Mini food is fun food! Baked up in crispy, shredded potato crusts, and filled with fresh eggs, milk and organic spinach, these mini muffin tin creations turn healthy food into fun food for kids. Served warm or room temperature these little quiches make a delicious light meal, party appetizer, or a great addition to any lunchbox! (more…)
Welcome back to an ingredient we’re beginning to recognize with dependable frequency – TBHQ. Yes, the ingredient that preserves food products by way of lighter fluid is back in the “mix”ed greens. This time it joins us in the form of a crunchy tidbit our children rely on to top a salad…the crouton. Croutons are by definition (according to dictionary.com), “A small piece of fried or toasted bread, sometimes seasoned, used as a garnish for soups, salads, and other dishes.” Bread, oil and seasoning. That’s it. Simple right? Not always. (more…)
Thanks to Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, I came up with something brilliant last week. Well, maybe not brilliant. Great? Oh alright. How about worth a try? I’d even go so far as to say that this new discovery should at least be tried by everyone with picky eaters. Want to know what it is?
Last week I participated one of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution Twitter Competwitions. That’s right, no it’s not a type-o. Competwition. The team at Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution keeps coming up with great ways to get like-minded folks together to talk about fresh food and this is one of the events they host on Twitter. When my son asked what I was doing, I explained that I was submitting an entry for a recipe contest. The theme was salad. My son looked at me for a long moment then asked, “So what’s your recipe?” A bit surprised that he was interested in this salad recipe contest, I told him what I was planning to submit. He looked thoughtful for a moment then said, “I want to enter a recipe.” I began to type. (more…)
Who doesn’t love cookies? I’m a big fan of the cookie and here’s a cookie that’s been around for almost one hundred years: Mother’s brand Oatmeal Cookies. Well the cookie itself hasn’t been around that long, (though with preservatives these days…) I digress. Mother’s brand cookies have been a staple on supermarket shelves for nearly one hundred years, yet their ingredients are anything but wholesome. (more…)
I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that a a lot of kids out there like avocados. They are a healthy, nutrient rich fruit (yes they are a fruit) that are often passed off as a vegetable in sandwiches, salads, and of course, guacamole. Seeing as Cinco de Mayo is right around the corner, I realized those easy prepackaged containers of guacamole would soon be flying off the supermarket shelf. (more…)
Spring Break. For many of us those two words are synonymous with freedom: freedom from school, freedom from responsibility, freedom from winter, and freedom from the captive grasp of supermarket produce. That’s right, Farmers Markets are opening in towns across the country, and for those of us here on the west coast lucky enough to have year-round farmers markets, we are now able to enjoy the bounty of spring produce. (more…)
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…)
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…)
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…)
