the ongoing food revolution - the lunch version

It's back to school time... wannna talk back to school lunches? One of my bloggy BFFs The Scattered Mom sure does and she's having a party with prizes!!



School lunches throw me for a bit of a loop. Our school is on the balanced day program where the kids get two 40 minute nutrition/recess breaks. There was a real learning curve when Abby started school. but now that she's headed into grade three I think we've got it figured out. For Abby anyway.

Now we have Maya starting school and I feel like I'm starting all over again. Maya is a very picky eater and she would happily go without food rather than try something she's already decided she doesn't like. She's lived on peanut butter sandwiches pretty much her entire life and that phase is about to come to an abrupt end because peanut butter is a no no at our school. Now what?

She recently started eating grilled cheese, so that will be making an appearance. Yep, my kids love cold grilled cheese. Luckily she likes yogurt, but only the kind that has two flavours in the same container. She likes KD, the kind that has the cauliflower in it. She doesn't eat cheese or lunch meat or any meat at all really or granola bars or muffins. She will eat gold fish crackers, rice crackers and rice cakes.

Abby will typically have a sandwich, either ham or a grilled cheese. Just last night at dinner she asked if she could have grilled chicken on a *multi-grain* wrap with some ranch dressing in her lunch this year. She also likes granola bars either the ones I make or the high fibre ones, blueberry or corn muffins, biscuits, goldfish, homemade cookies, cheese and crackers and cheese strings. Occasionally she'll take a juice, but she has a refillable water bottle at school and prefers to drink water.

Our school used to have pizza day once a week and sub day once a month. There will be changes to those this coming year with what the schools will now be allowed to offer for lunch. Schools will be required to have a food committee and a log book will have to be kept regarding what we offered the students on which date. Food being offered to the kids will have to fall within certain nutrition guidelines, so for example pizza will be allowed, but only on whole wheat crust and either veggie or plain cheese. I'm not sure if sub days will make the cut.

My kids lunches aren't perfect, but the get a little bit better all the time and it's those little changes that eventually add up to something big.

food revolution friday

So I've been slacking on my food revolution. Well not the revolution, but the posting of the revolution. If you're pals of mine on facebook then you're up to date with the weight loss end of things. As of this week I've lost 16 pounds and Mike has lost an incredible 52 pounds. Go us, right?

It's been 5 months since Mike started weight watchers and we began this journey. I think we're both surprised that it's been a pretty easy ride. We've been far from perfect. We've indulged in some of our favourite treats, but we've found that just a small taste is sufficient to curb a craving. We've also found a lot of fantastic substitutes for some of our old not so healthy favourites.

We almost never buy chips anymore. I will pick up the occasional bag if it's jammie movie night or one of the Jersey Girls will bring some. It's fine, we'll have a few and move on with our lives. More often than not I buy pretzels for a crunchy treat. And when we get sick of those I buy sunchips. Relatively low points for a handful. Plus the bag is compostable and they run their plant on solar power. I like all of that.

Another new favourite in place of chips and dip is baked nachos and salsa or triscuits and hummus. Roasted red pepper is my fave, but we picked up roasted garlic which was very yummy. Triscuits also have a wide line of different flavours so you can mix that up as well. I love the sweet chili and the rye and caraway.... neither of which they carry at our grocery store of choice anymore. What a pisser.

And feta!!! Here's the thing, we love cheese in this family. Really love it. In the days before WW a brick wouldn't last us a week, but we kinda went cold turkey on the cheese after we figured out how many points we'd have to spend on even a small cube. Oh my gosh. I love cheese, but not at those "prices". Here's the thing we stumbled upon, by accident, if you use a very strong flavoured cheese you only need a small bit of it to make an impact. Enter the feta.

Speaking of strong flavours, I apply that theory to the rest of the kitchen as well. We've been eating a lot of greek inspired dinners the past little while. The spice aisle is full of spice mixes to help boost the flavour in your meals. As I mentioned the greek and texmex one get lots of play at our house. I love filling our grill basket with lots of fresh veggies, a drizzle of olive oil and a hearty shaking of spices. It keeps the veggies from being boring and works great as a topper for turkey burgers or stuffed into pitas with chicken or turkey sausage.

What are your favourite healthy eating tricks?

As always, thanks to the fabulous Scattered Mom for hosting Food Revolution Fridays.

food revolution friday #5

Well the lovely ScatteredMom is talking lunches over at her little corner of the interwebs. I wish I had been paying attention earlier when she said we should be taking pictures... d'oh.

