A New Freezer, and What's in Your Fridge?

We bought a freezer on Thursday night. Yup, major purchase. I've been wanting one for a few months now, particularly since I've gotten more into couponing and cooking. Oftentimes I have to pass up deals at the store because I just don't have the freezer room at home (Dreyer's ice cream was on sale for $2.37 at Kroger!) or I have to forgo cooking a big batch of something because I don't have the space to store it.

Now, I know what you're thinking. Spending a bunch of money on a freezer in order to save a few dollars at the store doesn't make sense. Yes, you're right. It will take me quite awhile to recoup the money we spent on the freezer. But we will recoup it. I'll be able to buy fresh berries in bulk when they are in season and freeze them instead of spending an arm and a leg on them in the winter. I'll be able to buy chicken when it's on sale at $1.99 or less per pound and not have to give in and buy it at $2.99 or more. I can make more pizza dough, pasta sauce, and casseroles, and ultimately have to cook less. That's appealing.

And I must admit that one of the reasons that I wanted a freezer is organization. I really like things to be organized, and my freezer right now is anything but. Yes, I try to keep veggies on one shelf and fruits on another, but in the end stuff just gets shoved in wherever it will fit. And more times than not, something falls on your foot when you open the door.

The new freezer is a Kenmore Elite-- 20.6 cubic feet, upright, Energy Star, self-defrosting, with multi-port air baffles, a door lock, an electronic display and temperature sensors. It holds up to 711 pounds of food. Whoa. (Yes, we got it on a good 20% off sale.) It will be delivered Monday, and I can't wait to fill it up. :)

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I think it's very insightful to look inside someone's fridge. And since I've been writing about refrigeration, I thought I'd give you a peek at some of the things that you can always find inside our fridge. (Bear with me on the photos, as they are not MckMama quality! I took them a bit too hastily.)


On the top shelf, we always have at least 3 gallons of milk. Isaac drinks whole milk (as all kiddos should until they are 2), Caleb drinks 1%, and Scott and I drink skim.



We always have at least two large containers of yogurt in our fridge. I buy the organic whole milk kind for Isaac (he eats some every day), and the organic low-fat or non-fat vanilla kind for Caleb and me. I keep some little containers of flavored yogurt for Scott.



I would not like to live life without coffee. And we buy Yuban when it's on a good sale. It's bold and flavorful, and it's certified by the Rainforest Alliance. It would be much better for the environment and those who work in coffee fields to buy organic, fair-trade coffee, but I just can't afford it. If you know of an affordable one, let me know!



Ezekiel 4:9 are our favorite tortillas. In case you don't know the Biblical reference, here's the verse: "Take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt; put them in a storage jar and use them to make bread for yourself." Well, the people at Food for Life who make these tortillas (and the other Ezekiel products) took these words seriously. They are made from sprouted grains, which are more nutrient-dense than flour. The tortillas are actually a complete protein. Interesting stuff, and scrumptious, too!



Hummus. Yummus. Scott actually won't eat it, which is a shame. And technically I'm not supposed to let Isaac have it, either, since it's made from sesame seeds. But...he has it now and then, with no signs of allergies. ;) I like hummus on carrots, celery, red pepper, and bread.



Now this is a really bad picture, but here is the applesauce section of our fridge. We always have some plain organic applesauce, which I use for baking (any time a recipe calls for oil, I nix it and use applesauce instead). I keep some sort of flavored organic applesauce as well (this one is blackberry applesauce), and I add it to Isaac's cereal (typically either rice, oatmeal, quinoa, or barley) in the mornings.



I also add a little of this to Isaac's cereal and to my own oatmeal in the mornings. It's ground flax meal. I buy flax seeds in bulk, and about every 3 weeks I'll grind up a few cups. Ground flax meal is a great source of omega-3 fatty acids, especially for those of us who don't eat enough fish. It also has tons of fiber and other great nutrients. I have about 2 tablespoons each day, and Isaac has about 1 teaspoon.



