a peek inside the fishbowl

Can you tell that I’ve been on a bit of a health kick lately? There’s the granola bar recipe (which the girls had at school yesterday and LOVED – yay!) but I’ve also been tinkering with my berry smoothie recipe. I finally figured out the perfect ratio of what:what in order to acheive a healthy fruit drink that (a) isn’t too sweet for everyday consumption (b) keeps THE PLUMBING in good working order, you know what I mean, right? *wink wink*

These are the proportions that work for my personal taste and plumbing.

Take:

– 1/2 cup of green tea, cooled (Make it with one teabag per cup boiling water. I use PC organic. If you prefer something slightly sweeter you substitute the tea with milk, pineapple, or orange juice, but the experts are always saying we should be drinking green tea, so do try the green tea. It’s an easy way of getting more of it into you system…. which is great for those of us who don’t normally drink it.)

Blend thoroughly with:

– approximately 1 handful of washed raw baby spinach leaves (Roughly two cups, loosely packed)

Whizz it around for a few minutes, longer if you’re planning on serving this to a kid who doesn’t know what you’re up to. In fact, you might want to hide the blender while you’re blending, because at this point it will be full of a very green liquid which looks like something an alien from the planet parsleycilantrobrusselsprout might sneeze up. That being said, you will be utterly amazed at how the taste of the spinach disappears into the other ingredients. (!) *

(This article suggests smoothies can be strained, a great idea for anyone who doesn’t like anything larger than a fruit molecule making a sudden appearance in their drinks.)

Quickly, without moving or breathing or making any additional noise add:

– approximately 1.5 cups mixed berries. (I use a PC mixture of frozen berries which includes strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, blueberries. If you use frozen fruit your smoothie will have the consistency of a milkshake. But do consider freestylin’ it. Do you have a banana that overly spotted? Throw it in. How about a pear that’s a bit squished on one side? Use that. If you just use the berries, your smoothie will be a lovely dark purple colour.

– 2 or 3 tablespoons ground flax seed. (It’s available in your local health food store or bulk store.)

– 1/3 cup yogurt.(I prefer to use a brand with live bacterial culture because it’s good for your tummy. Activa sweetened plain or vanilla flavours are both good for this recipe. I really just eyeball the yogurt, sometimes I end up with a bit more, but I measured it out and 1/3 cup works just fine.)

– if you’re making this for a kid, this part is TOTALLY OPTIONAL – add 1 scoop of Greens+ Berrylicious for Kids.I have some of this on hand and throw it into the mix every once in awhile. I like knowing my kids are getting a few extra molecules of foods they wouldn’t touch with a 10 ft. pole. e.g kale, brussel sprouts and sweet potato, among others. I take it where I can get it.

That’s it.

Whirl it all up, scraping down the sides from time to time, and pour into one big glass or two smaller ones. Your child will thank you for the lovely treat. And more importantly, if you’ve made this for yourself, your innards will thank you. TRUST ME ON THIS ONE. Isn’t it cool how you’re getting all this healthy stuff in one easy (not to mention yummy) drink?

Cheers! 

* I will be really annoyed if someone wanders over here and accuses me of being a “bad mom” because I’m “being sneaky” and “hiding stuff” in my children’s meals without their knowledge. (Yes, I saw what went on in the blogosphere when Jessica Seinfeld released her “Deceptively Delicious” cookbook.) If you are one of these people, do consider how annoying I will find your comment. To you I say this:

1) If the kid likes the healthier version of the smoothie, why not just go with it? (Remember the brownies I made?)

2) I’m also not saying we, as parents, should stop serving veggies and fruit in a traditional way. Some kids will never eat spinach/broccoli/berries/whatever, not matter how you serve it up, how much cheese sauce you pour on it, or how many times you try to persuade them to eat it.

3) As head chef, I’ve never reviewed my choice of cooking/baking ingredients with the kids, so why start now? When I make breaded chicken strips I don’t bother to tell them I make the bread crumbs out of toasted whole grain bread, nor do I tell them I’ve added several heaping spoonfuls of ground flax seed. I don’t think I’m tricking anyone, it’s just how things are made around here.

Ok. Done. :)

Let me know if you try the recipe!

We had a battle with head lice earlier last year. Lice treatment is hell. For the sake of someone’s privacy I’m going to skip the identifying details. But I will say this: there was a lot of hair, a lot of scratching, and a lot of heartache and a lot of my leaping to pick off imaginary fluffs of this person’s head LONG AFTER the lice population was decimated. Adult lice look like tiny seeds with feet. As for the babies? You’ll need a magnifying glass for those.

Speaking now as someone who’s gone through it, I realize it would have been more helpful to educate myself before I got The Call … instead of late nights doing panicky googling when I should have been in bed.

