Thursday, April 14, 2011 at 07:12 AM
My friend Alicia is always looking for ways to get some extra protein into her girls’ diets. So, today, I thought I would share my kids’ favorite after-school smoothie recipe – that not only packs some protein, it also helps you to make sure they are getting their dairy and fruit requirements for the day.
There are just four ingredients in this smoothie and they all score over a 90!
Alicia’s girls are a little younger than mine, but before she knows it, her girls will be making this smoothie by themselves, just like my kids do.
First, my daughter scoops in some Fage non-fat plain Greek yogurt, NuVal score of 94.
Then she adds in some Dole frozen blueberries (NuVal score of 100!)
and Dole frozen strawberries (NuVal score of 100!)
I love that these frozen berries score a 100, just like fresh berries. And, this is so easy for my daughter – no rinsing, slicing, de-stemming involved. Also, because they are frozen, they add just the right frozen consistency to this smoothie at blending time.
So, like I said, my daughter adds some berries…
and then she adds some more…
and then, she just adds a whole bunch of berries. In her opinion, the more berries, the better.
Mom or our sitter (I am no longer allowed to say “babysitter”) adds 1 cup of skim milk to this mixture. NuVal score of 91.
And then Mom or our sitter blends this up using my Cuisinart Smartstick (my favorite invention since sliced bread).
My son, who prefers tasting to making, finally makes his way to the kitchen…
He is a big fan of the after-school smoothie, and so is my daughter.
And so do our pet lizards, who happen to match the color of this smoothie.
Interestingly, I often make these smoothies for breakfast on weekends, but somehow the kids don’t end up finishing them at that time. But when we make these after school, they suck them dry. In fact, their favorite part is all the loud gurgling sounds their straws make when they drain their glasses (think Weeds’Nancy Botwin draining her iced coffee).
So, for Alicia, my protein-seeking parent-friend, I suggest you give this one a try. I checked the nutrition facts panels on these products. The Fage yogurt has 15 g of protein in that little cup and 8 oz of skim milk contains 8 g of protein. Put those together in this recipe and divide by two and your girls will be good ’til dinner!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Cooking with Kids
Tags: Fruit Smoothies, snacks
Friday, January 14, 2011 at 07:24 AM
Happy Friday Blog Fans! My friend Tina, who is running her first-ever marathon in Phoenix, Arizona this weekend (go Tina!) has a tradition of Cookie Friday. Every Friday, she treats herself to a big cookie. In keeping with her tradition, I thought today would be a great day to show you the adventure I had this week with my kids in the kitchen making Whole-Grain Chocolate Chunk Cookies.
I found this recipe in last Sunday’s Boston Globe Magazine.
I was attracted by this headline:
and this picture
As Tina would say, Holy Yum!
Turns out, this recipe is from a new book coming out on January 15th. It’s called The Cleaner Plate Club.
And from the looks of the recipes featured in this magazine spread, the authors of The Cleaner Plate Club and I are preaching similar messages, such as:
I want to meet the two Moms who wrote The Cleaner Plate Club (Beth Bader and Ali Benjamin). I think they would be fans of NuVal and ABBG, don’t you?
So, Wednesday – just before dinnertime – as 15 inches of snow was barreling down on us in eastern Massachusetts, I gathered my children, for some cookie-baking.
We rounded up the ingredients. Amazingly, we had everything in house – except we did not have chocolate chunks. But our dark chocolate chips worked just fine!
For the exact ingredients and directions, click on the recipe here.
This recipe has some great trade ups from traditional chocolate chip cookie recipes. For example:
- Instead of Unbleached All Purpose Flour (NuVal Score of 67), this recipe calls for Whole-Wheat Pastry Flour (NuVal score of 91 for Bob’s Red Mill – my favorite!)
