Thumbs up and down to Oscar Mayer

Thumbs up: It is very hard to find nitrate-free hot dogs at the "regular" grocery store, much less at a reasonable price. I was in a for a nice surprise today at Food Lion - nitrate free Oscar Mayer hot dogs, and the turkey variety was only $1.99/pack! (The Angus variety were $4+/pack.)

Thumbs down: Mechanically separated turkey? Gross. I forgot to look at the Angus variety, so they may be better, but still.  And what is cultured corn sugar and cherry powder? Those are new ones to me.

Expected: High sodium, plenty of fat (too much for a turkey dog), and saturated. fat.

I'm glad to see nitrates/nitrites removed from these hot dogs, but there is still plenty of room for improvement. Because I don't see these leaving society's diet anytime soon, we can take all the improvements we can get.

And the winner is....

The winner of my very first blog giveaway is Michelle Loyd! Congrats Michelle, and I hope you enjoy the book as much as I do. I hope you'll give us a review!

I hope this is the first of many giveaways, so please contact me if you or your company/business has something relevant to share with my readers.

Thanks to all who entered!

P.S. In case you were wondering how I "randomly" chose a winner, I used www.random.org to pick.

I got paid to buy cereal!

Oh how I LOVE a good deal! Getting something for free is a thrill, but to get PAID to take something away from the grocery store is almost more than I can handle!

On my last trip to the grocery store, I was shopping for cereal. I always search for sales that correspond with my coupons, but this offer was too good to be true. Fiber One Caramel Delight cereal was on close out for $1.10. It also had one of those sticker coupons good for $1.00 of the box. To top it off, I had a coupon for $1.00 off of 2 boxes. I ended up getting four boxes, so if you do the math, that comes to me getting paid $1.60 for four boxes of cereal!

Side note - Fiber One Caramel Delight has a little more sugar than I care for, but it makes up for it in fiber.

Eating healthy on vacation?

Oh Monday morning...thank you for smacking me in the face with reality today! Vacation is over, and now we're back to the regular grind. But what a great vacation it was...stress free and a total break from our day-to-day routine, including our diet.

During our time at the beach, we allowed our kids far more treats than we normally do, but I did my best to still keep them as healthy as possible. Well balanced meals were still a requirement!

Some of the extras they enjoyed:

-Sparkling Juicy Juice (a fun soda substitute)
-Cheetos Natural White Cheddar Cheese Puffs
-Del Monte Fruit Chillers (freezy pops, minus the garbage)
-Simply Fruit Fruit Roll Ups (just like regular fruit roll ups, minus the garbage)

So my kids got to pig out on "junk food" freely, and I didn't have to feel guilty about it. Win-win! So why isn't all "junk food" made this way? I challenge you to only buy the healthier versions of these treats. There is power in numbers, and if we show our support for the good products, there will be more and more of them available and at more reasonable prices.

I'm BAAAAAACK!

I hope someone noticed that I haven't blogged in more than a week! We've been on vacation and just returned today. I felt funny about announcing that to the entire cyber world, so I didn't. I will have new posts starting Monday, so thanks for your patience.

In the meantime, don't forget about my autographed Dr. Sears book giveaway, and here's a picture of my fantastic family at the beach. :)

A very smart commercial!

Very smart Jennie-O...market to the parents, the people who actually have money to spend! Thank you for not aiming your sales tactics at our kids.



And, of course, I like the message!

Homemade ice cream

Summertime is the best time to enjoy some delicious ice cream! You could pick some up from the grocery store, but it is pretty easy to make it yourself and much healthier and fresher. We had my daughter's 4th birthday party this past weekend, and I made two kinds - strawberry and chocolate. All you need is an ice cream freezer (counter top version or one that requires ice, I use both depending on the quantity I need) and a few simple ingredients. Here's a recipe that makes 6 quarts:

Strawberry ice cream:
2 cups fresh strawberries
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
Milk - enough to fill to fill line (whole milk for richer ice cream, skim for lighter)

Mix it all up in the blender and freeze according to freezer directions. Scale recipe down if making in a counter top version. YUMMY!! This recipe can easily be adapted for any flavor you wish, and you get to control all of  the ingredients.