vacation – A Better Bag of Groceries

Friday Off!

Friday, August 5, 2011 at 07:16 AM

I am off today! I take some of my vacation days on Fridays in the summer so I can spend some time with my kids. I miss them!

We need to do a bunch of errands. But I will try to make them go as quickly as possible. We’ve been trying to find little ways to cut down on chore time so that we can maximize our play time.

For example:

At the grocery store, I always use the Deli Kiosk.
I never, ever grocery shop without Our List.
We have made a shopping list on our computer that includes our frequently-purchased items and it is grouped by category and it follows the map of our grocery store. That’s why I call it Our List.
When we get to the Check Out, I have my kids help me unload the cart.
At home, we’ve switched from having laundry hampers in all the separate bedroom’s to keeping them just in the laundry room. One hamper is for light colors, one is for dark colors. It cuts down on sorting time.
In the dishwasher, I load silverware tray with like items (forks with forks, spoons with spoons, etc). It cuts down on time when unloading the dishwasher.

Because who wants to spend their vacation day doing errands & chores?

No. We want to play. With friends. At the Pool.

And that is where we’re headed.

Question of the Day

What tips and tricks do you have for getting errands and chores done more quickly?

Posted by: Melissa 4 comments

Posted in: Friday, Summer, vacation

Eating Healthy in Walt Disney World

Monday, April 4, 2011 at 07:11 AM

Last week, my family took a long-anticipated vacation to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida.

My husband, my kids and I all went.

And my Mom and Dad came too.

I’m not sure who was more excited about this trip. My kids (who had never been on a plane before), my dad (who couldn’t wait to take his grand-kids to Disney) or me – whose last trip to the Magic Kingdom was in 1988.

I was ready to re-live some memories and show my kids the Disney magic.

My husband had never been to Disney, so he was interested to see what all the hoopla was about.

So many of our friends have been to Disney so we had a lot of people to ask for advice when planning this trip. We had two main goals:

We did not want to spend a ton of money
We wanted to eat as nutritiously as possible

Both of these are difficult goals when you are in Walt Disney World.

I did look into booking a Walt Disney World package – the kind where you stay inside the resort and get the Disney meal plan. Truthfully, even the least expensive plan was, well, expensive. And I did not want to be held hostage to lunches at fast food places all week long. I had heard that inside the parks ”everything is a nugget” and “there are giant turkey legs everywhere you go.” So, we opted to stay outside the park in a condo that had a kitchen. We made breakfast every morning, packed our lunches and even made one dinner at home.

Yes, we packed our lunches and brought them to the park. Check out my dad’s backpack below!

Bringing our lunches was the best thing we ever did. When we got hungry for lunch, we all sat down on a bench and opened our insulated bags and backpacks. Grandma passed around the hand sanitizer and we had nutritious sandwiches made on whole grain bread, sliced veggies, fruit and water.

We even brought snacks. Here I am enjoying my apple (NuVal score of 96) on Main Street. If you look closely, you may notice another guest behind me. I do believe she is eating her fast-food lunch that she purchased, probably after waiting in line for half an hour, while perched on top of a trash can.

Now, I do not mean to say that there is only fast-food offered in Disney World. Not at all. But for the good stuff, you have to plan ahead and make reservations. So a week before we left for our trip, my parents came over and we planned all our meals. At first my parents thought I was crazy when I told them we had to make our dinner reservations. Their last visit to the parks was just after September 11th, when all was quiet at Disney. Not anymore. If you want something other than a nugget or a ginormous turkey leg, you have to plan and make reservations. And the system works very well.

People will tell you that you need to book a Princess Lunch or Breakfast six months in advance. Don’t believe it. I got one just 10 days ahead. Probably someone’s cancellation. And it was sooooooo worth it!

My daughter was thrilled to meet Belle and get her autograph.

And do you love the look on her face as she’s meeting Ariel?

I was just as thrilled to meet Cinderella.

The Princess Breakfast at the Akershus Castle in Norway (Epcot) gave me a sense of what the buffets are like in Disney. I filled my plate with fruit, granola and plain yogurt.

And I did have a couple of bites of that luscious croissant.

Then, our Norwegian waiter, Christian, brought out our hot food.

The funny thing was my daughter asked, “What’s that?” She had never seen bacon before. We don’t make it and we don’t eat it. It gets a NuVal score of 6. She did try it, and (no surprise) she loved it.

Since we only purchased 3-day park passes (Disney tickets are expensive!), we did very long park days (13 hours) in order to get the most bang for our buck. So, each day we made a reservation around 5 pm for dinner. By that time, everyone needed to get out of the hot sun, sit down and recharge. All of the restaurants were fabulous and again, reservations are an absolute must.

