Easy Monday Night Dinner

Monday is my long day.  This means that I drive an hour to and from work to a satellite location of my clinic and hubby picks up the kids (unless I get out early).  Not only is it a long day, but it always gets longer the minute I walk in the door and start getting the "mommy, mommy, mommy" demands that come with my arrival!

Last night I walked in the door at 6.  The kids were already snacking because they always come home from school STARVING despite the fact that they are well fed all day!
They asked for dinner immediately so I turned on the oven to cook some dinosaur-shaped all white meat chicken nuggets and threw a sweet potato in the microwave.

I opened the fridge...what to make, what to make?

I gathered the following ingredients:
organic mesclun mix
2 persian mini cucumbers
bacon
gorgonzola cheese
eggs

also pulled together: craisins, croutons.

Hard boiled 5 eggs and cooked 4 pieces of turkey bacon.
This is what resulted:

Quick Cobb Salad!

Voila!

As an aside, I threw croutons and some light Caesar dressing on top.

By the way, if I had thought ahead, I could have hard boiled the eggs the day before which would have saved me 20 minutes in food prep.  Next time...

Bon appetit!

On another note

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-women-should-embrace-a-good-enough-life/2013/04/18/4b2b086c-a5db-11e2-a8e2-5b98cb59187f_story.html

This article is floating around Facebook land today.

This isn't strictly a matter of Realistic Food, but more like realistic living!
This has been a "tirade" of mine for a while now.  Each of us trying to be the best, most organized, healthiest, most Lululemon wearing mom in the PTA, while holding down a full time job associated with an advanced degree...WE CAN'T DO IT ALL!  YOU CAN'T HAVE IT ALL. 
You absolutely CAN'T be the best mom, wife, in my case - doctor, in the world.  You can do each thing really well on any given day, usually at the cost of the other(s).

Once youb accept that you CAN'T do it all, you will be able to do each thing better, or at least with less guilt associated with each thing getting done at about 80% (or less).

Take a breath, have a glass (or three) of wine and just do your best!  These high powered multi-millionaire CEO women who think they can preach to regular people about how we should all strive to be at the top of a corporation...well, I could tell you what I think they should do, but it isn't appropriate!  Their advice doesn't apply to 99.9% of us.  I won't even feed into the nonsense by buying/downloading their books.  They are just there to further make the rest of us feel badly about waht we do well!

Every day, strive to be your best. In the spirit of this blog, be realistic - in food, in life, in relationships.  Accept what you can't do and do everything else as best you can.

Goodnight :)
p.s. excuse the many grammatical errors in this post.  Tirades just have to roll, no editing!

School lunch services

Well, people, I kept you waiting quite a long time in between posts and am trying to get better!

In addition to a new post, I am changing fonts.  I just thought maybe a new font would spice things up a bit!

Many people grapple with the school lunch challenge - balancing time, money and nutrition.

"Hey, sweet graphic", you are thinking, right?

So, on any given day, the balance of these factors shifts.
One day, you might have very little time, and nutritional status of the lunch might suffer because of that.  Or, you try to make a very nutritionally-sound lunch, which increases both time and money in some instances.

And then there's the old adage..."time is money".  This is also true.  We are so busy these days with two working parents and kids running off to 8 billion activities, time truly is money. 
So, in any case, here are some more thoughts on school lunches and some creative ways that people have developed to handle the challenging balance of time, money and nutrition.

There have been sweeping changes in school lunch rules in recent years.  While most of these federally mandated changes technically apply only to the free and reduced breakfast and lunch program, it has brought to the forefront a focus on increasing the nutritional value of the food that our kids eat at school.

One interesting way that people have chosen to deal with the challenge of balancing time, money and nutrition are with school lunch delivery services.

These exist mostly in the big (read: HIP) cities in the U.S.  Let's just say, New Haven doesn't have one!

Let's take a look at what these services offer:
Smart Lunches: http://www.smartlunches.com/
This Boston-based service offers delivery to students and teachers in Greater Boston, North Shore, South Shore and Western Massachusetts. 
This service allows you to order healthy lunches that will be delivered directly to your child's school. 
From their website:
"Depending on category, size, and whether sides are included, main menu items range in price from $4.00 to $7.50. Healthy drinks and snacks are available as add-ons at most schools. "
Their website seems really easy to use and their FAQ page is totally complete and helpful!

So, yeah, this may cost more per lunch than what you would pay if you made the lunch at home (do some quick math here, one week's worth of bread plus sandwich makings plus fruit plus yogurt/applesauce/etc divided by a five day week...maybe comes to $2.00 per day?)
However, in the schematic above, this money does buy you TIME and guaranteed NUTRITION!