Wheat germ goes in Isaac's oatmeal and mine, too. It, like flax meal, is actually very good tasting, even though it sounds strange.



I am not a big fan of juice (nutritionally speaking), but Caleb doesn't like plain water. So we mix about 2 ounces of juice with 8 ounces of water to dilute it. Caleb doesn't know the difference. He will only drink white grape or apple, though I'm trying to get him to branch out.



And last but not least, I keep my whole wheat flour in the fridge. Wheat flour goes rancid faster than normal flour, so it's best to keep it in the fridge. I use whole wheat flour in cookies, breads, pizza dough, cobblers--pretty much anything I bake. Using it in place of all-purpose "enriched" white flour is an easy substitute that greatly boosts the nutritional value of your foods.


Now it's your turn. Leave me a comment or make your own blog post about what's in YOUR fridge!

Progress!!

I've posted before about Caleb's horrible food habits. The list of foods that he'll actually eat is pretty short, especially for a 3-year-old. Isaac eats just as many (if not more) foods than Caleb.

But things have taken a turn in the past few weeks. At the end of March, we went out to lunch at Tin Star with some dear friends of ours, Lin and CaLyn. Caleb had a quesadilla--which in an of itself is a pretty new form of food for him. But then he took a french fry and, at CaLyn's encouragement, dipped it into ketchup and ATE it! I know, I know, it's still junk food. But before that point, Caleb never would have dipped any one food into another food. Any time we suggested it, he looked at us like we were crazy.

A week or so after that, I had some chips and queso from Taco Cabana. (We eat healthily around here most of the time, but we do have our vices!) He has always liked chips and asks for them whenever I get them. This time, I told him he could have one if he'd dip it in the cheese first. I expected a flat refusal, but he complied! And he liked it! Ever since then, he has loved chips with queso!

And here comes the real biggie in my book: on Wednesday night, I hosted a pizza party for some of the kids at Awana for meeting a Scripture memory goal. I told Caleb a few days before hand that he could go to the party with me, and that there would be big kids there eating pizza. "I want to eat pizza, too!" he kept saying. He's said stuff like this before, then balked at the actual tasting, so I didn't hold my breath. But sure enough, at the party he loaded a plate with a piece of pizza, went to sit down without me, then called from across the room, "Mommy, I'm eating pizza!" I went over to see him, and I just about cried. My child was eating the same meal I was! There is hope that we can all eat the same food together at the dinner table someday!

After the pizza party, I had to lead Awana, so Caleb went to childcare. I had brought some snacks for him to have during the pizza party if he had refused to eat the pizza, and I gave those to his teacher in case he got hungry later. I had forgotten that there was some blackberry pomegranate yogurt in the bag--a snack I had intended for me. When I picked Caleb up from childcare, his teacher said, "Caleb ate all of his yogurt." I just stood there, with what I'm sure was a very stupid look on my face. "He ate that yogurt? Wow!"

Caleb actually likes yogurt, but until now he's always just wanted plain yogurt with no flavoring. If he'll eat flavored yogurt now, I can make him some with real fresh fruit in there! I can hide all sorts of nutrition in yogurt if he'll let me. He ended up having not one but two more of those flavored yogurt containers the next day. (Which is great because he's currently on an antibiotic.) I hope that he's not stuck on it being in a commercial container, but we'll see.

All in all, I am SO pleased with his progress. We are finally getting somewhere! Please pray that he'll continue to try new foods--and that not all of them will be junk!

Book Review: Super Baby Food; A Day's Worth of Food for Isaac

I have been trying to educate myself as much as I can on nutrition so I can improve our eating habits and raise Isaac to be a healthy eater. One of my favorite bloggers, MckMama, is an inspiration in the area of childhood nutrition. She feeds her kids all sorts of healthy fare (and they gobble it up gleefully), so I snatched up her suggestion and bought the book Super Baby Food by Ruth Yaron.

