Tag: healthy eating and mental health

Power Your Lunchbox

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It’s back to school (and tutoring and soccer and football and piano and lacrosse) time!

Even though my kids start school in mid-August, I don’t really take the school year seriously until September. Probably not great, but I just can’t get my mind around dealing with homework, bus schedules and tests when it’s 100 degrees. So now that we’re into September and the mornings are cool (at least here in Colorado!) I’m thinking about how to prepare healthy meals and snacks for my family. And (maybe more importantly) how to help them make healthy choices for themselves.

This year I’m partnering with Produce for Kids and taking their Power Your Lunchbox Promise. Check it all out here:

Basically, Produce for Kids provides lots of easy, yummy ideas for lunches (and snacks!), you make the promise, and they and their partners donate to Feeding America. It’s a win-win-win!

So as I made the promise this year, I again focused on snack foods rather than lunch foods. My kids all buy their lunch at school, so what we really need to focus on is a healthy, easy snack time. Here’s what we came up with this year:

Energy Bites

I don’t have a formal recipe, but I’ve been making these yummy snacks for years. I determine what goes in them based on what’s in my pantry. Here’s what I gathered today:

Sun-Maid Raisins, almonds, oat bran, oatmeal, a few mini chocolate chips I found in the way back, and peanut butter. In the past I’ve also added dried peaches, coconut, cereal and yogurt-covered raisins.  Anything goes as long as it’s small:

Once you’ve gathered all the odds and ends, simply dump everything (except the peanut butter) into a bowl:

Mix that all up, then slowly add the peanut butter:

Stir the mixture around until it is combined. Test the mixture to see if you can roll it into a ball that will stick together. Does it come apart? Add more peanut butter. Go overboard on the peanut butter? Add more dry ingredients. Here’s what mine looked like:

It’s ready to roll!

Grab a sheet pan and cover with foil. You will also need a scoop of some kind:

One down, about 100 more to go! The nice thing is, the kids can help:

I usually store these in the freezer, they stay nice and firm that way. And when the kids are ready, they can pack them up for a healthy, energy-filled snack on the go:

They’re easy to eat, and actually fill them up until dinner – which seems to be getting later and later as they get older!

Check out more recipe ideas and make the Promise:

 

 

#PowerYourLunchbox – Teen Edition

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Do you remember being a teenager? A middle schooler? Let’s just say it can be a challenging time in life. Bodies, ideas and emotions are changing at lightening speed; nobody understands you; and life can feel like an endless series of demands, trials and challenges. Everything from clothes to hair to after school activities can be put to the test:

Is this cool or totally dorky?

And yes, I know those aren’t the terms today’s teens would use to describe good and bad, so I am reverting to my own adolescence (cringe.)

Anyway, it wasn’t until a year or so ago that I realized that school lunches were also judged in terms of being cool, or not-so-cool.  Here are how things work out for the teens/tweens in my house:

Buying lunch = cool

Taking lunch to school = not cool

But after discovering that my now-7th grader ate fried chicken sandwiches every single day for lunch last year, I decided we needed to make some changes this year.  So when Produce for Kids issued their annual #PowerYourLunchbox Pledge, I decided to get creative. The goal? To find a cool(ish), healthy lunch that my tween and teen would actually eat for lunch. In front of their friends. And not blame me for ruining their lives. Tall order, I know.

And here’s what I came up with: Mason Jars. They’re cheap, functional and Joanna Gaines-approved (that’s a good thing in our house). You’ve probably seen mason jar salad ideas floating around online for the past couple of years. I had too, but I had yet to try them. Here’s how it went:

I pulled everything out of my frig and pantry that could go into a salad:

I read that you should start with dressing, so I put that on the bottom, then filled up the jar from there:

I put the dry ingredients (tortilla strips, croutons, etc) in a little baggy on top so they would still be nice and crunchy at lunch time:

Then I realized I could put anything I wanted into the jars and it would look cute! Leftover pasta salad, fruit salad – nothing in the frig was safe!

…you see where this is going…

One of my kids took this for lunch today, doesn’t it look delicious?

In about 20 minutes we made several lunches and snacks.

