The “Corn Dog” Days of Summer
Dinner Table / Kids Food / Lunch Box / On the Go

The “Corn Dog” Days of Summer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s summer!  Across the country, state and county fairs are offering loads of delicious processed foods on sticks.  Foods that kids love (and I hate to admit, some of us adults too).  Today as my boys and I strolled through the brightly colored booths at the Ventura County Fair, we inhaled the decadence of fried fair treats, creating memories of summer.  These are the memories we will eventually go back to on cold November afternoons, encouraging us to take out a box of frozen corn dogs in order to recapture the experience.  Hey, why not?   Frozen corn dogs are easy, inexpensive, delicious, and some brands are even made with healthy turkey dogs, right?  But it’s what lies within the box, underneath the list of thirty seven, no thirty eight ingredients that should snap us back from our sweet memories of summer and encourage us to look for food outside of the box.

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81 Comments
06/30/2011
Dinner and Dye – No More Red 3 or Red 40
Dinner Table / Kids Food / Lunch Box

Dinner and Dye – No More Red 3 or Red 40

Food dye.  Well there’s the big red-blue-yellow and pink elephant in the room.  Artificial food dyes are currently headliners on our food related news. A couple weeks ago Frito Lay announced they plan to give a more natural makeover to some of their snack products like Lay’s flavored Potato Chips, Tostitos, Multigrain SunChips and Rold Gold Pretzels.  And a week later the FDA held hearings to evaluate a request to post warning labels on the labels of products containing these artificial colors.  You can read three pertinent news articles on these topics here: (more…)

10 Comments
04/10/2011
The Scary Seven: Foods the Experts Avoid
Kids Food

The Scary Seven: Foods the Experts Avoid

Some of you may have seen this article before.  It has floated around Facebook and been passed along in emails.  But in case you haven’t, it’s an article that needs to be read.  According to an article in PREVENTION magazine, there are seven foods that individuals at the forefront of food safety avoid eating.  These foods are as follows: (more…)

4 Comments
04/03/2011
Clean-Out-The-Fridge Vegetable Broth
Dinner Table / Kids Food / Lunch Box

Clean-Out-The-Fridge Vegetable Broth

How many times do you find yourself cleaning out the produce drawer of your fridge and kicking yourself for not actually using those veggies you were certain you’d use, “this time”?  It happens to me a lot.  I overbuy the beautiful produce I see at the farmer’s market, use only half a bunch of celery or undoubtedly leave half an onion sitting wistfully softening in the drawer.  Don’t beat yourself up.  You can use those leftover veggies to replace something you’d normally buy at the market, but without all the added sodium.  Something you can use to make soup, risotto, mashed potatoes, sauces…the possibilities are endless.  Vegetable broth. (more…)

1 Comment
03/13/2011
Chicken Broth: What’s in a Can?
Dinner Table / Kids Food / Lunch Box

Chicken Broth: What’s in a Can?

I can’t tell you how many of the recipes I make call for chicken stock or broth.  It’s an ingredient I use more often than I can keep track of, yet I was unaware what I was actually adding to my dishes every time I cracked open a can or poured generously from a carton.  Sodium.  And lots of it. The American Heart Association (AHA) recommends that individuals consume less than 1500mg of sodium per day (that is just over 1/2 tsp of salt).  Yet some varieties of packaged chicken stock and broth contain more than 850mg sodium per serving! (more…)

5 Comments
03/06/2011
Granola: The “Sometimes” Healthy Snack
Breakfast Table / Kids Food / Snacks

Granola: The “Sometimes” Healthy Snack

homemade granola for kids

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Granola.  What image does the word “Granola” evoke for you?  I’ve always felt the word “Granola” was synonymous with “health”.  For me growing up, the word Granola evoked images of health food markets where you could barely fit down the aisle but you could find things like Wheat Grass and Hemp seed.  But now Granola is common, good food and chances are you can find a healthy, minimally processed granola at the average supermarket.  But not all Granola is the same and this is a perfect opportunity to discuss the importance (and ease) of reading labels.

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6 Comments
01/09/2011
Kids Food / Snacks / Sweet Treats

The Holidays and Marshmallows – The Final Chapter “Hot Cocoa”

A few nights ago we took our boys to see the holiday light displays on “Candy Cane Lane”.  As we rolled our minivan slowly through the streets behind the rest of Los Angeles, we spotted a neighbor selling hot cocoa to benefit the Eagle Scouts.  What’s more festive than a cup of hot cocoa, brightly colored light displays and holiday music on the radio, right?  We bought each of the boys a cup and as they sat cozy in the back, sipping the warm drink and slurping the marshmallows out one-by-one, I realized that it was probably time to take a deconstructed look at instant hot cocoa.  I was pretty sure those drink packets weren’t as innocent and idyllic as they seemed.  Turns out I was right.
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1 Comment
12/26/2010
Trick-or-Treat
Kids Food / Sweet Treats

Trick-or-Treat

What creeps you out the most on Halloween?  Goblins and witches?  Spiders and ghouls?  Or is it the load of processed, corn syrup-laden, artificially flavored “treats” that will fill your children’s smiling plastic jack-o-lanterns?  Bet I can scare you even more.   Did you know that some of those well known candies they’ll be  ingesting contain ingredients like TBHQ (a form of Butane)?  TBHQ, believe it or not, is an ingredient in many processed food items ranging from candy to chicken nuggets.  The following excerpt from author Michael Pollan discusses TBHQ in regards to it’s placement in a McDonald’s Chicken McNugget: (more…)

17 Comments
10/24/2010
Kids Food / Lunch Box / On the Go / Sweet Treats

…Jam.

Last week we deconstructed peanut butter.  This week we had to top it with a quick, healthy jam!  Making jam is a summer routine for my family but it requires a few pieces of special equipment, quite a bit of time, and in my case, a couple of scorching burns (none of which make for a fast Out of the Box Food alternative).   But since fresh, homemade jam can be such a treat, I knew we had to explore a quick and easy alternative for Out of the Box Food. (more…)

2 Comments
10/17/2010
Kids Food / Lunch Box / On the Go

Peanut Butter and…

When you think of peanut butter what ingredient first comes to mind?  Peanuts?  Good.  What else needs to be added to make it peanut butter?  Was your answer nothing?  You’re right!  Nothing!  But many of the nationally recognized brands of peanut butter contain other ingredients like hydrogenated oil and sugar.  I grew up on Skippy Peanut Butter so I automatically bought what I knew (or thought I knew) for my kids.  But now that I am looking at labels before buying products, I am steering clear of many of my good ol’ standbys.  (more…)

3 Comments
10/10/2010