Choose My Plate

Nutritional diet resource


Over the years, the food pyramid has changed. The most recent recommendations for foods to eat, as well as portion sizes, was created by the United States Department of Agriculture on the picture of a plate. Their website is called ChooseMyPlate.gov and it has the food groups broken down into fruits, vegetables, grains, proteins, dairy and oils. Oils, however, are not pictured on the plate.

The website encourages consumers to fill at least half of their plates with fruits and vegetables. One fourth should consist of grains, with at least half the grains being whole grains. The other one fourth is meant for proteins. Where does the dairy come in you ask? It is found on the side as a small circle, perhaps representing a glass of milk or a cup of yogurt. The USDA recommends using fat-free or low-fat dairy products.
If you are unsure as to what to prepare, or how many calories to take in each day, the website has recommendations on that as well. In fact, there are several weekly sample menus to give you an idea of what each meal should look like. I find this especially helpful. I like the actually measurements given, which are easy to follow. The website even gives you the option to print the menu out.

Another aspect of ChooseMyPlate.gov that I took advantage of was the free posters and informational brochures. I thought these would be great tools to use with my daughter during health class (she is homeschooled). Of couse, they also ship out packets of brochures and posters for homeschool coop groups or schools.
 

Challenge Yourself: Live Below the Line



Live Below the Line is a charity with an objective to raise awareness on poverty. Participants of this challenge are to live on $1.50 for food per day for a total of five days. That's only $7.50 per person total for the five days.

I agreed to be a part of this challenge when asked by BzzAgent. I have two daughters, which means that the three of us must live on $ 22.50 for the duration of the five days. My hypothesis is that we will be able to eat three meals a day, but they won't be foods that are considered healthy. I'm making this hypothesis based on my observations within the grocery store. Healthy foods tend to cost much more than quick foods, which have little to no health benefits.

One positive for us is that we already drink only water. That means we won't have to spend any money on drinks. I suppose if you only had $1.50 per person to spend on food each day that you would have to forget about buying juice, tea, or coffee anyway.

Here is my menu plan for the three of us for the five days:

Breakfast: 1 box of ShopRite cereal for $1.99 and 1 box of ShopRite Instant Oatmeal for $1.69. I'll need to spend $1.59 on 1 qt. Of ShopRite milk to use with the cereal. I use water with the oatmeal.

Lunch: ShopRite white bread is on sale for $1. I can make sandwiches each day by purchasing a 12 oz. jar of ShopRite peanut butter for $1.79 and an 18 oz. of ShopRite grape jelly at $1.59.

Dinner: Ramen Noodles are $.20 per pack, which means a total of $.60 for the three of us. If we eat that for dinner two nights, we'll need to subtract $1.20 from our budget. We can also get a box of elbow macaroni noodles for $.66 and a jar of pasta sauce for $1.29. That will get the three of us through dinner another two days. The last day we can eat ravioli's in a can for $1.00 a piece (a total of $3). We'll get the meat raviolis, since they contain protein.

We are then left with a total of $6.70, which we can use to buy canned veggies and fruits to have with lunch and dinner. Also, this week ShopRite has an 18 ct. of eggs on sale for $1.88, so I'll purchase that first. After subtracting it from the $6.70, I have a total of $4.82 remaining. We will be able to boil some eggs for snacks. This gives us some much needed protein throughout the day.

ShopRite has canned carrots, peas, and green beans for $.75 a can. Buying 1 can of each of these vegetables leaves me with $2.57. I can get a can of ShopRite fruit cocktail for $1 and two cans of mandarin oranges for $.79 each, but that does put me in the negative a penny. So pretend I found a penny on the street (which my daughter does often).

I strongly urge you to sign-up and take part in this challenge. It is a great way to try and put yourself in someone else's shoes for 5 days.

Note: I used the ShopRite order from home prices for my hometown to plan my menu.

The Lie Of Caramelized Onions

OH MY GOD, I THOUGHT IT WAS JUST ME

Rarely have I been as happy, as personally validated, to read a Slate story as this one: "Layers of Deceit: Why do recipe writers lie and lie and lie about how long it takes to caramelize onions?"
 
I only recently came to this whole "cooking food" thing. For the first, oh, 30 years of my life, I was strictly a processed and pre-packaged food gal. Lean Cuisine for lunch, frozen pizza for dinner, bag of pre-packaged salad (with all the fixins) as a healthy side dish. (What can I say? I was raised as a latchkey kid by a single mother who worked all day, then went to class at night to earn her MBA. My mom didn't have the time or energy to cook, and I certainly wasn't going to bother.)