And guess what? The kids actually took these beauties to school, ate the contents and brought the jars back home to be refilled – a HUGE SUCCESS! Next time we might try peanut butter, hummus or Nutella in a jar, with some fruits or veggies in another jar for dipping. The possibilities are endless!

Want more ideas for healthy, yummy and semi-cool lunches? Check out Produce for Kids.

Want to help support Feeding America as they provide meals for kids in need just by lifting a finger? Take the #PowerYourLunchbox Pledge!

 

Food and Mood: Virtuous Kale Salad

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This post is part of the series: Food and Mood.  Today I’m welcoming Dr. Debbie Sorensen as a guest blogger. 

Kale Salad: From Guilty to Virtuous

Every now and then I feel something that could perhaps be called “Not Enough Veggies Guilt.” It is the shameful emotion that arises when I realize that I haven’t eaten nearly enough vegetables for a while. What better way to remedy that unpleasant feeling than to eat a big dose of super-healthy leafy greens, like kale?

I am not one who generally loves the taste of kale. For me it has mostly been more of a “should eat” in my diet than a “want to eat.” That is, until my in-laws introduced me to this really yummy kale salad recipe.

Although I don’t naturally love the taste of kale, I DO naturally love the strong flavors of garlic, lemon, and freshly grated Parmesan cheese. And a little zip from crushed red pepper makes those flavors all the better. When you marinate raw kale in a dressing made of those ingredients, it is transformed into something I can’t stop eating! And with all that nutritious kale in my body, my feelings change from guilty to virtuous, a much more pleasant state indeed!

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I can’t guarantee that all children will love this recipe, but you might be surprised. My kids have been known to nibble a little kale out of our garden, and will eat some of this salad. And, it is a fun recipe for kids to help make- especially tearing the kale into little pieces and massaging the dressing into the kale.

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I have modified the original recipe a little to simplify it:
1. I don’t bother with the breadcrumbs, and the recipe is great without it.
2. I don’t really measure the ingredients for the dressing. I just sort of wing it, and I usually go heavy on the garlic and crushed red pepper.

This is how I make it:

Feeling Virtuous Kale Salad
(Adapted slightly from the website of Dr. Andrew Weil)
1. Wash about 4-6 loosely packed cups kale. We grow Dinosaur Kale in our garden and it works well, but any kind of kale will be fine.
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2. Remove thick stems, and tear into small pieces. Even small hands can help with this task!
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3. In a small bowl, combine: juice of 1 lemon, about 3-4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, 1 or 2 cloves garlic (mashed or minced), salt & pepper (to taste), and crushed red pepper flakes (to taste).
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4. Pour over kale in serving bowl and use your hands to massage dressing into kale. Another great job for small hands.
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5. Add about 1/3 cup grated fresh Parmesan cheese and mix into kale salad.

6. Let sit for at least 5 minutes and then it’s ready to eat.

7. Top each serving with a little more grated Parmesan cheese.
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Enjoy, and savor that virtuous feeling while it lasts!
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About the author: Debbie Sorensen is a a psychologist who lives in Denver with her husband and two young daughters. She tries to eat a healthy home-cooked dinner with her family most nights, but isn’t always successful.

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Making the Healthy Choice the Easy Choice

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I recently wrote an article for the fantastic non-profit organization LiveWell Colorado.  If you are not familiar with them, take a look:

LiveWell Colorado

The article I contributed was about making healthy choices easy.  Here’s a bit of it:

We all know what we should do: eat more fruits and veggies; drink more water and less soda; move our bodies more and look at screens less.  The challenge is putting this knowledge into action and making healthy choices each day.

So, how do we make the healthy choices the easy ones?

Give yourself a chance.  If there is cake in my house I will eat it.  All of it. I know it’s not healthy, but cake and I have a serious love affair going on.  It’s not possible to say no if frosting is anywhere near me, so instead I keep it far away (except on special occasions, of course). We all have foods that call to us, so why keep them nearby?  To give yourself the best chance of making healthy choices, minimize the unhealthy options in your pantry.

For more ideas about making healthy choices easy, check out the rest of the article here.