I find lunches hard both for Abby and myself. Our school is on a balanced day program. For those of you who don't know, a balanced day is set up in five parts. A morning teaching session followed by a 40 minute eating/outdoor time break (20 minutes for each), another teaching session, another 40 minute eating/outdoor time break and then the final afternoon teaching session and then home time.

Twenty minutes isn't that long of a break to eat, especially when you're a kid because there's just so much other stuff to concentrate on. I rely on sandwiches and easy to eat snack type things rather than a full meal. Typically I'll pack a sandwich, Abby likes four kinds of sandwiches - one thin slice of ham with mustard, peanut butter and jam, grilled cheese or an egg white omelet on an english muffin. All on whole wheat bread. The peanut butter is not allowed at school, so she usually takes the first option, although, occasionally she'll ask for a grilled cheese. The egg white omelet is relatively new to the line up and hasn't made an appearance at school yet. Every once in a very long while she'll ask for pasta in her thermos, but not very often.

I round out the main course with an combination of the following:

a muffin - oatmeal chocolate chip seems to be the house favourite
a cheese string - these have lost their appeal, so they'll be out of rotation for a while. Abby is not a milk or cheese fan, but she liked those.
whole wheat crackers and some turkey - This is great as an added extra when it's pizza day (once a week) or sub day (once a month)
pudding or a yougurt - only lemon pie will do.
popcorn - another favourite snack 'round here.
cookies - only home made around here. Usually chocolate or buttersctoch chip
high fibre granola bar - these have lost their lustre too. Time to go back to homemade.
dry cereal - another item that has run it's course for a while.

Recently we found out that she was eating most of her lunch for first break and then had nothing for her second break. As a result she was coming home from school starving. So now we talk about what's in her lunch and what items she'll eat first and what she'll leave for the afternoon. That seems to be working out better.

You may have noticed that there's no mention of a drink. My kids don't drink pop or very much juice. Grandma Sandi will occasionally bring over some fruit and veggie juice and Grandma Linda has koolaid jammers at her place for them. My girls, by and large, drink water. As I mentioned Abby is not a milk fan, but will have the occasional chocolate milk with her pizza lunch. It varies month to month whether or not she wants it. We order lunch for a month in advance. Maya loves milk, chocolate milk specifically, but we buy syrup and make our own and the amount that goes in isn't much. Abby takes refillable water bottles to school and keeps them refilled from the fountain.

It's far from perfect at this point, but it's evolving and getting better and nobody said mounting a revolution was going to be quick or easy.

What do you pack for your kids lunch?

As always, thanks to the fantastic Scattered Mom for hosting food revolution fridays.

food revolution friday #4

This week's post is all about the 80/20 ratio. I can't remember where I read this, but it was on someone's blog as I blog hopped around one night. The notion that while this family tried to eat as healthy and as free of processed foods as possible they still did order in pizza or head out to the golden arches and the question was.... is that okay or is there no room in a healthy life style for such things? Someone left a comment saying as long as you followed the 80/20 rule it was all good, in their opinion anyway... and please remember I'm paraphrasing here. So the idea is you eat healthy, fresh foods 80% of the time, the other 20% is for the not so healthy choices.

I like that idea! I like it a lot. I have often remarked that I love weight watchers because I'm still allowed to eat bacon and I don't want to live in a world where I can't have bacon. That being said, I've had bacon twice in four months. I mean sure I could eat it, but the points I'd have to spend on it make it pretty cost prohibitive, in my miserly opinion anyway. Here's the thing with weight watchers, you become very stingy with your points very quickly. Mike and I have both been known to look something up in the book and be all... p'shaw, 5 points for a serving of that!! No way, I'll pass thanks and eat a kagillion carrots sticks for zero points instead. See how that works?

I think we do better than 80/20 around here, maybe we're closer to 90/10. I think we've ordered in pizza once in four months. I've had red meat twice in the same time period. We rarely buy junk food. I mean it works it's way into the buggy every now and then. This weekend is jammie movie night, so I picked up some sun chips, whole grain crackers and some roasted red pepper hummus. Previously it would have been doritos, ruffles and some delicious full fat chip dip.