Overall, the book has helped me a great deal. It has a section on making your own baby cereal (she calls it Super Porridge, which I'll get into later) that I have put to daily use in our house. She tells you how to incorporate stuff into your baby's diet that I wouldn't have known what to do with--lentils, dried beans, flax meal, wheat germ, kale, tofu, etc. On top of that, it's actually pretty easy, too! It's worth the time to read and learn how to make your own homemade "Super Baby Food." It's tons cheaper and healthier than that jarred stuff.

I can't recommend the book without a few caveats:

• She recommends giving babies and toddlers nuts and seeds. In most pediatricians' eyes, this is a big no-no! She does encourage you to get your pedi's advice before starting any meal plan, but I wish she'd left out the nuts and seeds. When I asked my pedi about the book and whether I could give those things to Isaac after he turned a year, she looked at me like I was crazy. The only seed she approved was flax seed.
  
• The book is not well-organized and is very wordy. She incoporates lots of "tips" which largely just take up space.
• Sometimes she makes things sound overly complicated. She'll go on for a couple of pages about how to do something, when basically it can be summed up with, "Put the whole oats in the blender. Blend for 2 minutes. Voila! You have ground oatmeal! "
  

She advocates feeding the baby "Super Porridge" in the morning, which is the main meal. It's just cooked oatmeal, rice, or some other grain mixed with fruit, veggies, and/or other nutritional stuff. Here's what mine looks like that I make for Isaac:




He LOVES this. It's ground oatmeal, organic cherry applesauce, flax meal, and wheat germ. I change it up and use different fruits or grains, but this is the crux of it. (If you're interested, the oatmeal part is easy, but it does take a few minutes. Boil 1 cup of water in a small pot. Once it starts boiling, reduce the heat to low. Sprinkle 1/4 cup of ground oatmeal in the water. Stir. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occassionally.) You can't tell in the pic, but that's a big adult-sized cereal bowl. He eats the whole thing!!

Yaron recommends having a second meal based on yogurt, and we typically do that. I buy organic whole milk yogurt (whatever is on sale at Sprouts!) and mix it with whatever fruit I have on hand--some combination of peaches, bananas, strawberries, kiwi, or blueberries. I load it all in my trust mini food processor (this thing is the workhorse of my kitchen and gets used at least once a day!) and blend away.



It winds up looking something like this:




Making this for Isaac's lunch is good for me, too. After I make his, I make some for myself (with nonfat vanilla yogurt, fruit, wheat germ, flax, and sunflower seeds). Yum!!

Once your baby can handle a little bit chunkier food, you can just buy bags of frozen fruit (with no icky preservatives!) and keep them in the freezer. When it's time to make the yogurt smoothie, grab your frozen fruit, add a fresh banana or whatever you have on hand, and blend!

I also make my own veggie and fruit cubes. This is the part that saves me some serious money. For example, I spent about $4 on one big organic butternut squash, and I got this gallon-sized bag of baby food out of it. It's the equivalent of at least a dozen of those level 2 baby food jars.



Yaron covers pretty much every type of veggie and fruit puree in her book, or you can go here to learn how to make several of them. The easiest ones to me (and the ones that are almost always in my freezer) are squash, sweet potatoes, blueberries, peas, and carrots. I use these ice cube trays (I actually verified with the company that they contain no BPA) that have covers on them to freeze my purees, then I just store the cubes in freezer bags.

Isaac normally eats about 6 cubes of veggies at dinner, then finishes the meal off with some Cascadian Farms Purely O's (the best organic O-shaped cereal, with no sugar added). He has some of those or some other finger food at lunch, too. We'll be working in some more beans and tofu soon. He also has a scrambled or hard-boiled egg a couple of times a week.

Well, there you have it! That's what Isaac eats in a day, influenced greatly by Ruth Yaron's book Super Baby Food.

A Call for Help

Dear readers, I am at my wits' end. I am hoping that some of you out there have been in my shoes and can offer some advice.