My Kids at 5 PM - waiting for our table at Tony's

We enjoyed:

Tony’s Town Square in Magic Kingdom
Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater in Hollywood Studios
Nine Dragons in Epcot

Watching Tom & Jerry cartoons at the Sci Fi

One last word of advice on Disney Dining – be ready to use the website and phone number if you plans change. We had two terrible weather days while were were in Florida and had to rebook the Princess lunch. I was crushed! I thought I would never be able to re-book a Princess lunch with only one day notice and I was sure that Disney would charge me for not showing up, but there were torrential downpours and tornado warnings. We simply could not go to Epcot. So my husband and I spent two hours on my laptop – and again, by sheer luck – we finally scored someone’s cancellation and we got that Princess Breakfast at the Akershus with only 24 hours notice. Then I called Disney dining and I got them to waive the cancellation fee. It can be done. Just become friends with the Disney Dining site and keep the phone number in your back pocket. 407-WDW-DINE.

You know, while I was planning our trip (and we did it sort of last minute and very quickly), I was getting very overwhelmed by it all. Stories of huge crowds (all true), bad food (there are ways around it), and money just flying out of your pocket had me asking my friends, “Why do I want to do to Disney?” And they said, “Because it’s magical.” And you know what? It really is.

Posted by: Melissa 2 comments

Posted in: vacation, Walt Disney World

Tags: Disney Dining, Disney Moms, vacation, Walt Disney World

Nutrition Challenge: Disney Vacation

Friday, April 1, 2011 at 07:10 AM

I’ve been hinting all week. I am on a fun adventure – I am with my mom, my dad, my husband, and my kids in Disney World!

Of course, when we planned this trip, one of our number one concerns was how we could eat healthy during our vacation. We had heard some not-so-great stories about the food offerings in Disney and we were hoping to keep to our regular routine of nutritious eating while on vacation.

Any tips from people who have been on how to do Disney – the healthy way?

I’m all ears!!

Posted by: Melissa 4 comments

Posted in: vacation

Tags: vacation

What I Ate on My Summer Vacation

Thursday, August 26, 2010 at 07:08 AM

So, last week, we packed up our family of four and headed to West Harwich, MA on Cape Cod, where we rented a beach cottage for an old-fashioned family vacation. We did it all: played mini golf, rode the Cape Cod Rail Trail, drove go-karts, jumped on trampolines, drove bumper boats, took a whale watch, strolled the streets of Provincetown during Carnival, relaxed on the beach and swam in the waves. What we did not do was hit the All You Can Eat Buffet and slurp frozen margaritas all week. For me, vacation is about taking a break from the usual and spending much-needed quality time with my little family of four. It is not about undoing the benefits a daily healthy lifestyle with a week-long binge-fest.

That being said, I do find it fun to let my hair down a little and eat a few treats that I normally don’t have in my kitchen at home. When I hit the Harwich Star Market on Saturday, I could not resist some of Ray’s Everything Bagels (NuVal score of 4)…

and some of my favorite Ben & Jerry’s Low-Fat Cherry Garcia Frozen Yogurt, NuVal score of 15.

and some Frontera Gourmet Mexican Salsa Jalapeno Cilantro (NuVal score of 8).

But for the most part, my shopping cart looked pretty much the same as it does when we are at home. Even though we were on vacation, we still ate healthy. While bagels for breakfast were a treat, we accompanied them with lots of fruit and ate outside on the patio in our pajamas.

We wrapped up hummus, avocados, veggies and sliced chicken with Joseph’s Oat Bran & Whole Wheat Lavash Bread (NuVal score of 68) and brought the wraps on our bike rides and to the beach.

For vacation dinners, we typically eat 3 nights out and 4 nights in. While I enjoy a break from the kitchen, I don’t love the cost of 7 family dinners! Not to mention – it’s tough to find healthy choices. To make things easy, we brought three Dream Dinners with us, so I really didn’t have to “cook”. As always, we paired our Dream Dinners with a beautiful salad:

As for our nights out, we did one at a traditional Cape Cod family restaurant called The Weatherdeck. OK, not really my favorite. Almost everything was fried. I settled on a broiled scallop plate. But when on the Cape….

Better was Land Ho!, a new restaurant in Harwich Port, recommended to us by our photographer when we had our family portrait taken on the beach. I had swordfish on top of a bed of spinach. Yummy and nutritious! And I didn’t have to do dishes.

But my favorite dinner of all was in Provincetown. After a breathtaking Whale Watch on the Dolphin VIII, we strolled the streets of P’town where everybody was celebrating Carnival. In P’town, employees stand outside the restaurants and tell you all about the menu to try to get you to come in. And that is how we landed in a South African restaurant, Karoo Kafe. I played it safe and ordered the Vegetarian Plate: hummus, stuffed grape leaves, Falafel, Tabbouleh and Power Salad (chick peas, lentil, quinoa and couscous).

My husband enjoyed an Antelope burger. Amazingly, we have scored Antelope at NuVal. It gets a 39! I tried a bite. I loved it. It tasted like very lean beef. The kids had hot dogs (of course!) and sweet potato fries. Overall it was my favorite meal of our vacation.

We came home, got on the scale and found no extra vacation pounds upon us. Whew! Our kids are still chattering on about all the fun they had. I’ll never forget this face after my son’s first hole in one: