Meatless Monday Family Style – Vietnamese Summer Rolls
Dinner Table / Kids Food / Lunch Box

Meatless Monday Family Style – Vietnamese Summer Rolls

Summer may be officially over, but Vietnamese Summer Rolls are a delicious way to celebrate Meatless Monday all year long.  These vegetable filled rolls are fun for the kids to assemble, and pack a nutritional punch.  We put out all the fixings and let the kids make their own rolls for dinner, and a few extra for tomorrow’s lunch box.

Feel free to adjust the ingredients seasonally to include what’s in currently available near you.  Try winter vegetables such as butternut squash, carrots and blanched broccoli Raabe or spring vegetables such as asparagus and assorted greens. (more…)

2 Comments
09/29/2012
Rosemary-Garlic Almonds
Kids Food / Lunch Box / On the Go / Snacks

Rosemary-Garlic Almonds

This week, in honor of Mother’s Day, Out of the Box Food is sharing a healthy and delicious snack for moms and kids alike (Ah, who are we kidding….everyone will love ’em: dads, grandparents, friends, friends-of-friends, cousins of friends-of-friends…you get the gist)  These Rosemary-Garlic Almonds are delicious and nutritious and by starting with whole, raw almonds, we have control over the sodium in this wholesome snack. (more…)

4 Comments
05/13/2012
Kids Food

The Hidden Cost of Beauty – A Guest Post by Peter Lamas

Written by: Peter Lamas

There are hundreds of face creams, shampoos, lipsticks and other beauty products that line the aisles of a store’s beauty section, each product claiming to help make you more beautiful. But at what cost? Many of today’s products are loaded with harsh chemicals that can irritate or damage your hair and skin. In fact, some ingredients are so toxic, they are considered carcinogenic – cancer-causing. (more…)

0 Comments
11/13/2011
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.

(more…)

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
Let’s Talk Turkey: Does Deli Turkey Need Nitrites?
Dinner Table / Kids Food / Lunch Box

Let’s Talk Turkey: Does Deli Turkey Need Nitrites?

The answer is NO.  Repeat after me, No nitrites, no nitrites, NO NITRITES!!!  Okay, I just had a flash back to my old cheerleading days.

Turkey deli meat is one of those things that I never really thought too much about.  It’s always been the lean deli protein that came sliced, smoked, honeyed or roasted and when piled on whole wheat bread with mustard and veggies became my healthy lunch.  Or was it?  During this Out of the Box Food journey I’ve been looking more carefully at everything, and that needed to include turkey.  I tended to choose turkey over ham because it was supposed to be healthier, right?  Well, I’m learning that it’s not just about the product itself, but how the product is cured and what might be added to it that makes the difference. (more…)

5 Comments
03/27/2011
A Healthy Homemade Lunchable Your Kids Will Love…Plus a Bento Lunch Box Give-Away For You!
Kids Food / Lunch Box

A Healthy Homemade Lunchable Your Kids Will Love…Plus a Bento Lunch Box Give-Away For You!

 

My kids have ALWAYS wanted Lunchables.  They have no idea what they taste like, but they think the little compartmentalized container with the little squares of processed food product are enticing…I’m sure that’s what the company was hoping for.  I’ll admit, I have tried to create homemade versions of the Lunchable by cutting deli meats and cheeses into little squares, buying individual containers and organizing the bite size morsels into their lunch boxes.  But I have yet to get approval from the under seven set.  They’re just “not cool, mom”.  So therein lay my dilemma.  I couldn’t possibly make a cool homemade Lunchable, and I sure wasn’t going to buy the prepackaged Lunchables.  So there we were, my kids and I in a Lunchable stare down.  Who’d blink first? (more…)

54 Comments
02/20/2011
Ahoy Mateys! The Healthy Cookie Conundrum.
Kids Food / On the Go / Sweet Treats

Ahoy Mateys! The Healthy Cookie Conundrum.

Cookies are such an easy treat.  They can be packed in a lunch box, stuffed in a mouth or held in even the tiniest of hands.  But why fill those little hands and mouths with hydrogenated oil and high fructose corn syrup when you can bake an easy, fresh, and delicious treat which, by the way, tastes even better warm with a tall glass of milk!

Packaged cookies are a convenience that I’d guess most (if not all) of us have purchased at one time or another.  They must be a viable money maker based on the number of brands and varieties that fill nearly an entire supermarket aisle.  Yet, when I compared the ingredients on packaged cookies to those we can make fresh…well, there is no comparison. (more…)

2 Comments
02/13/2011
Can Yogurt Actually Be Unhealthy?
Breakfast Table / Kids Food / Lunch Box / Snacks

Can Yogurt Actually Be Unhealthy?

We know how important it is to read labels on snack foods, boxed dinners and cereals but do we actually need to read the labels on yogurt?  YES.  If I’m learning anything during this journey it’s that you have to read the labels on everything. Yogurt should contain only milk, live yogurt cultures and any natural fruit they might add.  Should.  But many of the fruit flavored yogurts on the market contain a lot more than that.  I’ve seen some that contain carrageenan, others that contain high fructose corn syrup and artificial colors, and some fruit yogurts that contain no fruit whatsoever.  So how do you find yogurt that contains simply fruit, milk and yogurt cultures?  Two ways:  read the labels or mix up your own. (more…)

10 Comments
01/30/2011
Pigs in a Blanket: Fun Kid Food The Healthier Way
Kids Food / Lunch Box / Snacks

Pigs in a Blanket: Fun Kid Food The Healthier Way

I’m not suggesting that what your about to read is about health food.  It doesn’t follow a raw diet, vegetarian or vegan diet, or even a fresh-fruit-and-veggie diet.  But we all know kids like fun food and I’m a believer that “Fun Food” does not have to be synonymous with “Junk Food”.   If we make smart choices about the ingredients we use, we can make fun “kid food” without all the chemicals, food dyes, refined sugars and well…junk. (more…)

3 Comments
01/22/2011