 
I find that there are a lot of things people just know about cooking, which are rarely actually mentioned in the recipe. You're just supposed to know, for example, that "green peppers" probably means "green bell peppers" and not "jalapenos." You're supposed to know that if a recipe calls for green bell peppers, you can use red or orange if you want it to be even better. For years I didn't use red or orange bell peppers, because recipes always specified "green bell peppers."
 
So this thing about caramelizing onions, I just always assumed I was doing it wrong. And being an inexpert cook at best, I followed the recipe to the letter. If the recipe said to cook the onions for five minutes until they are caramelized, I cooked them for five minutes, end of story. If they weren't exactly caramelized… well, what the heck does that mean, anyway? I assumed that either I wasn't cooking them right, or I just didn't know what "caramelized" meant.
 
But here it turns out I was right all along. If you want your onions brown and tender, which is to say "caramelized," you need to cook them for at least half an hour - probably more like 50 minutes.
 
All those recipes that say otherwise? They lie.
 
This is part of the trend for recipes to be done quickly. In the name of quick meals, recipe writers (or rather, editors) cut a lot of corners that they really shouldn't. But if you don't know, how are you supposed to know? You know?
 
Anyway. Do yourself a favor and REALLY caramelize some onions sometime, to see what you're missing! And mistrust any recipe that says you can do anything meaningful to an onion in only five minutes!

Doritos Jacked: Smoky Chipotle BBQ

Delicious!

As much as I love miniature versions of regular food, I love giant versions better. Like those giant Cheetos puffs and curls they released a while back. Or the giant M&Ms spring to memory. I'm also still hunting down the legendary 5lb Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. I once gave my friend a giant Rice Krispy Brand Treat for her birthday, and she was as tickled by it as I was.
 
So as soon as I saw the first ad for the Doritos Jacked line, I made a mental note to keep an eye out for them in the store. I live in a rural area that usually doesn't get special promotional items until months (sometimes years) after the rest of the country. But I tell you what, I found Doritos Jacked just one week after the first time I saw the commercial. I suppose that speaks to the insane marketing effort behind this particular Dorito product.

 
When I tried Doritos Dinamita chips recently, one of the things I liked about it was that it was a denser chip. Over the years, Doritos chips have remained the same thickness, while losing density. The Doritos people will probably try to claim it's supposed to provide a better crunch for the consumer, but we all know it's so that they can charge the same amount of money for half as much product.
 
As a result, your everyday Doritos chip has become more of a baked foam than anything else. More likely to melt on the tongue than crunch between the teeth.
 
Doritos Jacked corrects this problem. The chips are not thicker than a regular Dorito, but they are much more dense. And slightly larger, too, although not HUGE like the ads led me to believe.
 
Basically, this is a standard tortilla chip - large, crunchy, triangular - with Doritos flavor on it. In other words, it's what Doritos were supposed to be all along. 
 
The Smoky Chipotle BBQ looked like the flavor least likely to set my mouth on fire. (After my Dinamitas experience, I was feeling cautious.) The smoke flavor is very strong, and the chipotle chili is actually allowed to have some heat. I didn't taste much in the way of BBQ flavor, but chipotle and smoke is really all you need. 
 
These gave a sort of rolling heat that let me keep eating the chips, even though my nose was running and my lips were burning. Just enough heat to give it real kick, but not so much that I had to put them down. Devastatingly perfect, in other words! 
 

Combos Baked Snacks

I assume you know the deal with Combos. There is a thing, and it is hollow, and they put something else inside that thing. e

I know you probably won't believe me, since I'm such a fiend for snacks in general. But trust me when I say that before today, I had only eaten Combos once. Back in the 1980s when they first became popular. I didn't like them (I think I tried some kind of Ranch flavor?) and I never tried them again.
 
Aren't our food beliefs and pretensions and fussinesses funny? 
 
The other day at the grocery store when I was picking up bologna to try for the first time in at least 35 years, I passed a big display of Combos on sale. And I thought, "Aw, what the heck." In for a penny, in for a pound, right? As long as we're trying new stuff, let's go all out!

 
The bologna turned out to be a disaster. Disgusting. But I'll tell you something: I was wrong about the Combos, all those years. These things are delicious!
 