It was also my birthday this past week and I celebrated with dinner out at my favourite restaurant, a gift from family. I ordered my favourite dish, enjoyed it immensely and felt zero guilt about it. On my birthday I cooked my very own birthday feast because there were a couple of specific things I wanted to have for dinner. So I cooked them and enjoyed them immensely and felt zero guilt about it. It helped that I did my official weigh in before the birthday feast and lost 2.3 pounds (15.6 lost total).

I used to watch Sandi Richard's show Fixing Dinner all the time and I always loved her closing remarks.... "fixing dinner isn't just about food, it's about family". Sometimes food is more than just fuel for the body. Sometimes it's the experience. Like a birthday feast or an impromptu lunch out with a friend. And I've found in the past four months if you do your best to eat well most of the time it makes those special occasions that much more delicious.

Thanks as always to the lovely Scattered Mom for hosting Food Revolution Fridays. Did you know she was interviewed this past week for an article that appeared in the Globe and Mail? Go take a read it's a great article and not just because she mentions me and the Abster in it. We're the Mom who wants to loose weight the the daughter who I switched to yogurt.

food revolution friday #3

I am starting suspect this food revolution thing is growing larger by the minute. My Mom works for a children's clothing store and she mentioned that there were lots of parents and grandparents buying jammies and clothes instead of chocolate this past Easter. Interesting, don't you think, that they would mention that fact to her while shopping?

People often ask me (and I'm sure Mike as well) how the *diet* is going. I hesitate to correct the terminology, but a diet isn't going to fix anything. A diet makes me think that at some point when I reach my goal weight (whatever that may be, because I really don't have a set number in mind at this point) I can just go back to eating whatever I want. I mean sure I could do that, but I'd be right back where I started in a relatively short amount of time, I would imagine. No this has to be a change for my whole life. Forever. Wow, that sounded a little bit dramatic didn't it? But it's true enough.

Recognizing this as a forever change I've realized that I need to find myself some "not so horrible" treats. I mean who wants to live in a world without chocolate? Not me. My biggest find this week was chocolate pudding. Okay, so I didn't invent chocolate pudding. What I did do is figure out that, 100 calorie chocolate pudding with the addition of some fresh strawberries is a pretty decent imitation of chocolate fondue. All for a mere 2 points, in weight watcher's speak. Thanks to ML for sharing her farmer's market strawberries with me. Mmmm.

And the kids, well they continue making changes too. All with relatively no fuss. Abby has recently decided that she likes toasted egg sandwiches. This past week I bought a carton of golden egg whites. Basically it's egg whites with a small bit of egg yolk powder mixed in to give it the appearance of a beaten egg. I switched it for Abby's regular beaten egg, put it on a toasted whole wheat english muffin and she didn't even notice the difference. Abby only likes one kind of pudding, lemon meringue pie. This week I picked her up lemon meringue yogurt which was deemed a satisfactory replacement. Maya, well she's still a work in progress. We have cut back her milk at the sitter's. She's a great milk drinker, but a horrible eater. Really, though, who wants to eat after drinking a glass or three of milk? Our sitter is great, though and makes sure she's eating a certain portion of her lunch before she gets any more to drink. I think that's our biggest struggle with her - milk vs food - she'll pick milk every time. While I'm sure her bones are strong as steel because of it, it will be nice to have her sit down at the dinner table and, you know, actually eat a meal with us.

And I'll close with a tally update. For Mike, he lost just over 8 pounds. Wow, right?! He's now lost the equivalent of Maya, plus a little bit. As for me, I stayed the same. Which I'll take. I was flipping back through my book and noticed that I really drank very little all last week and more specifically had no green tea. Green tea is a well known weight loss booster, but you need to be drinking a minimum of three cups per day. I know it's been said that a food journal is key, when you're trying to lose weight and eat healthier and after this week I have to agree. It was great to be able to look back over the week and see where I could improve for next week.

Thanks to the fabulous Scattered Mom for hosting Food Revolution Fridays!

it's a revolution #2

So the food revolution continues around here. This week has been pretty exciting because for the first time Maya has been voluntarily stepping out of her box. We had Easter lunch with my Mom this past weekend and I almost fell over in my chair when Maya asked for some sausage and then actually ate it. And then asked for some more. My Mom is Polish, so it's not unheard of to have a plate of cut up kielbasa at the dinner table. It is unheard of for Maya to actually -- you know -- eat any of it. She did the same thing the night we had eggs and turkey sausages for dinner. So it's looking like I'll be able to send her to school in September without worrying that she'll starve to death since she can't take her beloved peanut butter sandwich for lunch.

