ArcaMax

Best Food for Kids Before and After School

When I was a grade-schooler my brother and I would walk home from school each day. He was one grade behind me. It was about a mile from school to the house. If we didn’t get any other exercise at least we got that.

I do know that we went out to play after school but when we got home and dropped our books on the dining room table we had a snack routine that followed immediately after.

Most often I’d do my snacking in the kitchen. I’d go to the pantry and pick up a donut or other pastry my mother had gotten at the bakery. I’d wash that down with a big glass of milk while I watched TV. My shows of choice were to watch Julia Child whip up a dish or I’d watch Graham Kerr, (another famous chef), cook a meal. Little did I know that interest in cooking would carry on into adulthood and become so integral to my life. My brother had different tastes. He would grab a bag of potato chips and a 16-ounce Pepsi and he’d go off to the den to watch his favorite shows.

After that we went out to play with friends until dinner.

I never really worried about my weight until boys came into the picture. At 12 years old I became rather obsessed with diet and food. It didn’t stop me from eating donuts. My overall tactics were to just eat less and less. The education at the time revolved around counting calories. I became really good at that. I bought one of those pocket calorie books they had by the cash register at the grocery store. I memorized it.

Now I know that calorie counting was a waste of time. What I needed was a low carb way of eating. I needed options and I needed to eat the right stuff.

So now when I think of what kids could be eating, potato chips and donuts assuredly don’t hit the list. What I am going to do here is give you ideas for breakfast, lunch and after-school snacks. Your kids deserve tasty, healthy food...

Read the full column at PlanZDiet.com

Strawberry Smoosh

I discovered cinnamon water in Costa Rica. I came back to my room after dinner one night and there was a pitcher of water by my bedside. But instead of it being flavored with the usual lemon slices, it was flavored with cinnamon.

Strawberry Smoosh is my husband’s FAVORITE ZReduction dessert. Here’s the recipe for all to enjoy!

Ingredients:

20 frozen strawberries of various sizes (you can get unsweetened ones in bags in the grocery store)
1 tsp of organic vanilla
1 tsp of Truvia (stevia)
up to one cup of water

Instructions:

This recipe requires a food processor. I’m afraid unless you have a really strong blender that it would kill it.

Put the berries and the vanilla and Truvia in the blender. Pulse the berries to break them up into small chunks. It will look sort of like red, chunky slush. Open your processor and scrape down the sides. Put the top back on and add a ½ cup of water. Pulse some more to get it softer. Scrape again. Then add the last of the water and continue to blend until it’s smooth and moves around the inside of your processor like frozen slush.

Each portion is a half cup. You can eat it right away. It does freeze well in a container. When you take it out of the freezer plan to leave it on the counter for a bit to soften up. Unlike ice cream it will freeze solid and will be a bear to scoop out unless you let it soften some. This never lasts long at my house.

You can use raspberries to do this, too.

I haven’t tried blueberry or blackberry yet but I’m confident they would do pretty well too.

Instead of using regular stevia, dieter Michael uses a few drops of the chocolate flavored liquid stevia drops. Yum.

Enjoy!
Cheers,
Zola