I assume you know the deal with Combos. There is a thing, and it is hollow, and they put something else inside that thing. I decided to start simple. Combos come in a bewildering variety of flavors. (My hand hovered over the bag of Pepperoni Pizza flavor for several moments.) I settled on the Cheddar Cheese/Pretzel combination.
 
The pretzels here are fat, about the width of your pinkie or ring finger. They are crunchy and salty and, you know, pretzel-y. Not much you can say about pretzel bits.
 
The filling was a dead ringer for the "cheddar cheese" they put in those cracker sandwich packs. Salty, neon orange, vaguely cheese-flavored, and an interesting texture between spreadable and crumbly. 
 
Taste-wise, these were pretty decent. But the texture is where I really felt these shine. They have the perfect combination of a crispy crunchy outside, and a creamy tender inside. Combine that with the primitive appeal of fat and salt, and you've got yourself a winner! In fact, I ate almost the entire bag before I had realized what was happening. I had to stop myself in order to take the picture above, with the sad last four Combos.
 
The only down side to Combos is the cost, which is surprisingly high. I paid $1.99 (sale price) for a little 7 ounce bag. The bag is about the size of a lunch pack sized bag of potato chips, although the density of the Combos means you get a lot of snacking in there.

Oh, Bologna!

I tried it... and I still don't like it.

Bologna, or its Americanized name "baloney," recently had a star appearance on The Colbert Report. I was stunned as I watched the story on how bologna's prices have risen so fast, and the meat is in such high demand that it has created an opportunity for smuggling black market bologna across the border from Mexico. 
 
I don't like bologna. But as I watched kids on The Colbert Report tuck into their bologna slices with delight, I realized that I literally could not remember the last time I ate some. My earliest bologna-related memory is just a vague feeling of dread at kindergarten that I would get to the lunch table late and have to get stuck with a bologna sandwich. Clearly my opinion had been solidified before the time I was five or six. But at this point, as I near 40, "I hate bologna" was basically just received wisdom.

 
What did I REALLY think of bologna? That's the question I set out to solve. The first thing I thought was, "Dang, this stuff IS expensive." The Oscar Meyer brand was almost $5 for a 9-ounce package. Bologna costs as much as real lunch meat!
 
I quickly discovered that there is literally nothing that I like about bologna. Here is a list of my objections:
  • LOOKS: The pinkish hue is not appealing. It looks both raw and fake. 
  • SIZE: The thickness is off-putting. I prefer lunch meats sliced thinly, deli-style. 
  • METAPHYSICALLY: Oh I get it, this is basically a gigantic hot dog, sliced up for sandwiches. I'm not a big fan of hot dogs.
  • TEXTURE: somewhere in between a slice of foam rubber and a slice of cheese. Oddly foamy yet durable. You can fold it in half and it won't crack.
In order to give bologna a fair hearing, I tried it several different ways:
  • COLD, EATEN STRAIGHT FROM THE PACKAGE: like eating a cold, un-cooked hot dog. Leaves behind a grotesque lard film in your mouth. 
  • COLD, IN SANDWICHES: the best thing I can say about baloney is that it disappeared into my sandwich. I had no idea what I was eating. It was so bland, it got overpowered by the slice of medium cheddar cheese.
  • FRIED, EATEN STRAIGHT FROM THE PAN: fairly sopping with rendered fat. Frying it makes it taste even saltier than usual. Disgustingly slithery on the tongue, like a hot raw oyster.
  • FRIED, ADDED TO A HOMEMADE EGG-AND-TOAST BREAKFAST SANDWICH: makes a salty, greasy breakfast even saltier and greasier, and not in a nice way.
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Side salads for spring

Although salads are delicious all year long, I find myself making more of them during the spring months. There are so many different options and combinations that you never have to create the same salad twice.

First, I usually start with a pasta. The type of pasta I use depends on the rest of the ingredients I intend to add. Sometimes I'll use elbows, while other times rotini fits better. Of course, if I need to add color to the salad, I'll use tri-colored pasta.

Second, I decide if I am going to add a protein, or just veggies. Whether I use protein or not, I always add vegetables. Celery, onions, carrots, green peppers and olives often make their way into my side salads. Options for protein include chicken, tuna, kielbasa, turkey, ham, bacon and egg slices.

Third, I create a dressing for the side salad. Whether I use a mayonnaise based dressing, or an oil based salad dressing is once again based on the ingredients I created the side salad with. If I'm making a tuna salad, for example, I'll typically always use mayonnaise. If I use kielbasa or ham, however, I'll stick with an oil and vinegar type dressing.

