This would be an easy & fun patriotic art project for preschool and Kindergarten children. You will need a fork, red, white and blue paint and construction paper to make these Fireworks!
How cute and yummy is this Fourth of July toast for breakfast? Give it a try and find out! Patriotic Flag Toast!
For a fun and healthy Fourth of July snack, make fruit kabobs into the shape of the American Flag. Patriotic Fruit Kabobs!
While shopping at a farmers market over the weekend, I noticed a poster at one of the tables that said "Breakfast on the Farm". I talked to the farmer about it and she offered me free tickets to the event. As it turns out, the breakfast on the farm event is a Michigan State University Extension. Families get a tour of the farm, learn about milking cows, get to pet a calf, see the farm equipment, take wagon ride, learn where food comes from, eat ice cream and also eat a farm fresh breakfast. I'm really excited to take my kids to this event. It should be a really fun learning experience for our whole family. Breakfast on the Farm is hosted at various farms in Michigan. If you live too far to take advantage of one of these great events, you could do a search or ask around at farmers markets in your area to see if something similar is offered near you. I love finding new, fun, educational activities for my family. Breakfast on the Farm.
My kids really like my homemade potato soup so I thought I would share my recipe here. It's a great way to get them to eat a bunch of vegetables. I've been enjoying the cooler soup weather lately :) I rarely measure anything but I'll do my best to give you a good idea of how to make my soup. I hope you enjoy it as much as we do!
Ingredients:
Two large carrots peeled and chopped
About 12 medium to large potatoes peeled and chopped
1 stalk of celery rinsed and chopped
Dried Parsley
Favorite seasoning if desired (I like Zehnder's chicken seasoning)
Salt and pepper
Cream cheese (I use about 2 Tablespoons of Fat Free)
Milk (I use about 1/2 cup of 2% milk)
Butter (about 2 Tablespoons)
Chicken Broth (32 oz)
One small onion (chopped)
Yellow bell pepper (you could omit this, I normally don't put it in but I had about 1/4 of a pepper that needed to be used and it turned out to be a nice addition)
Shredded cheddar cheese (I used a couple handfuls)
Directions:
Wash, peel & chop all veggies and add to a cooking pot. Pour chicken seasoning and milk over the veggies and add to stove top. Sprinkle seasonings, herbs and add butter if desired. Simmer for about 30 minutes or until tender enough to mash. When mashing veggies, you may want to leave a few chunks. I like ours this way. After mashing, add desired amounts of cream cheese and cheddar cheese (this will help thicken the soup). Enjoy!
My daughter has some food allergies so it's always wonderful when we find good frozen treat alternatives for her. I'm going to give this super easy recipe a try. We have SunButter in the pantry and frozen bananas in the freezer. We're going to a birthday party today and since she can't have cake or ice cream, I think I might bring some along. A two ingredient "ice-cream" made with SunButter and frozen bananas. Doesn't get much easier. Enjoy! SunButter ice-cream
I enjoy cooking and especially making healthy meals that my kids enjoy. Tonight one of my children requested that I make extra baked potatoes because she loves them so much. My other daughter wanted asparagus. I was happy to cater to their dinner desires tonight.
I want to share with you a new food blog that my friend Kendra has started. She also loves to cook healthy meals for her family. She is a home school mom and enjoys including her children in the cooking process. In addition to her healthy meals recipes, I think you will also enjoy her kitchen school posts where her kids get involved. Check out Kendra's yummy blog. The Queen of Brussels Sprouts.
A couple of years before we had kids my husband and I decided to get a new life insurance policy. After getting blood work done for the new policy, we discovered that my husband had high cholesterol. My tests came back fine but with my family history of high cholesterol, heart disease, cancer and diabetes, I knew that making healthier eating choices would be of great benefit to me. I started taking steps to become more informed, cleaned out the pantry and started shopping and cooking differently.
I thought that I was doing very good with our food choices until my twins were 2 years old. We were at friends baby shower and I let my kids have some dessert. One of my daughters broke out in a terrible case of hives after eating a strawberry cake with some artificial ingredients. We spent several weeks trying to figure out what caused the reaction and we narrowed it down to red dye. I suddenly had to be even more aware of what was in the food we eat. Red dye (specifically red #40) is in so many things...even things that are not red! After giving it some thought I started wondering why we needed artificial colors at all and artificial flavors for that matter too. In my quest for no artificial coloring, I became even more aware of ingredients. I was honestly surprised at so many ingredients, some names that I did not even recognize. I decided that I was going to do my best to buy natural foods with ingredients that I understood.
Replacing refined flours with whole grains, using all natural peanut butter (only ingredient is peanuts), lean meats without preservatives when possible and lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, was pretty easy. Avoiding artificial colors and flavors took awhile to get used too and grocery shopping took a lot longer at first but it was worth it for the health benefits.
I won't pretend to be an expert on the subject but I want to share a few of the "better for you" and not too expensive store bought convenience foods that I have in the house right now for the kids. In the summer we are busy and I do a lot of spontaneous picnics and outings with my kids and their friends so quick and easy is good.
~Mott's All Natural Fruit Snacks
~Target Market Pantry Unsweetened Applesauce (I make my own canned applesauce every year but always seem to run out so these are a good alternative). I believe that Mott's also has the natural and unsweetened applesauce but the Target brand is less expensive.
~Pepperidge Farm Goldfish made with Whole Grain (my kids begged for goldfish crackers for a long time so I was glad to find these for a special treat)
~Dannon All Natural Yogurt, No Artificial Anything (these do still have quite a bit of sugar but that doesn't worry me too much since my kids don't get a lot of sugar and after all..sugar is natural)
~Hormel Natural Choice (100% natural, no preservatives) deli meats
~Quick Oats 100% natural (great for a quick and healthy breakfast, I buy a big container at Aldi very inexpensively)
~Pure Honey (we put it on our oatmeal to add sweetness). My kids also like to use honey as a dip for many things.
~Ocean Spray 100% Juice, no sugar added. No artificial colors or flavors and made in the USA. (we like the Cranberry & Blueberry and the Cranberry & Concord Grape). I buy this at Target for $2.59 (64 fl oz) which seems like a good price to me. Juice is so expensive these days.
Non-Food products that we switched over to recently:
We have a lot of fun in the sun and this summer we started using "Burt's Bees Chemical Free Sunscreen" with hemp seed oil. It's pricey at $12.99 for a 3.46 fl oz tube but it seems to work well, doesn't smell bad and I feel good about using it.
Another product that I've discovered this summer is "Jason Hand and Body Lotion" (Pure, Natural, Organic). It makes our skin silky soft. I found this at Target on sale for less than $5.00 a bottle.
These are just a few of my finds. I would love to hear about some of the natural snack and lunch foods and products that you enjoy. Please leave me a comment or send me an email and let me know.
Do you bring your children grocery shopping with you? My children almost always go grocery shopping with me and one of the things they look forward to is choosing a food item. Sometimes I let them look around in the produce section and I encourage them to pick out a new fruit or vegetable because trying new things can be a lot of fun. Letting your children pick out a new food item is a great way to encourage trying new things and healthy eating.
Weekly Challenge: Before you go shopping, have a discussion about new foods that might be fun to try. Look through the grocery store ads and ask your children to name the fruits and vegetables. Take your children grocery shopping with you the next time you go. Let them look around and choose a new fruit or vegetable to try. When you are ready to try the fruit or vegetable at home, let you child help prepare it in some way if at all possible (washing, peeling, cutting, etc).
I would love you to leave a comment and let me know what your kids ended up trying and whether or not they enjoyed the experience. You may want to give it a try every time they go grocery shopping with you.