- The Quick-Cooking Oats (not typically found in a chocolate chip cookie recipe) score a 57on the NuVal scale
- Typically you would see about 1 stick of butter in a chocoalte chip cookie recipe. This only called for 2 Tablespoons! (Land O’Lakes unsalted sweet butter scores a 2 on the NuVal scale)
- Typically, you wold not see peanut butter in a basic chocolate chip cookie recipe, so adding Teddie Smooth Unsalted, with a NuVal score of 49, packs in some nutrition
- For the most part, dark chocolate scores higher than milk chocolate on the NuVal scale. These Ghiradelli chips that we used score an 8, while the Ghiradelli milk chocolate chips only score a 3.
I always say that it doesn’t matter what you make – what’s important is that you get your kids into the kitchen to teach them some basic cooking skills.
Like measuring dry ingredients:
and sticky ingredients
Thank goodness for my old friend, the Pampered Chef All Measure Cup for measuring out the Teddie Smooth!
And stirring is good exercise when you’re all cooped up inside during a Blizzard!
The recipe does warn you – the batter is very thick!
And we used our Pampered Chef Large Scoop to form 30 cookies. I love it when recipes are right on! This really makes exactly 30 cookies!
We used placed them on parchment-lined cookie sheets and baked them at 375 degrees for exactly 12 minutes. Perfect! In fact, 11 minutes may have been even better. I’m still learning how to use my new oven.
The smelled so good. But we had dinner to eat (Slow Cooker Chicken Cacciatore) before we could dig in. Let’s just say, my kids ate their dinner very quickly that night!
The Verdict?
I highly, highly recommend this recipe! If you are tired of some of the same-old, same-ole chocolate chip cookie recipes, why not trade up for some more nutritious ingredients and see what your kids think? My kids loved them and I think they took pride in them because they made them. I brought some in to my colleage Rob at work (and he would tell me if they stunk – he is all about taste) and he gave them the two-thumbs up. Bring them to your next school function, and you can be known as a Hip Healthy Mom. I am really looking forward to this new cookbook!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Cookies, Cooking with Kids
Tags: Cookies, Cooking with Kids
Thursday, November 18, 2010 at 07:07 AM
What were your Thanksgiving traditions? I vividly remember spending time at my Grandmother’s 1940′s ranch-style house, spending the morning watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade on her big color cabinet style television set (no remote back then) while we colored paper placemats with Crayola crayons. Every now and then we’d sneak into the kitchen to steal a black olive or a stick of celery filled with cream cheese, while the delicious aroma of roasted turkey began to fill her little house. These days, so many parents I know (the kind who are blowing out 40 or so candles on our birthday cakes) are enjoying watching all the Peanuts holiday specials with our kids. I think it’s because they take us back to that time gone by. It was a big night when A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving was on TV. You only had one chance per year to watch it back then!
Now, we own the DVD and my kids love all the Peanuts specials, but there is something about the Thanksgiving episode that is so calming, so peaceful. I even have music from the Thanksgiving special (not just the Christmas music – which is also awesome) on my Ipod. I think it is the calm before the storm that the Christmas frenzy has become. I just love that moment when all the kids climb into the back of the station wagon (without seatbelts!) and sing “Over the River and Through the Woods” on the way to Charlie Brown’s Grandmother’s condominium. What an awesome grandma, he had, by the way! Sure, Charlie Brown – bring all your friends over to my tiny condo on a major holiday with no advance notice!
So, for all you Peanuts fans out there, I have a fun activity to do with your kids: re-enact A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving! We did this last year – on Thanksgiving Day, for lunch, actually, because we were having a late dinner. And this year, we will do it on the Weekend Before The Big Feast. Or, my friend Jodie Fitz, suggests, hosting another family for Movie Night, watching A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, and serving this for dinner. Fun!
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Dinner (with NuVal scores, of course!)
Wheat Toast (choose a 100% Whole Wheat bread, such as Sara Lee Heart Healthy Plus 100% Whole Wheat Bakery which scores a 44on the NuVal scale. Most butters and spreads score a 10 and below, so add sparingly).