Caleb, our 3-year-old, refuses to eat fruits and vegetables. In fact, he refuses to eat most foods, but the fruits and vegetables are the biggest problem. Here are the foods Caleb will eat:

• whole wheat bread
• crackers--lots of different kinds
  
• tortillas
  
• Corn Chex
  
• Fruity Cheerios
• pretzels
• pancakes--I make banana pancakes to get a little fruit in there
  
• bacon--we only give him turkey bacon that is nitrite and nitrate-free
• deli ham--specific brands only, nitrite and nitrate-free
• deli turkey--specific brands only
• cubed or sliced cheese--pretty much any hard cheese
• grilled cheese sandwiches--only homemade
• bananas--if bribed
• plain low-fat yogurt
  
• raisins--once a month maybe he'll consent to eating one
• fruit leather--he's eaten this 2 or 3 times, but usually leaves it untouched
  
• rice cakes--chocolate
• Quaker Oatmeal Squares--banana flavor only
• Chick FilA chicken strips--not nuggets, not any other type of chicken
• peanut butter crackers--sometimes--and he's had a peanut butter sandwich once
• Apple juice, very diluted (2 oz juice, 8 oz water)
  
• 1% or 2% milk
  

That's just about it. He'll eat some junk food if we'd let him--chips, fries, cookies, chocolate--but of course we try to keep that stuff away from him. He won't eat pasta, pizza, fish, beef, eggs, or pretty much anything I serve the rest of the family. Isaac, at 1 year, eats a much wider variety of foods than Caleb ever has.

Caleb didn't like fruits, veggies, and meats much even as a baby. He loved pureed sweet potatoes, and he loved yogurt mixed with apple/blueberry baby food. But gradually he stopped eating those things.

I know that part of his problem is my fault. When he started solids, I didn't push the finger foods. Sure, I gave him things like Cheerios and those Gerber puffs, but I didn't give him diced banana, carrot, pear, grapes, avocado, etc. like Isaac gets on a regular basis. I just didn't educate myself enough then.

By the time I had Isaac, I had decided to really change the way we were eating in our house. Now we eat organic foods whenever possible, we eat a lot of fruits, veggies, and nuts, we use flax seed in our meals, etc. Isaac is growing up with these things as the norm. Caleb got set in his bad habits and we let him. NOW what? We've been trying to alter his diet for at least 1.5 years--half of his life--and it hasn't gotten very far.

I know other moms who are able to sneak veggies in their kids' pasta sauces and things like that. But Caleb doesn't really eat "mixed" foods.

The way he eats is so embarrassing to me. I mean, here's a typical diet for me: on Thursday (before I got the flu and stopped eating), I had

• Raisin Bran with skim milk for breakfast
• Carrots with hummus and a fruit smoothie (nonfat yogurt, strawberries, blueberries, bananas, flaxseed oil, wheat germ) for lunch
• Trail mix for a snack (raw almonds, raw cashews, raisins, M&Ms)
• Baked salmon, peas, and orange-glazed carrots (I know, I was craving the carrots that day!) for dinner
• Air-popped popcorn for a late night snack while hubby and I watched a movie

If Caleb would eat even some of that, I'd be THRILLED!

I was so excited when I saw the Parenting magazine cover for this month. It says, "Got a Picky Eater? Makeovers that Work." I quickly opened it up and read through the article. Man, was I disappointed. Evidently they went to a preschool and had all the moms write down what their kids eat for a whole week. They took the "pickiest" eater and put her week's menu in the magazine, and they had a nutritionist offer suggestions on how to make the kid eat better.

But guess what this kid eats! Waffles, orange juice, pizza, ravioli, chicken breast, chicken nuggets, rice, rice pudding, cranberry juice, apples, mac and cheese, pears, brisket with gravy, matzo-ball soup, corn....

That's the pickiest kid they could find???? I was so disheartened.

So, dear readers, if any of you have ideas on how to get Caleb to eat better, please share them with me. I would be so thankful. Every meal turns into a battle, and I don't want it that way. Should we see a nutritionist? Have any of you done that?