Well, the kids are back to school which means my house gets a little quieter.  (Only a little – the twins are still home with me.  :) )  It also means that I’m back to packing lunches, so I thought I’d start a new series called: “What’s For Lunch? Wednesdays”  Every Wednesday, I’ll share what the kids (and dad) had in their lunchboxes.  I find it’s hard to always come up with a fun and healthy lunch for the family, so it’s always good to have a few menus to refer back to.

So, here is what lunch looked like for week one:

(I really should invest in a better camera, so I could put some better pictures up here.  It looks a lot tastier in person!)

Lunch 8/29

quinoa pizza bites (recipe found here - I omitted the pepperoni) *

pizza sauce for dipping (made 12 jars of this from farmer’s market tomatoes! – recipe found in “Simply in Season”)

melon and grapes

blackberry apple muffin

* I doubled this recipe and froze half so I have enough for another lunch in the future.  It’s always nice to have supplies ready in the freezer for those busy mornings!

What are your favorite healthy lunchtime menus?

My unprocessed foods met possibly their biggest challenge last night: a group of 10 and 11-year-old boys.  And they actually liked it!  I’m always worried about how other people will react to our food choices.  I know that my own kids will eat what I make for them, but it’s a little tricky feeding other kids.

I made the boys at Tim’s party whole wheat pizza and Tim’s choice of cake (blackberry apple cake).  They had juice boxes and water bottles to drink.  I didn’t hear complaints from any of the boys.  They all ate a good portion of pizza and polished off their cake, too.

So, for anyone who worries that their kids will only eat “kid foods,” try serving some healthier options.  Your kids might surprise you.  I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by the boys last night.

We are in the midst of the birthday season/back to school rush at our house.  This year we let the kids have parties with a few friends to celebrate their 7th and 10th birthdays.  (I can’t believe I now have a 10-year-old!!  He seems so old now that he’s hit the double digits!)

We had Katie’s princess tea party on Saturday and Tim’s laser tag party will be tomorrow.  So many parties for kids involve processed foods washed down with soda and a treat bag full of candy to take home.  We managed to avoid most of the usual kids’ party fare and I think the girls still had a great time.  (We’ve yet to see how homemade pizza, strawberry fizz and blackberry cake goes over with the 10-year-old boy crowd!)

Here’s the birthday girl in her tea room.  :)  We decorated simply with a flowered tablecloth and flowered cups and napkins.  I made some colorful banners to hang around the room using some scrapbook paper and bias tape.  These took 20 minutes at most to make and I think they turned out really cute:

For activities, the girls decorated crowns and wands, played Queen says (a princess version of Simon Says) and Kiss the Frog (a pin the tail on the donkey game).  The frog game turned out really cute.  I just drew a picture of a frog on poster board and printed out some clipart lips for the girls to stick on:

I used craft supplies I already had for the crowns and wands, so altogether the games only cost about $1 to put together!

Their tea party menu:

cream cheese and cucumber sandwiches

pb&j sandwiches (made with homemade peanut butter and jelly)

mini muffins (zucchini carrot muffins)

fruit kebabs

pink princess lemonade

water bottles

glitter cake

I realize there is no actual tea in this menu, but honestly tea doesn’t really go over well with most kids at this age.  The pink princess lemonade was a big hit though which is great because it was a last minute improvisation:

1 12 oz bag frozen strawberries

evaporated cane juice

lemon juice

water

I just simmered the strawberries in a little water until they were soft enough to be blended.  I made a simple sugar syrup by dissolving the sugar in some water.  I mixed the strawberry blend with the sugar syrup and lemon juice and added water until it was the right concentration.  I strained out the strawberry seeds so it looked a little prettier for the girls and they loved it!

The cake was from a recipe that I tried to adapt with wheat flour.  Let’s just say it was a little dense.  I’m still trying to get the hang of working with wheat flour.  It’s a lot harder to get fluffy baked goods with wheat flour.  Some of the girls said they needed a saw to cut their cake with.  ;)  I tried not to take too much offense; most of them did end up eating every last crumb of their cake.  The only concession to processed foods I made with the cake were the glitter sprinkles on top.  I tried to tint my frosting pink with some strawberry jam, but it didn’t work at all.  And the cake just looked so sad and dreary with just the white frosting on it.

We sent the girls home with treat bags filled with various princess things we found at the Party City clearance.  We got stickers, tattoos, a crown, a watch and lipgloss for each girl for only $2 a bag.

I hope the girls had a fun time at the party.  I had so much fun planning and preparing for this party with my little princess.  There is nothing sweeter than 5 little girls in party dresses enjoying a tea party.

We have now moved into tomato season!

It seems the critters have been enjoying more of the tomatoes from our garden than we have.  Oh well.  The tomatoes from the farmer’s market have been great.  Especially those beautiful yellow and red grape tomatoes.  You almost want to eat them like candy.  I’ve been tossing them with onions, garlic, cilantro and lemon juice for a quick salsa.  But my favorite way to enjoy them is with fresh mozzarella and basil:

Doesn’t that look good??  Just chop up those tomatoes, some mozzarella and basil.  Toss with olive oil and you have a quick salad.  Or, if you want to make a meal of this, add pasta.