Popcorn (you want to make it the old-fashioned way, just like Snoopy did. See my blog post comparing regular popcorn to microwave versions. The score differences are amazing. Orville Redenbacher’s Original scores a 91. Microwave popcorns all score a 28 and below).
Pretzel Sticks (Ok, pretzel lovers, you are not going to like this. Most typical pretzel sticks score under a 10. However, I researched the scores and I found that there are some multi-grain and whole grain pretzel sticks that score better. Try Utz Organic 7 Whole Grain Pretzel Sticks with a NuVal Score of 29or Snyder’s Of Hanover Multi Grain Pretzel Sticks Lightly Salted with a NuVal Score of 31)
JellyBeans (Those you see pictured are Mike and Ike’s which get a whopping NuVal Score of 1. So do Jelly Belly’s, Brach’s and pretty much all the jelly beans I researched. Pure sugar.)
Yes, this year, we’ll be having our 2nd Annual Re-enactment of A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Dinner. I guess it’s become a tradition. So, someday, maybe my kids will be blogging about how they remember making toast and popcorn and eating jelly beans every year on Thanksgiving!
Question of the Day:
What is it (food, smells, television) about Thanksgiving that brings you back to a time gone by?
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Cooking with Kids, Popcorn, Pretzels, thanksgiving
Tags: Charlie Brown, Peanuts, Popcorn, Pretzels, thanksgiving, Toast
Monday, November 8, 2010 at 07:01 AM
We’ve all heard of oven-baked sweet potato fries, right? But butternut squash fries? Yes, I made these up in my very own kitchen and I highly, highly recommend them! Not only are they scrumptious in taste, but they will make your whole house smell wonderful!
I’ll be honest – these Butternut Squash Fries were not planned!
My daughter and I were having a Girls’ Only Dinner – reheated homemade turkey meatballs with Dreamfields spaghetti – while the “boys” were out at a Cub Scout meeting. We were having such a lovely time – talking about dance class, Kindergarten, lots of girl stuff – when I went to get something in the refrigerator and I noticed that I had one of those peeled, cored and seeded butternut squashes in the refrigerator – and it was about to go bad. Oh horrors! In fact, it was going bad – on just one edge – but something had to be done – and quick!!! Good thing my daughter loves to cook, so we could weave Save the Squash into our little Girls’ Night!
So first, I checked to make sure the squash was safe. It had a small mold spot on one edge. I went to the US Food Safety and Inspection website to check and I found that as long as I cut a 1-inch piece around the mold spot, I was all set. By the way, this US Food Safety and Inspection website is awesome!!! It tells you – right there on this Molds on Foods Page – everything you need to know about your food safety questions. It is now one of my favorites.
Moldy spot gone and knife cleaned, I decided that I just didn’t feel like boiling and mashing this squash. I wanted to get back to Girl Talk! My daughter was showing me all her new dance moves from her ballet, tap and modern classes. I wanted to get this squash cooking – and quickly. Then I remembered something that my friend Miss Conduct once said: All vegetables taste good when roasted at a high temperature with a little olive oil and Kosher salt. So true!
So, I sliced the squash quite thin and then cut it in half.
Together with my 5-year-old daughter, we laid it out on parchment paper…
and sprayed it with olive oil (NuVal score of 11) using my Pampered Chef Kitchen Spritzer) and sprinkled it with Kosher salt and ground black pepper.
Then we put it in the oven at 435 degrees for 25 minutes.
Then, we took them out and flipped them and put them back in for another 15 minutes.
When they came out of the oven – just as my husband and my son were walking through the door from Cub Scouts – they were just perfect. Crisp on the outside, warm and mealy on the inside. The perfect “fry” We liked them plain – the kids liked them dipped in ketchup. Yum – we have a new fall treat. And I’ve found a new way to get a new vegetable into my kids!
