Lunch Roundup #9

Lunch #9 actually has too much food for my kiddo, so I knew some would end up coming back. This week there is cold WW spaghetti, Garden Veggie Chicken Sausage, carrots, Pea pods, mixed fruit, and faux Nutrigrain bars (Oatmeal Squares).

The reason why I started making these bento box lunches is because of my youngest. I would buy one box of "treats" from the store for her lunches which was usually boxed Little Debbies. They started to become a huge issue however. She would eat them one right after the other early in the week at home so there would be none left for her lunches. I would inevitably go buy more so she would have her one sweet thing at school like her friends. The more she ate the crankier and more bossy she would become. It became a vicious cycle. 

Since I have been making the lunches and snacks homemade, she has been much more pleasant to be around although there was a week of hell to contend with when we started. Now, she isn't eating one sugary treat after another and I only have to go midweek grocery shopping for more fruit. The recipe below is supposed an alternative to Strawberry Nutrigrain bars. My oldest preferred them with jam and my youngest without. You can actually add anything into them you want like mini chocolate chips or dried fruit. 

3/4 cup Brown Sugar

1/2 cup Granulated Splenda

2 large Egg White

2 tbsp , 1% (Average)

2 tsp Pure Vanilla Extract

1 1/2 cups Whole Wheat Pastry Flour (100% Stone Ground)

1 tsp Baking Soda

1/2 tsp Cinammon, Ground

1/2 tsp Salt

3 cups Oats - Rolled

1 cup Lowfat Plain Yogurt

2 tbsp Canola Oil

1. Heat oven to 350

2. In a large bowl combine: sugars, yogurt, egg whites, oil, milk, and vanilla. Mix well. 

3. in medium bowl mix flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Add to the large bowl and mix well.

4. Add in oats and mix well. 

5. Spread into a 9 x 13" pan and bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes or until the edges are a little brown. 

6. Remove from oven and cool completely. Cut into 24 square bars.

6. If you would like to add jam: slice each bar into 2 layers. Spread jam int he middle. 

Servings 2 suares: 218 calories, 4g fat, 4g fiber

Lunch Roundup #4

Lunch Round up is a bit different this week. The kids and I had off school/work  for winter break. That's like spring break but in the winter for you non east coast people. :-) I thought maybe if I went ahead and made their lunchboxes as usual they would take them out of the fridge and eat their lunch or part of it when they were ready for it. So that is what I did Monday & nope, they did not want to have anything to do with it. Even with a little (not so) gentle coaxing from me. So for the rest of the week I just precut a bunch of their favorite fruits and salad fixings and stacked them in the refrigerator. Which worked out really well because we have had friends over, the kids have gone to their friends' houses, we've gone to the mall, my youngest got to go to an indoor water park, and having plenty of fruit and veggies cut up in the fridge has helped. On top of that we have sandwich fixings in the fridge as well as leftovers. I'll have to get more creative for summer I think!

I also made my usual treat for the week. This time I had Life as a Plate's Bananacado muffins printed out and ready to go but then got cold feet because of the expense of all the avocados and a couple of jars of almond butter. Plus my youngest does not like cooked banana recipes. :-( So I decided to start with her idea and make my own recipe.

This was actually a first for me - I have never made up a baked goods recipe. I used whole spelt flour, and replaced the oils in a standard chocolate cake recipe with the healthy oils in avocados and almond butter. My first try had a great texture but not much chocolatey taste, so I upped the cocoa and added some mini chocolate chips. Adding the chocolate chips, however, added some saturated fat and extra calories.

The taste and texture ended up turning out something like those Little Debbie's Brownies with the candies on top (Cosmic Brownies), which happen to be my 9 year old's favorite thing to beg for at the grocery store. One of those little packages has 280 calories, 11 grams of fat etc, not to mention questionable ingredients. 

Mine below for one fudgey brownie bite has 86 calories and healthy fats. I know that no one ate just one, so you do have to at least double everything on the chart.

Fudgey Brownie Bites

Whole wheat spelt brownie bites with avocado and almond butter for healthy fats.

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cups sugar
• 1/3 cup (1 medium) smashed avocado
• 1/3 cup almond butter
• 2 eggs
• 1 3/4 whole spelt flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 cup cocoa
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 cup milk
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup Ghiradelli mini chocolate chips
• 1 cup hot water

Instructions

1. Mash your avocado with a fork to get rid of as many lumps as possible.
2. In a large bowl add avocado, sugar and almond butter and beat until smooth.
3. Melt 1/2 a cup of your chocolate chips and add to mixture. 
4. Beat in eggs.
5. In a medium bowl combine flour, salt, baking powder and cocoa.
6. Add milk to the avocado mixture alternating with flour mixture until well mixed. Add vanilla.
7. Mix in hot water.
8. Stir in remaining (not melted) chocolate chips.
9. Fill two mini cupcake pans with liners. Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes.

