that gets a 96, why would you ever give them chips?
4. Pancakes Now my daughter must have been thinking that by putting something on this list, we could get is back in our household because we stopped buying Aunt Jemima Frozen Mini Pancakes when I found out that they score a 6! This same child loves Quaker Old Fashioned Oatmeal which scores a 57, so I make it in large quantities and reheat leftovers for a quick hot breakfast.
5. Cinnamon Toast Crunch My son begged for this cereal last week because Ice Age 3 Return of the Dinosaurs was on the box. We were shopping in Roche Brothers at the time and they do not have NuVal yet (although I wish they would get it), so I wasn’t exactly sure of the score, but I was in no mood for a melt-down in the cereal aisle, so I relented. I got home and looked it up and found out that it gets a 27, which is not bad when you consider that the median score for cereal is a 25. The key would be to get my son to switch to Cinnamon Toast Crunch with 75% reduced sugar because it scores a 40. That is even better than Cheerios (one of the best scoring Children’s cereals at a 34). The question is: Does the 75% reduced sugar have Ice Age 3 on the box? I hope so.
6. Ice Cream Sandwiches My daughter, who does not like chocolate (crazy!), loves Hood Ice Cream Sandwiches. They score a 2. She also loves plain vanilla ice cream. As I discussed in my I Scream post, Breyer’s Extra Creamy Vanilla ice cream scores a 45. I will work on migrating her over to that choice. “Sorry, honey. The store was all sold out of ice cream sandwiches.” That will only work when I get to go grocery shopping alone – which is like a vacation!
7. Pineapple Another award-winning pick from my son. Fresh pineapple gets a 99. The canned versions only score a 25. So, while it is more expensive and a huge pain to cut up, I buy the fresh. I admit there are weeks that it sits on the counter and the leaves get all dried out and it starts to grow a little mold on the bottom and then I feel guilty that I blew $4 on a fresh pineapple. But actually that is usually when it tastes the best, so it works in our busy house.
8. Orange Juice This surprisingly healthy shout-out came from my daughter, Miss Spaghetti-Pancakes-and-Ice Cream. As I mentioned in Keeping Kids Hydrated – Guiltfree, Tropicana 50 Pulp-Free with Calcium scores a fabulous 81. That is amazing when you compare it to Minute Maid Orange Juice Pulp-Free which scores a 30. Before I knew about Trop 50, we were buying our juice from our milk man because I’m on this glass bottle kick right now. Sorry Milk Man! As I mentioned in My Top Ten Favorite Foods, be sure to buy the one with added calcium and Vitamin D, because the other one scores much lower.
9. Plums My son must have thought there was a prize at the end of this because his last choice scored a 99 also. My colleague and friend is a dad of 2 and he has a “fruit before anything else at breakfast” rule in his house. I liked that, so I started giving the kids cut up plums or peaches with little tiny seafood forks that came with my everyday flatware (what else are you going to do with those?) at breakfast time. It’s a great way to squeeze in another fruit. I put the plums in paper bags until they get nice and ripe.
10. Soup And on the hottest day of the year, my daughter chooses soup! She has always been a big fan of this hot and salty favorite. We love to sing the old Tom Jones favorite, “She’s a Lady” when she drinks the remaining broth right out of the bowl. She’s such a class act, my four-year-old. Unfortunately, I don’t have any scores on soup as of yet because NuVal is scoring that this fall. It will be interesting to see how they do. It was also interesting to read this morning that Campbell’s will be removing 25% of sodium from soups. Maybe they heard about NuVal?
Try this with your kids and see what they choose. I’d love to see your lists in the comments!
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.