Finally, I often top the side salad with a bit of cheese. I tend to use Swiss cheese with ham, but switch up the other cheeses with the rest of my salads. Sometimes I use cheddar or Monterey Jack, but other times I'll stick with blue cheese or Parmesan cheese.

As you can see, there are countless combinations that can be made from a wide variety of ingredients. Start experimenting and keep track of the side salads that your family raves about. Then you will easily be able to duplicate them in the future.

 

Homemade Pink Lemonade

I don't know what it is about pink lemonade that attracts children, but mine prefer it over traditional lemonade. Although using the powder lemonade drink mix is convenient, it doesn't have the flavor that we crave on a hot summer day. That is why we make our own pink lemonade.

You will need the following ingredients to make your own pink lemonade:

  • 1 cup cold water
  • ¼ cup granulated sugar
  • ¼ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
  • ½ tsp. grenadine syrup
  • 1 cherry
  • 2 ice cubes

Follow these instructions to make your own glass of pink lemonade:

Step 1:
Pour eight ounces of cold water in a tall glass.

Step 2:
Add the granulated sugar and stir until the sugar is dissolved.

Step 3:
Pour the freshly squeezed lemon juice in the glass, along with the grenadine syrup. Strain your lemon juice first if you notice any pulp or seeds where left behind. If you don't have fresh lemons, you can use bottled lemon juice.

Step 4:
Stir the contents in your glass to reveal your homemade pink lemonade.

Step 5:
Decorate the glass before serving by dropping in a cherry. You'll also want to add ice cubes to keep the pink lemonade cool.

There are plenty of other versions to this recipe, such as using grape or cranberry juice. Feel free to modify it to meet the tastes of your family. My girls and I love Shirley Temple drinks, and because of that we are fond of using the grenadine syrup.

Tip: Use a sugar substitute if you have diabetes or just need to watch your sugar intake.

 

I can't get enough of Chopped



Chopped is a unique cooking show that airs on the Food Network. The show begins with four contestants, who must cook an appetizer from several mystery ingredients that are brought out of a picnic basket at the beginning of the challenge. The chef with the worst appetizer is then chopped, or eliminated from the show.

Next, the three remaining contestants are issued a new challenge with new ingredients. They must prepare a dinner for each of the three judges. Once again, the chef with the least appealing dinner is chopped.

The final stage of the competition is a showdown between the two remaining contestants, who must create a delicious dessert from the mystery ingredients. The chef with the best dessert wins the show.

I don't normally sit and watch cooking show after cooking show, but I can certainly sit for a marathon of Chopped. I think what grabs my attention the most is the strange ingredients that are pulled from the basket. Many of the items are foods that I have never even heard of. Some are just foods that I have never had the chance to prepare.

During Chopped, many of the chefs explain why they choose to create a certain dish with the ingredients that were presented to them. They inform us viewers about complimentary foods. I believe that information is going to help me prepare more scrumptious meals for my family.

I don't personally have the Food Network, but I do get to watch episodes online via Hulu. Last night I watched one of the All-Stars episodes. I loved it because I recognized most of the chefs and loved seeing them in competition with each other.  
 

Add flavor to your next cup of coffee

Purchasing flavored coffees and creamers can become quite expensive, especially if you like more than one flavor. Fortunately, you can add flavor to your coffee naturally at home with ingredients you most likely already own.

I've been drinking coffee since the age of 14. My 12-year-old also loves coffee, although at this age I only allow her to have a cup maybe once every other week. I believe we get our love of this hot beverage from my mom, who drinks about eight cups of coffee a day. Too much caffeine gives me the shakes, so I stick with one cup a day. Every once in awhile, I get the urge to add some flavor to my coffee. I found out that it is quite easy to do.

First, you'll want to prepare your coffee and place it in a coffee filter. I purchase my coffee already ground, but I do know some individuals that prefer to grind their own coffee beans.

Next, you need to decide what flavor you want to add. My favorite is cinnamon, but my daughter prefers cocoa. Of course, there are plenty of other options, such as vanilla or peppermint.

Finally, add the flavor of your choice directly to the coffee grinds in the coffee filter. Brew immediately for a fresh cup. When I add cinnamon to my coffee I'll sprinkle ½ teaspoon in with the coffee grinds. The amount you add really depends on how weak or strong you like your coffee.

It may take a few cups of coffee to figure out exactly how to get the flavor to fit your specific tastes, but once you do, you'll be able to create a perfect cup of flavored coffee every time.

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