Nutritious choices made simple®
Complete this fun snack with some equally engaging trail mixes. I suggest providing small bowls of each option (and encouraging some snacking along the way as well). I selected the (mostly Guiding Star-earning) ingredients below, which provide a mix of good fat, fiber, fruit and a bit of protein, so that the trail mix will not only be fun to make, but nutritionally balanced too.
At our schools, the lunch schedule for the various grades is based on several important considerations, but the time at which the kids actually NEED lunch doesn’t seem to be one of them. As regular visitors to this blog know, I am trying mightily to change the food served at school lunch, but changing the schedule is a front on which I have chosen not to fight. Instead, I have an easy system for sending the kids to school with snacks that will fairly healthfully tide them over to the next meal, whenever it may be.
On May 3rd, I packed up my car and headed from Boston to Maine. Summer vacation, here I come! That seems like just yesterday. I had so many big plans for my long summer weekends with friends and family. I was going to go skydiving with my brother, white water rafting with my cousins and to Nashville with my friends to find ourselves some southern gentlemen to take home to Mommy (that’s normal, right?). Now, it’s the first week in August? You have got to be kidding me. Have I done anything I actually planned to do this summer?
Mmm, delicious, juicy…yes, I will take another and another and another.
What am I talking about? Berries. Freshly picked strawberries, blueberries, blackberries or raspberries. Growing up in Maine gives you all of these pleasures, and you don’t have to go very far to find them. My dear mother (an avid canning queen) always took me and my two sisters berry picking, no matter the berry in season–we picked what was available and abundant.
Oh June…an emotional month of gearing up for summer while saying goodbye to another school year and all of its chaos. If you have school age children, you probably see June as another symbol–another mark on their growth chart. It is both thrilling and a little sad to see them grow.
Along with the many end-of-year emotions comes the never ending series of activities, parties and attempts to dodge the ice cream truck at the park. Before you know it, every day is filled with one “sometimes” food after another. Add to it the pressure of not wanting to be the parent that continually brings unhealthful foods to parties (try being the “dietitian mom”!).
I’ve adopted a family. By that, I mean that I’ve adopted a family who is interested in learning how they might eat healthier. That, of course, begins by better understanding how to make more nutritious choices in the supermarket. Like you, they have ideas about how they should eat better, move more and learn how to reduce their risk of future health problems. With me by their side and the Guiding Stars nutrition navigation program in their tool box, we are beginning their journey of better living. My “adopted” family of four and I are working together over the next several months to set goals that we can build upon to encourage lasting dietary change for their family.
On a day when people like you and I, despite our better judgment, purposefully cart our children around collecting junk food, here’s a fun way to keep the spirit of healthy living alive tonight. When my children came home and saw these just casually hanging out on the kitchen counter, they were more than a little disturbed…and my kids are not easily impressed by anything I do. But with a few pieces of fruit and about 15 minutes with a paring knife, you’ll have a fun item to share for your Halloween celebration.