Something to think about...

In other cities:
Seattle: The Midnight Kitchen
http://www.themidnightkitchen.com/lunch.html
I love the name of this company because it makes me think of the reason why I make lunches while making dinner each night - I simply don't want to be up until midnight making the lunches for the next day!
I like that this company states that they use BPA/phthalate-free lunch boxes from www.easylunchboxes.com and utensils by Light My Fire that are sanitized daily...that's the west coast for ya!
I can't quite tell what the daily cost is for these lunches on their website.

Los Angeles: Fresh Lunches
http://www.freshlunches.com/
While their website font is WAY too small and difficult to read, I do like this little graphic!

I also can't tell what these lunches cost, but they do state that the cost is comparable to home-made lunches.
They seem to have easy online ordering.

Portland: Smarter Sprout
http://www.smartersprout.com/
Again, the west coast devoted to healthy eating for our kids!  I can't tell what the daily cost is, but they also offer easy online ordering.  Easy, large-font website.
Like some of the other services, they address the important issue of food allergies.

So, this phenomenon seems to have gone from west to east coast, as evidenced by the ease with which I found west coast services.  I bet there are a gazillion in NYC, but typical of The City, the information isn't easily accessible to an outsider!

Like I said before, we don't have such a service in New Haven, CT.  If we did, I would seriously consider using it.  Over the past several months I have made it my mission to become familiar with my own nutritional needs, in addition to those of family.  I haven't purchased a Lunchable in ages, and instead make "homemade Lunchables" for my 6 year old and other vegetarian options for the little one. 

Time is money.  Money is time.  Time is nutrition...and so forth!

You decide.  Are these services worth it?

Bon Appetit!

 

Another lunch box I found

http://m.easylunchboxes.com/

A very cute lunchbox - ZULILY

This is a shameless plug for Zulily. 

You can follow the link below to buy, and yes, I will get credit for you joining and buying from zulily, but that is not why I am sharing this! 

Super cute, BPA-free, phthalate-free lunch box!  A little pricey, but seems like a good deal overall.

http://www.zulily.com/invite/rfortune511/p/orange-lunchbox-deluxe--43253-626865.html?tid=social_email_ref_shareviaicon_na_modal_3c952476a6da24b215d62fa12a4a1c3c&pid=626865
Excuse me, while I go buy two of these for my kids!

Have a great day!

What we pack our lunches in...and other confusing questions

Hi Everyone

Sorry for the hiatus!  I mean, really, who starts a blog and then disappears without completing the promised topics?  ME!  That's who.  Due to circumstances beyond my control, I haven't been able to continue the discussion on school lunch, but here I am, back as promised.

I have spent a lot of time reading and thinking about BPA, phthalates and all the other yucky stuff that is reportedly present in the products in which we store our food.  It's really gross when you think about it.  But, the information changes so rapidly that it is hard to follow and know what to react to.

So, here's the deal, as I see it.

The studies on BPA are new, and not totally conclusive.  Some people think that BPA is just an environmental risk and others are totally scared by the studies showing traces of plastics found in our blood (eeew).

BPA is a chemical used in the production of plastics to make hard plastics (think old Nalgene water bottles).  BPA is also used to line the inside of many canned food containers to prevent acids in the foods from damaging the aluminum.  So, by logical extension of this information, unless you eat NO canned foods and use NO plastics, you will likely have some BPA in your blood (again, a gross idea). 
BPA has been linked to metabolic derangements and cancer.

So, how do you know if your plastics contain BPA?  Well, as with these two examples below, many things now say "No BPA" if that is the case.

If you have found a random piece of plastic in your cabinet and don't have a clue if it contains BPA, you can look at the bottom and figure out if it contains BPA.  The plastics that contain BPA are #7:

When plastics are heated, the harmful chemical can leach into food that is stored within that plastic.

It is best to not microwave the BPA-containing plastics!  Also, even washing these plastics on the top rack could be dangerous - plastics should be handwashed!

If you want to send your kids' lunches in plastics, that is ok.  Just use something that doesn't contain BPA, for sure!

Recently, my mom bought these containers for my kids:

They are very cute with owls on the top - and BPA/phthalate free...

And, that brings us to phthalates.  Yet another nasty thing in plastics!  yuck! 

So, in short - # 7 plastics are bad.  If you have them, don't microwave them.  If you have them, hand wash them.  Also, for other # plastics...just don't microwave them!

Next post...phthalates!  Woohoo!