This is one of the best times to visit the farmer’s market.  There has been such a great selection of produce.  Some crops have been affected by the drought (corn, in particular), but I came home last weekend with a huge bag of cucumbers and tomatoes.  I was able to make 8 jars of salsa and 7 jars of pickles.  I’m planning to make some tomato sauce and bruschetta topping this weekend.  If you’ve never canned before, try it.  It is so nice to open up a jar of something homemade from the garden in the middle of the winter.  I recommend Ball’s Blue Book of Canning as a good place to start.

Besides all of the canning, I’ve been busy planning two birthday parties.  It is a lot more difficult when you are trying to make everything from scratch but still make something that will appeal to the 7 and 10 year old crowd.  Details to follow soon!  Hope everyone is enjoying the last few weeks of summer!

I am officially done reading books about nutrition.

It’s just too depressing to keep reading them.  I just finished reading Marion Nestle’s What to Eat and I don’t think there’s anymore I’d like to know.  I just don’t want to hear anymore about the politics behind food marketing.  Between the companies that will try to convince you that sugary cereals are good for your kids and the various food lobbies that all have their own agenda, it can feel as though we’re being set up to fail in our food choices.

Besides, the common thread from all of the books that I’ve read (and I’ve not come anywhere close to reading them all) is that processed foods are bad and unprocessed foods are good.  And really, if we’re all being honest, we knew this already.  The appeal of processed foods is that they are just so EASY.  And we can all try to justify it by saying that it’s how everyone eats.  But that doesn’t mean it’s a good way to eat.

I’m still left with questions about what is the “best” way to eat.  I’ll never understand whether dairy is “good” or “bad” for you.  And whether you should only eat full-fat dairy products or low-fat.  I don’t know if sugar is the worst thing you could possibly eat or OK in moderate amounts.  And are there good sugars and bad sugars??  If anyone knows these answers to these, I’d love to hear them.  :)

For my family, I’m going to continue to try to eat thoughtfully and use common sense in our food choices.  We’re still continuing with our no-processed food plan.  This month we’ve given up all vegetarian “meats.”  That’s another one of those things that I kind of knew wasn’t good for us to be eating, but I told myself it was OK because it wasn’t as bad as other options.  It doesn’t seem like anyone has all of the answers about what type of food we should be eating, but if we all start thinking about our food choices, we’ll be much better off.

We are STILL trying to find new ways to enjoy all of the zucchini coming from our garden!  I’ve been slipping some zucchini into almost every meal we’ve made lately.

My favorite way to eat them is in muffins!  So the kids and I came up with another tasty muffin recipe which is especially good for using up some of those huge zucchinis that you waited to long to pick!  With raisins, nuts, coconut, carrots and zucchini, these muffins are filled with good stuff!

Healthy Day Muffins

1 cup olive oil

1/2 cup orange juice

1 cup evaporated cane juice

1/2 cup honey

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

4 cups white whole wheat flour

2 tbsp baking powder

2 tsp salt

2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

4 cups grated carrot and zucchini

1 1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1/2 cup raisins/craisins

1/2 cup shredded, unsweetened coconut

In your mixer bowl, combine oil, juice, sugar and honey.  Add your eggs and vanilla and beat until light.  Sift together your flour, baking powder, salt and spices and mix into the egg mixture.  Fold in your carrots/zucchini, walnuts, raisins and coconut.  Pour batter into muffin tins (either sprayed with oil or using paper liners).  Bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes (mini-muffins) or 20-25 minutes (regular size muffins) or until a toothpick comes out clean.  Cool on wire racks.  Makes 3 sheets of muffins (36 regular or 72 mini).

School is starting soon and these would make excellent school day snacks.  Put a batch of mini ones in the freezer.  You can pop a couple into the kids’ bags in the morning and they’ll be thawed by snacktime!

Other suggestions for using up that zucchini:

* Saute with onions and cumin and use in quesadillas.

* Combine with some sweet corn and make squash/corn chowder.

Now I need to figure out what to do with all of those tomatoes …

I apologize once again for getting so behind in posts!  Living simply can be very difficult!  And very time-consuming!  And lately I’ve been dealing with technical difficulties which make trying to post something very frustrating.  And since I have no computer savvy at all, I am at the mercy of technical support.

Hopefully my tech issues will be resolved soon.  But I have to say being “offline” a little more lately hasn’t been a bad thing.  :)  And it’s great for the kids.  I know there are a lot of kids out there who spend far too much time in front of a screen, either a computer screen or a television screen.  Obesity is a serious concern for kids today.  Part of the problem that needs to be addressed is diet but another part is physical activity.  While most of this blog and my life lately is focused on healthy eating, I do make sure to teach my kids the value of exercise as well.  And a lot of the exercise they get just comes from “kids being kids.”  I spent my whole summer outdoors as a kid.  I’m trying to give my kids the opportunity to have the same unstructured play-based summer.  For us that means:

* Very little TV/Computer time.  (We have no cable TV, so we only watch the occasional DVD from the library.)  Computer time is limited to 30 minutes at a time.

* We go to a park 2/3 times a week.  The kids have to bike there, too.  Gives me a chance to run as well with the babies in the stroller, so everyone stays healthy.  :)  And I will be so sad when my kids get older and no longer think a trip to the park is exciting.

* The kids sign up for only a couple of activities over the summer.  The bulk of their time is spent playing.  It is so much fun to see the creative games they come up with.

Hopefully you all are enjoying a “simple summer.”  I’d love to hear any suggestions you have about how you keep your kids happy and healthy in the summer.