food

Healthy Kid Meals?

/ Varza / Leave a comment

I have been seeing this tread online lately: making healthy kid meals at home. This is an easy thing to do, for the most part, but I have been paying very close attention to the meals at restaurants for kids when I am out with my son and I am so disappointed. Even with the places that have “healthy meals” for them. This generally breaks down to switching fruit out for french fries. Fruit which is usually apple slices which yes are healthy but are still pretty sugary. As for drinks the only healthy drink is usually milk or water. Sometimes you can get an apple juice – which is even more sugar. Very rarely, if ever, you get a choice of vegetables – even carrot sticks. And I am not even talking about just fast food restaurants but also regular sit down places.

Now, there seems to be a basic idea of what kids eat at meals and this usually is: fried chicken nuggets, spaghetti (with tomato sauce no meat), grilled cheese, pizza, quesadillas, fried, fried, fried… and fried. Do we really need to look any further to why our kids become picky eaters? And only want to eat crap? Do we continue to have french fries available in kids meals, so we won’t feel guilty for eating them while our kid munches down on carrots or apples?

I can not say I am not guilty. The other day I was craving a burger from Wendy’s and my kid got one too but my husband got him fries. We try to be very careful with giving him crap food. We try not eating out as much because its such a temptation. And when we do, we try hard to be careful in his meal while we are out. We hit Quizno’s the other day on a quick meal out while running errands and I was a little surprised in a place that has a wide range of choices of meats, cheese and vegetables had such a crappy kids meal menu. Their choices: Flatbreads – 1 with three cheeses and the other with cheese & marinara then a meatball monster. Luckily they had a choice of build your own and I did just that… I got him a turkey, cheese with tomatoes, lettuce and avocado. While his only side choices were a cookie or chips… my husband and I got the baked chips and ate them ourselves. As for a drink… we had lemonade which I watered down.

At least I had the choice. I don’t have a choice in a lot of places when fried chicken nuggets (which, yes my son does enjoy) are the main choice. Why not bake them? Or do nuggets without the breading and grilled? My son loves grilled nuggets just as much as Fried. One of the few places that bakes their chicken nuggets: Target. They don’t have a fryer on hand just that giant rolling oven they make their flatbreads, pizzas and chicken strips in.

I read about how kids are fed in other countries, like France, where they do not have kids menus. Kids eat the exact same food as parents. These kids generally not only are less picky eaters but also have a greater appreciation for food as they grow up beyond just greasy yumminess that we all grow up on in the US.

I am trying to do this but it is hard when that $2.99 meal comes up and he needs to eat as well. I don’t mind sharing with my son but I am trying to break him from the habit of not eating his food so he can eat off my plate instead. At dinner, we make sure he has the same food we do. I make him the same breakfast I have on 5 out of 7 days. But when we are running errands and we have to stop for a quick meal we are generally not very lucky. One of the few places in the Denver area that has a reasonable kids menu is Ikea… they actually serve kids vegetables with their mac & cheese.

So, what do we do? For now, I am going to just start feeding him off of my plate again unless I see better meals for kids on the menus. It’s not like they don’t give us enough food on our plates.

Cheesy Pretzels!

/ Varza / Leave a comment

I am always looking for yummy, homemade healthy-ish snacks to make for my son. He loves all types of breads so I figured why not go ahead and try some soft pretzels and yum them up with some cheese:

I had a couple of people ask me for the recipe so here it goes. Now, these aren’t perfect yet. I needed to add more cheese – I ran out of time in the mixing because 1. our shredder sucks 2. I didn’t pre-shred the cheese early enough.

I took a soft pretzel recipe from FoodNetwork.com by Alton Brown and made some of my own changes. Here is the recipe from the website but I bolded the changes I made to it.

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cups warm (110 to 115 degrees F) water
  • 1 tablespoon sugar
  • 2 teaspoons kosher salt
  • 1 package active dry yeast
  • 22 ounces flour, approximately 4 1/2 cups (use 3 cups whole wheat flour, 1 1/2 cups of all-purpose white)
  • 2 ounces unsalted butter, melted
  • Vegetable oil, for pan
  • 10 cups water
  • 2/3 cup baking soda
  • 1 large egg yolk beaten with 1 tablespoon water
  • Pretzel salt (I just used a bit more kosher salt since I didn’t want them to be too salty since my son is only 14 months)
  • Shredded Cheese – Medium Sharp Cheddar was my choice. Use whatever you want – I recommend about 2 cups for mixing with the dough and 1 cup for topping it.