I didn’t know what to look for before I got The Call. Now I do. So if you are a parent with kids who have hair who might come in contact with other kids who have hair, listen up.

Start here: this article sums the experience up pretty well.

My best tips (which doesn’t get mentioned in the article above) are to :

1) Ditch the lice comb that comes with the chemical treatment and get a good flea comb from your local pet store. Save your child thousands of dollars in therapy and don’t tell them you’re using a flea comb. Flea combs are wider, and their longer handle makes it easier to use than the wee lice combs. They’re awkward. And they gave me finger cramps. The flea comb is ideal for the daily lice checks you’re going to need to do for the next few weeks. Or more. Gah!

2) Buy a pile of fun books or comics for the person scheduled for daily delousing.  Having the kid with head bent down in reading position was easier to than having a kid-with-head-up-in-TV-watching position. The process will take take a couple of hours every day, or more, depending on how much hair we’re talking about.

3) Use hair cutting scissors to snip out the lice eggs rather than pulling them out. The eggs aren’t just loosely laid in the hair, oh no, the lice use a sticky substance to glue each egg to a single strand of hair. They’re not that simple to dislodge. You will need to use the tight “clasp-and-slide” pinching motion with to get it out. I was constantly afraid that I’d dislodge it with my fingers only to lose it further down in the hair. After HOURS spent doing this – and pulling hair in the process – I discovered that cutting the egg out was much easier. I used the scissors to snip the one strand of hair, egg attached, and tossed it aside. Note: I did this outdoors, not indoors. You’ll need a good light for this.

We still do regular head checks, and we’ll do them more often now that the girls are back in school. I’ll also be spraying their noggins every once in awhile with a tea tree oil solution. Apparently the little buggers hate the smell of the stuff.

Good riddance lice! I hope I never see you again.

It looks like this is the most popular granola bar recipe on the Internet. :)

After a trip to the grocery store yesterday I renewed my resolution to bake my own healthy granola bars for the girls to bring to school. Gah. I walked past aisle after aisle of over-sugared, over salted, high-fructose corny syrup, over hyped, over packaged crap. I just had to make my own. (I even saw Disney Princess SANDWICH BAGS. Fer chrissakes.)

Anyway, after a lot of searching I found a healthy granola bar recipe to make for my kids, but after reading a few of the comments posted with the recipe I decided to alter it a bit and make it my own.

This one is a keeper. It was wildly successful, despite the fact I totally screwed it up (but more on that later), and it received an enthusiastic thumbs up from everyone. Here’s what they look like:

Here’s my version … (it’s nut-free, and you can make this as organic as you want)

2 cups rolled oats (I’ve upped it to 2 1/2 cups for another batch and they turned out great)
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup wheat germ
1/4 cup ground flax
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour (I think it was called “soft” flour)*
1/2 cup raisins
1/4 cherry-flavoured cranberries
3/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 cup honey
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup canola oil (I might try substituting some of the oil with apple sauce next time)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

* I picked up a lot of these ingredients at the bulk food store. I’ve also made a batch with sunflower seeds and whole flax seeds. They were just as great! I find that if I add raisins and cranberries the bars become sweeter and chewier. You’ll have to experiment and figure out what you like best.

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease 9 x 13 baking pan.

2. In large bowl, mix together the oats, brown sugar, wheat germ, flax, cinnamon, flour, raisins and salt. Make a well in the centre, pour in the honey, egg, oil and vanilla. Mix well. Pat the mixture evenly into the pan. It will be sticky.

3. Bake for about 30 minutes, but watch the baking time. If you leave them in too long they’ll be dry. I like mine a bit chewier so 30 minutes works for us. Cool for 5 minutes, then cut into bars or squares. Do not allow the bars to cool completely before cutting or they will be too hard to cut.

–

So. I mixed the ingredients. The original recipe said to use your hands to mix, which I did, and I realized I really didn’t need to. Oh well. After I was done I licked ALL TEN FINGERS because the mixture was so good. I poured the mixture into the pan and popped it into the hot oven. After about five minutes I realized that the mixture was a little too wet. And THEN I realized it was because I forgot to add the flour. I pulled it out, sprinkled the flour on top, mixed it in, and put it back into the oven. PEOPLE, THIS IS THE WAY I COOK THINGS.

BUT they were still pretty good.

I’m not sure if they’ll be sweet enough for everyone’s liking. I reduced the amount of sugar, but I found the raisins made the bars sweeter. The girls like them, and that’s what matters to me.

If you try them let me know how they turn out for you! Any questions? Please let me know.

Update: June 2015
This recipe for granola bars is still a family favourite! My kids love bringing them to school. I bake them on Sunday afternoons for the week ahead.

You can cut them as large or small as you like. For this batch I cut them into bigger bars before I wrapped them in foil and popped them in the freezer… although I’m not sure why I bother, because they disappear so quickly.