Yield: 48-52 mini cupcakes



After a sleepover this week, my daughter and her friends had some whole wheat mini bagels, scrambled eggs and cantaloupe for breakfast but wanted some junk food. I let them walk the almost mile to the gas station to get some (& the same distance back). This has been my policy in the summer too. If you want junk food you have to go and walk and get it. What do you all think about that? Sometimes they think its not worth the walk and sometimes they do. This is for my 13 year old, btw. My 9 year old has to go with the 13 year old and there are sidewalks the whole way. Plus this week it was unseasonably warm at 50 degrees. 


- Nicole 

Dark Chocolate Kisses

For Valentines Day I made molded chocolate kisses. 

I love making molded chocolate, but I really dislike the candy melts they sell at the craft stores. They taste terrible and have loads of sugar and hydrogenated oil in them. They also have artificial flavor as the last ingredient which boggles my mind. I mean chocolate and a little vanilla is all you need.  So I make mine using melted chocolate chips and a little sunflower oil. I might not be able to get the really shiny look or fancy colors of the candy melts but the chocolate tastes good and has less sugar. You can see the difference below on Ghiradelli chocolate chips' ingredients and Wilton candy melts' ingredients. I used Ghiradelli because that's what they had at Target - but I am sure you can use any semisweet chocolate you want including organic chocolate bars broken up. Just put a tablespoon of sunflower or other oil in about 10 ounces of chocolate and melt using a double boiler or at 1/2 power in the microwave in 30 second intervals. Take the chips out of the microwave when they are still lumpy and let them melt while stirring with a spoon. Spoon into your mold and put in the plastic ring pop ring if you have them. That just makes it fun! I like to speed up the hardening process by putting them in the freezer for about 5 minutes. I am impatient! 

Ingredients Wilton candy melts - sugar, partially hydrogenated palm kernal oil, whole milk solids, cocoa powder processed with alkali, reduced mineral whey powder, cocoa powder, soy lechithin, salt, artificial flavor 

Ingredients Ghiradelli 60% cacao chocolate chips - Bittersweet Chocolate (unsweetened chocolate, sugar, cocoa butter, milk fat, soy lechithin - an emulsifier, vanilla). 

The kids will be getting these in their bento lunch boxes one day this week as a preview to Valentine's day! They would also make great school valentine gifts. 

Here's a similar candy mold at Amazon that has the space for lollipop sticks so you won't need the plastic rings:

Two Easy Gluten-free Cheesecakes & Sugar Talk

I feel a bit guilty about making another sweet post, but it is almost Christmas and I wanted to bring a gluten-free dessert with me to a party tonight so I could have some while I was there. I don't exclude sugar in my diet anyway, whereas my paleo eating sister does. Hi Sis! <3

Sugar is an interesting topic. I find that eating sugary foods does not effect me like eating gluten does. I get no perceptible spikes and lows in my energy, and no extra hunger. For some people, however, sugar in every form can effect their body and they need to lower their intake if not eliminate it from their diet. Lowering the amount of sugar we eat should also lower the amount of overall calories consumed as well because sugar is a dense calorie food.

If you want to limit your sugar, you could start during the holidays not by taking out the dessert you want at a party but by being more aware of the added sugars in your food. I don't mean the sugar you add into your food - you are aware of that. I'm talking about the sugars hidden in things like tomato sauce, bagels, health food bars, yogurt and more. These hidden sugars according to the Emory University School of Medicine and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) account for 16% of the sugars we eat. 

Meringue Spice Cookies - gluten-free cookie

 I wouldn't go so far as saying these cookies are good for you, they are packed with sugar, but they are gluten-free and are really yummy. If you need to bring some treats for a holiday party these are a great alternative. They also make a great almost guilt-free dessert present.

I came up with the recipe for these cookies by accident. I was trying to make organic cookies, so I used fresh organic eggs and organic turbinado sugar (raw sugar).  Turbinado sugar tastes like molasses similar to brown sugar, but brown sugar is made by adding molasses to refined sugar. Turbinado sugar is (according to wikipedia):

produced by extracting the juice from sugar cane, heating it to evaporate water and crystallise the sugar, then spinning in a centrifuge to remove some impurities and further dry the sugar. 

Needless to say the cookie batter turned out smelling very molasses-y so I added some pumpkin pie spice that I had around (we put it on our squash) to make them into a quick spice cookie. Now they are my favorite meringue cookie! -- Nicole