Butternut Squash, by the way, gets a NuVal score of 100, so I’m going to file this recipe under Incredible Vegetables. Enjoy!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Cooking with Kids, Incredible Vegetables
Tags: Butternut Squash, Cooking with Kids, food safety, fries, Incredible Vegetables, mold
Wednesday, October 13, 2010 at 08:12 AM
Welcome to Cooking With Kids, a frequent feature here at A Better Bag of Groceries. My kids (especially my daughter) love to cook and I love to teach them to cook, so whenever we can, we find a recipe and we blog about it. On this particular day (this past Monday – Columbus Day), I was working and my husband was home with the kids. So I asked him (nicely) if he could play Daddy Blogger for me. My husband is the best!! He took this recipe for Pumpkin Pancakes that I got from Jodie Fitz who runs the Kids Cooking Club for Price Chopper Supermarkets and he made them with our kids. And he took pictures! And then he cleaned up! What a guy!
Pumpkin Pancakes by Jodie Fitz
Ingredients:
Pancakes:
1 egg (NuVal score of 33)
1 1/2 cups flour (NuVal score of 91 for Bob’s Red Mill 100% Whole Wheat Flour)
1 cup low fat milk (My husband traded up to skim milk because it’s all we had in the house, NuVal score of 91)
1/2 cup pumpkin (NuVal score of 94)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 Tablespoon baking powder
3 Tablespoons light brown sugar (NuVal score of 1)
1 package chocolate chips (12 – 15 chips per pancake, NuVal score of 8 for the Ghiardelli premium 60% cacao chips we had in our pantry)
Note: My daughter does not like chocolate. So my husband substituted raisins for her smiley faces. (NuVal score: 87)
Caramel Cream: (Note – my husband did not make the Caramel Cream sauce because we did not have the light cream in house, but here is the recipe anyway)
1 Tablespoon butter (NuVal score of 2)
1/2 cup light cream (NuVal score of 6 for Hood Light cream)
3 Tablespoons brown sugar (NuVal score of 1)
Directions:
Mix the egg, flour, milk, pumpkin, cinnamon, vanilla, baking powder and brown sugar together with an electric mixer.
Over medium to low heat, cook pancakes on a griddle coated with cooking spray.
While the first side is cooking add chocolate chips to the uncooked side of the pancake to create a face.
Flip and cook the second side. Serve with caramel cream.
To make the caramel cream, in a sauce pan, melt the butter. Stir in the brown sugar and continue stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Add the cream and heat until the liquid is bubbling along the edges. Continue stirring throughout the cooking process.
So, how did the pumpkin pancakes go over with the kids? My daughter liked them, but my son loved them. And he ate them plain – because we also did not have maple syrup in the house! We just moved, so we’re still getting our pantry back up to speed! But, yes, my son loved these whole wheat pumpkin pancakes just plain. So, my husband froze the leftover pancakes so that we can heat them up on busy weekday mornings. What a great recipe from Jodie Fitz!
Last week, Jodie and I got on the phone to talk about these pumpkin pancakes. She and I have met a couple of times at Price Chopper events and we’ve been really looking forward to working together on some blog projects. We talked about the Caramel Cream sauce and if it had a place on A Better Bag of Groceries, seeing that my blog has such a healthy slant. But both Jodie and I have the same philosophy about cooking with kids: Teach them to cook and worry about the nutrition later. So, if we had had the light cream in our house on Monday, my husband would have made the Cream Caramel sauce too. But the cool thing is that now my son has learned that he can enjoy these whole wheat pumpkin pancakes without an added sugary sauce – or even syrup!
For more of Jodie’s recipes, check out her blog at www.jodiefitz.com or the Price Chopper Kids Cooking Club.
Yesterday’s Winner
Congratulations to Commenter #22, Jessica! You are the lucky winner of yesterday’s granola giveaway! Send me an email at abetterbagofgroceries@gmail.com with your mailing address so that I can mail your prize out to you. Thank you everyone for all your great suggestions! You’ve given me lots of ideas for Trade-Up Tuesdays!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Cooking with Kids, Pancakes
Tags: Cooking with Kids, Pancakes, Pumpkin Pancakes