Directions (from FoodNetwork.com)

Combine the water, sugar and kosher salt in the bowl of a stand mixer and sprinkle the yeast on top. Allow to sit for 5 minutes or until the mixture begins to foam. Add the flour,cheeseand butter and, using the dough hook attachment, mix on low speed until well combined. Change to medium speed and knead until the dough is smooth and pulls away from the side of the bowl, approximately 4 to 5 minutes. Remove the dough from the bowl, clean the bowl and then oil it well with vegetable oil. Return the dough to the bowl, cover with plastic wrap and sit in a warm place for approximately 50 to 55 minutes or until the dough has doubled in size.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Line 2 half-sheet pans with parchment paper and lightly brush with the vegetable oil. Set aside.

Bring the 10 cups of water and the baking soda to a rolling boil in an 8-quart saucepan or roasting pan.

In the meantime, turn the dough out onto a slightly oiled work surface and divide into 8 equal pieces. Roll out each piece of dough into a 24-inch rope, cut again into several small pieces. Make a U-shape with the rope, holding the ends of the rope, cross them over each other and press onto the bottom of the U in order to form the shape of a pretzel. Make small tubes of the dough, you should get about 28-32 depending on size (I made mine just big enough for Miles to hold easily). Place onto the parchment-lined half sheet pan.

Place the pretzels into the boiling water, 1 by 1, for 30 seconds. Remove them from the water using a large flat spatula. Return to the half sheet pan, brush the top of each pretzel with the beaten egg yolk and water mixture and lightly sprinkle with the pretzel salt and shredded cheese. Bake until dark golden brown in color, approximately 12 to 14 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack for at least 5 minutes before serving.

I put about half of these in the freezer but you may not have to because they get eaten pretty quickly.

These are about 100 calories each.

FOOD!!

/ Varza / Leave a comment

So, my sons first birthday is right around the corner and I am going crazy with ideas for food. We are having a small gathering of family and some friends. Mostly finger foods. My dad is going to be bringing a turkey up – shredded that we will use for sandwiches. But its the snacks… we will be doing a lot of cooking and in fact I probably should start making a lot of the items this weekend. We have cupcakes and the cake. The cupcakes need a dry run though. Need to make sure I have it all down before I make them for the party.

Then we have some pizza sticks we are making. Miles loves pizza crust so we are going to make this sticks of the dough but making a few versions. One we will mix in cheese, then in another we will mix in carrots and zucchini, maybe another will have a sweet additive or cinnamon. He loves cinnamon.

For the sweet tooth – candies! I am making Mickey Mouse lollipops with red, white and dark chocolate. But I thought it would be fun to make some Pretzel Wands. Basically the larger pretzel sticks (take off some of the salt) then dip in chocolate and then dip in different color sprinkles.

As you can see from the list – there are some items that I can definitely make this weekend and store in the freezer for the party.

We will also be making cookies… probably just chocolate chip. I want to make more but also limited time. With family coming in we have a lot of things to do while everyone is here and the day of the party we are also having my son and niece’s baptism in the middle of the day. My husband and I have this really bad habit of doing as much as possible in a short period of time.

Time to run… someone just fell onto one of his toys. At least not blood just a boo-boo.

Salads… bad?

/ Varza / 1 Comment

I went to dinner last night with the familia at the Macaroni Grill. It was an interesting experience later that evening when I happily went to the website to get the calories et al for the very nutrious, delicious Seared Scallop Salad that I had for dinner. Now I chose over the healthy chicken cause, duh salad good for you right? WRONG! The salad had 1320 calories in it which about 73% of the calories I am suppose to be eating in a day to loose weight (trying to stay around 1800 at the most) . 1320 calories! What the hell!? That is only 160 calories less then TWO Double Quarter Pounders with Cheese from McDonalds. On a damn salad of all things. On top of that there are 91grams of fat in the salad. Ugh… I am just glad I only ate part of it last night. And I am doubly glad that I went to the gym afterwards. Just wish I had worked out more now instead of heading home after about 45 minutes.

Here is the saddest part – the chicken I skipped over 330 calories. And in case you are curious the name of that chicken is the Pollo Margo “Skinny Chicken” which is a Grilled chicken breast with honey balsamic glaze served with grilled asparagus and broccoli. Those calories include everything in the dish. This was a 990 calories less then the salad.  And sadly there was another salad I was looking at and it was only 840, without dressing 490. Smack my head and call me Sally. While yes it was yummy yummy… but it wasn’t worth 1320 calories.

Now I know some of you reading this will probably say in your mind – yep, its always been like this. And while I have been aware that many salads were high in calories. I just never imagined they were that high in calories. I am not really one to count calories, I just want to hit an average and be aware of exactly what I am eating. At least now I know – I can still go the Macaroni Grill, I just need to be a bit more prepared and if I am completely and utterly not sure what is good for me, I need to just read the stupid little guide they give you and get a healthy meal from the menu.