I've upgraded: Homemade "uncrustables"

I picked up this little gadget a while back and have been meaning to share it on the blog. I have an old post from 2010 that shows me making homemade uncrustable style PB& J sandwiches using a wine glass. The things I can come up with when working with just what I have in my kitchen! Hey, it worked. They looked just like the ones you buy in the box. A couple of years and many wine glass made sandwiches later I was in a grocery store and noticed a interesting square shaped plastic thingy hanging on the shelf. As I got closer I noticed the Wonder logo and something on the small tag that told me what it was. I was pretty excited about finding it. Definitely because it did what I was doing in a quicker fashion but also because it was like $3. Maybe $4 but either way it was affordable. I haven't looked back since. And because we took a long break from making this style of PB& J's, the kids didn't think twice about it being a square not a circle.

If you run across one of these,  I would recommend getting it. It is less expensive than the other one I saw here and it hasn't let me down yet. I hand wash it but it's dishwasher safe. A couple of things to remember is not to overfill your sandwich. It will make sealing it tough or you can end up with a rip in the bread. A standard size/shape piece of bread fits perfectly. The more rectangle pieces as well as the kind of small pieces of bread don't always work. I make up four to six at a time, put them in a freezer bag with a piece of parchment or wax paper between them and throw in the freezer. Easy, easy.

Resist the Lunchables

With back to school time in full swing, let's talk Lunchables. I'll start on my soapbox. I figure it's best to come out swinging and lighten up from there! I've read and heard more than a handful of people talking about giving their children Lunchables for snack and/or lunch. The conversations are sort of matter of fact, you know, like it's the norm. I also see ones where it seems the parents are either near burnout or have given up.

What confuses me the most is the amount of people okay with feeding their children this highly processed, who knows where the "food" came from, always has a treat, salty tray of food product. I can understand the temptation to reduce some of your workload during the school year as well as save a buck or two but does it have to come in the form of highly processed food that is not providing proper nutrition to the kiddos and ruining their palate at the same time? For me, it's about nutrition as well as teaching my kids healthy eating habits. Processed meat, cheese and crackers with a water (with "Kool-Aid to sprinkle in a little flavor and fun") and some Jell-o and cookies to top it off is not healthy and certainly will not assist our children with learning how to make healthy food choices.

I usually say this somewhere in a post like this - I'm the Medium Food Mama, not Totally Green, Organic and Crunchy Mama. I appreciate the need for some convenience and the occasional packaged food (can we say Mac & Cheese?) but providing a steady diet of highly processed "kid food" is not good for anyone. I also understand budget. And it truly frustrates me that crappy food is the cheapest food. Better organized people may beg to differ with crappy food being the most affordable because well, you can grow some of your own produce, join a co-op or eat organic rice, beans and veggies most of the time BUT it's just not feasible for a lot of folks. I looked into a co-op myself and it was too expensive to join. I also make a lot of my own versions of convenience foods, not all of it turns out to be less expensive. I walked by a cold case of Lunchables at Target this morning and the price I saw was $1.52. A "meal" (in a lot of people's minds) for a buck fifty is likely gonna trump a sandwich on whole wheat with organic turkey, organic produce and avocado with a side of organic fruit for a lot of people. Unfortunately.

The Lunchables facebook page has almost 590,000 likes. Kraft Macaroni & Cheese has over one million. Pages for companies that offer healthier convenience foods for kids like Plum Organics (84,800), Annie's Home Grown (285,800), Amy's (49,300), Clif Bar (110,850) and Nature's Path (267,700) have significantly less followers. So is it about money or lack of nutrition knowledge or just plain denial? I'm not sure yet. From my rookie research though, I lean towards it being a bit of each with a little nostalgia and comfort mixed in.

The challenge of eating healthy on a budget and with little ones that may be a little picky is not going to go away but in my opinion items like Lunchables can. There are plenty of alternatives to these yucky little trays. Here's a few links to give you some ideas.

Mom's Plan
Weelicious
Easy Lunchboxes
The Nourishing Home

The Slow Cook

I was on one of my favorite sites, tastespotting.com, and found yet another fabulous site, theslowcook.com. I have found some really cool sites and blogs via TasteSpotting, you know by clicking on one thing then finding your way to something else and then something else?

While exploring The Slow Cook site, I started reading about Ed Bruske's experience at the Berkeley Schools central kitchen. We live all of 15 minutes from Berkeley which made it even more interesting for me. I wanted to share a section from the story that illustrates the way I feel we should approach food and one of the reasons why I started Medium Food Mama.

...Why go to all that trouble? 

Indeed, it was precisely this question that I came to Berkeley to answer, because it was here that Alice Waters, the fairy godmother of cooking fresh food from local, seasonal ingredients, made her imprint on the public school cafeteria. Her influence continues to reverberate around the country inspiring school districts, farm to school programs, even first lady and White House gardener-in-chief Michelle Obama.

But in case you thought the Berkeley school menu was just a copy of the one at Waters’ internationally famous restaurant–Chez Panisse–located just a few blocks from the central school kitchen, you need to check those inclinations fast. As I quickly learned, kid preferences exert an enormous influence even in schools where food is fresh-cooked, because Berkeley schools still depend on subsidies from the federal government. Like every other school in the federal meals program, they need to “sell” as much of that epic chicken as possible. Each student who qualifies for a free lunch and takes the chicken earns the school district a $2.68 payment from Uncle Sam.

Thus, at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School you will see pizza on the menu twice a week, Monday and Friday. Pizza is, hands down, the favorite food of school children nationwide. In most schools, kids get a reheated frozen pizza made in a factory with a ton of industrial additives. In Berkeley the pizza is made in the central kitchen using a whole wheat crust, real mozzarella cheese, marinara sauce made with freshly chopped onion, celery and carrots. And instead of being topped with frozen, factory-made pepperoni, as in my daughter’s school in D.C., here it’s fixed with turkey sausage also made from scratch using whole turkey and seasonings. One variety of Berkeley pizza even comes with pesto.

Nachos are served every Friday. But they are not the ones you see at other schools–fried chips doused with processed orange cheese. The Berkeley nachos start with baked corn chips, but forget about the Dayglo cheese. Instead there’s a meat mix of beef, turkey and soy protein, accompanied by a side of freshly cooked brown rice and re-fried beans. Tacos, also with brown rice and beans, are served every Monday as an alternative to the pizza. And there’s plenty of pasta to be eaten over the course of a week, but Berkeley pasta involves freshly grated cheeses and sauces that start with home-made vegetable stock, just like in a first-class restaurant.

Alice Waters might cringe at the way her food rules have been bent to accommodate juvenile tastes. But executive chef Bonnie Christensen says her menu addresses the main concern of Berkeley parents who lobbied for the change. They were appalled by the frozen processed foods being served in school loaded with fat, salt and sugar. They did not want their children exposed to corporate, brand-name products laced with additives.  They wanted their children to learn to eat fresh-cooked meals.

Choosing to make food from scratch when you can and with better ingredients in conjunction with taking the time to find the "better" convenience items is the essence of medium food. It is especially important for young children to be accustomed to and prefer the real food versions of chicken nuggets, pizza, mac and cheese, etc. If a school district that has to feed 2,350 children five days a week can find the happy medium, I think the average family can too.