This Easter weekend was rough for me and not likely in the way you would think. I did well staying on track and lost 1.3 lbs this week. Not bad considering the smattering of chocolate that's been hanging around the house. Oh and the easter bunny sugar cookies I made. And the cake. And the cupcakes.

Here's the deal though. We had two Easter dinners. One with Papa and Grandma Linda and one with Granny. Both completely delicious. And both made me pretty dang "sick". Don't get me wrong, it was all delicious. So delicious. We had scalloped potatoes, ham, carrot casserole, turkey, sausage, broccoli with cheese sauce, stuffing and various assorted vegetables including super yummy brussel sprouts that my sister-in-law makes with bacon and onion.

See the problem?

With the exception of some of the veggies, that's some pretty heavy food on that menu. And afterward my stomach protested greatly. That got me thinking of all the foods that I haven't eaten in the past couple of months - bacon, red meat, white bread, cheddar cheese, and full fat sour cream. Those are the ones I miss the most and to be truthful I don't really miss them all that much. With the exception of the sour cream and the bacon. We tried to have perogies with fat free sour cream and no bacon.... it was awful. Really. And I think my poor Polish grandmother was likely spinning in her grave. I won't be doing that again. But it's all for the greater good right?

it's a revolution

I've mentioned here and there that Mike and I are doing the weight watchers thing. Mike is doing tremendous and has lost 41.8 pounds so far. I can't claim those kinds of numbers, but I have lost a respectable 12 pounds so far. Now if you're paying attention you'll notice that last week I said I had lost 13 pounds. Yep, I gained a pound back. That's what happens when you lose focus my friends.

I could tell you it was because of my messed up sleep patterns this past week. Or that I misplaced my book, so nothing was getting written down. Both of which are true, but what it all boils down to is - I just wasn't putting in the effort. So, I'm regrouping. I found my book and I'm ready to get back on track.

This is about so much more than just losing weight, which is awesome, don't get me wrong, but let's keep in mind that we are parents to two young girls. I don't want them to think it's all about losing weight. So we talk about making healthy choices to be healthier and the positive changes we're making are having a trickle down effect to them.

These kids of mine are picky eaters and if I'm being honest, I'll tell you that we let them be picky eaters. We do. I make them separate meals. I let them refuse to try new foods. I like to think that I'm a pretty good Mom when it comes to raising these girls to be productive functioning members of society. I am willing to be the "bad guy" if it means my kids learn manners and respect for themselves and others, but you know what... when it comes to food I'm a total pushover. I have to stop that. And we have..... well we're working on it. And the shocking part of it is, the girls have been working on it too. I mean it hasn't been without it's hiccups, but so far it's been pretty great.

Yep we've started a food revolution of our own.

Here's some highlights so far......

1. We switched to whole wheat bread. I really thought there would be a mutiny with this, but the kids barely mentioned the switch from white. At Abby's school they have a sub day once a month and I made the switch to whole wheat there too. I almost fell over when Abby came home from school and thanked me for switching her sub to whole wheat because it "tasted so good that way". Why whole wheat and not whole grain? The whole wheat bread we buy has a lower point value than the whole grain. It's hard to have a sandwich if you're dealing with a bread with a high point value. It becomes very "cost prohibitive".

2. I've been trying to make our meals a mix of things I know they'll eat and things they usually turn their nose up at. They are free to eat or not eat anything on their plate, but we have a reasonable expectation that they try a bit of everything. Abby is much more willing on this than Maya. In fact Abby even voluntarily tried a bite of cucumber the other night. She didn't like it, but I was so impressed that she wanted to give it a try. Unheard of!

3. The amount of junk food in this house has decreased significantly. Replaced with healthier snacks. I do still bake cookies and what not. I prefer the kids eat my chocolate chip cookies then store bought. At least I know exactly what's in them. And it gives us an opportunity to teach the kids about "sometimes" foods.

Those are probably the biggest little changes we've made with the kids so far. As they say... it's a marathon not a sprint. We keep plugging away at it. And while there may be set backs, we're just looking to keep the forward momentum going. I mean I may have had a less than stellar week, but today both my kids picked yogurt to have as a snack. Something neither one of them would touch with a 10 foot pole before! So I'm still going to count it as a success.

Thanks to the lovely Scattered Mom for hosting Food Revolution Fridays