Healthy Meals and Snacks Kids Can Prepare For Themselves

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When your family is in a rush, and you need the kids to help prepare their own snacks or meal, it’s tempting to have prepared foods for them that are quick to eat, but don’t have as much nutritional value as you would like.

Instead of stocking up on expensive pre-packaged snacks (with unsuitable ingredients) that they can quickly grab, this is a good opportunity to teach your kids to prepare quick, healthy foods for themself. The times your kids are busy is precisely when they need the most nutrients. If they’re old enough to use a stove on their own, they can learn to prepare healthy foods that will keep going them going a lot longer than a bag of chips or a handful of cookies.

Here are some quick healthy meals and snacks kids can prepare for themselves, or for the whole family.

Scrambled Eggs

Scrambled eggs are a good choice for breakfast, hot lunch or dinner, or even an afterschool snack. Eggs are a health food that supply high quality protein and other nutrients kids need.

3 eggs

3 tablespoons of milk or water

1/8 teaspoon sea salt

1/8 teaspoon pepper

2 tablespoons butter

Break eggs into a small bowl. Add the milk, salt and pepper. Mix everything well with a fork. Make sure the egg yolks are broken up and the yolks and eggs are well mixed.

Melt the butter in a skillet over medium heat, then tilt the skillet so the melted butter coats the bottom.

Pour the egg mixture into the skillet and cook over low heat. Stir continuously to keep the eggs "scrambled." Cook until the eggs look firm.

Whole Grain French Toast

French toast is another quick healthy snack or meal. Your kids can eat it topped with pure maple syrup (not the fake stuff!), fruit syrup, or even peanut butter.

1 egg

¼ cup of milk

1/8 teaspoon sea salt

1 tablespoon butter

4 slices whole grain bread

Break the egg into a small bowl. Add the milk and salt and mix well with a fork. Melt the butter in a skillet over medium heat.

Dip both sides of the bread into the egg mixture until they’re well soaked. Then place the bread in the skillet and cook until the bottom turns brown. Flip the bread over with a pancake turner and brown the other side too.

Skillet Whole Grain Spaghetti

Instead of putting a couple of frozen pizzas in the oven, the kids can make a quick spaghetti supper on their own. This is a meal the whole family can share before rushing out the door on a busy night.

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

½ cup chopped onion

1 pound ground beef (preferably grass fed)

3 cans (8 ounces each) tomato sauce

1 ¾ cups water

1½ teaspoons sea salt

½ teaspoon dried parsley

½ teaspoon dried basil

1/8 teaspoon pepper

8 ounces uncooked whole grain spaghetti

Heat the vegetable oil in a large heavy skillet. Cook the chopped onion and ground beef in the oil until brown. Stir and mash the meat with a fork to break up lumps.

Stir in the tomato sauce, water, salt, parsley, basil and pepper. Heat to boiling.

Break the spaghetti in half the stir it into the sauce gradually. Stir the spaghetti to keep it separated.

Once the spaghetti’s in, cover the skillet with a tight fitting lid. Lower the hit and let it simmer for 25 minutes.

Find more whole foods recipes for the whole family at Free Whole Foods Recipes. Don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter and grab your FREE menu planning guide!

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A Pecan Pie Recipe that is Both Healthy and Delicious

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Pecan pie
Image by quinn.anya via Flickr

Why does everybody assume that every healthy dessert is uninteresting? Here is a prime example of a deceivingly simple pecan pie recipe that is just perfect for the health-conscious people of today’s world.

This pecan pie recipe is guaranteed to be healthy for you while being absolutely delicious at the same time. Besides the obvious benefits of pecans (they happen to be full of nutritional food values and make great healthy dishes), this pecan pie recipe was handed down for generations, so you know it’s got that old-fashioned home cooked goodness about it!

There is no way you could not love this pecan pie recipe, which is a lot of people’s all-time favourite! And anybody who gets their hands on it is extremely lucky. So now, here is a pecan pie recipe passed down for generations that tastes just as good on special occasions as any other time of the year – a pecan pie recipe that everyone will love and only requires around 15 minutes to create.

The Ingredients:

1 unbaked deep pie shell or several smaller pie shells

3 eggs

1/3 of melted butter

Between 1 and a 1 ½ cups of pecan halves

¼ teaspoon of salt

1 cup of maple syrup (pure)

2 teaspoons of molasses

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, and then combine all of the ingredients above in a bowl until they are thoroughly mixed. Once done, add your pecan halves and continue to beat. Put your pie shell into your pie pan and lay it on top of a cookie sheet to prevent spillages that could damage your oven while baking.

Once it is ready, carefully pour the resulting pie filling into the shell and place it into your oven. Be careful when placing it, though, since the mixture is a fairly viscous liquid that could spill. The pie will be finished in either 50 minutes or whenever you can insert a knife into it and pull it out without any residue left on it.

One serving suggestion for this pecan pie recipe would be to serve the pie hot with some vanilla ice cream on the side, but you can serve it however you want and still find that no one can resist this wonderful pecan pie recipe. Plus, while the baking time may take around 50 minutes; the actual preparation time for it would only be 15 minutes. This pecan pie recipe is guaranteed to get you numerous compliments, so be sure to give it a shot! You won’t be disappointed!

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How to Bake Cod

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Baked Codfish
Image by Farruska via Flickr

Cod (also called codfish, or, in some places, scrod) is a white-fleshed “flakey” fish that is high in many nutrients now recognized as exceedingly good for your blood, heart and brain. It’s a popular seafood item in restaurants throughout the United States and in many European countries.

When I dine on cod, I think of icy cold waters and northern lands like Canada, Iceland, Norway and such. Indeed, cod played a vital economic and cultural role for centuries in these countries; even the Vikings subsisted at times by consuming large quantities of this fish. Later, when the frigid waters of the North Atlantic were found to be teeming with cod, England and France almost went to war over who would control this abundant protein source–the fishermen of New England or those of the French maritime colonies of Canada.

Today, codfish stocks in the North Atlantic are under threat from overfishing, and restrictions on the taking of cod have been put into place to give those stocks a chance to recover. Cod from other waters–notably the North Pacific–remains more-or-less widely available, fortunately. You can still enjoy a dish of cod and know that you’re getting plenty of vitamins A and D along with those omega-3 fatty acids that do wonderful things to keep your heart in good shape.

Cod is a mild-flavored fish, so it is often enjoyed by people who don’t like fish that is, well, too “fishy” tasting. Because it is mild, it can take a lot of different seasonings and flavorings, making it an especially versatile seafood.

Cod is an outstanding baking fish, and as you might guess, there are many ways to bake cod. Here’s a basic recipe that will serve you well. Feel free to experiment with it, though. It’s hard to go wrong with cod, so play around with adding other ingredients that come to mind or varying the amounts of the ones shown here.

Ingredients

1 lb. cod

1/4 cup melted butter

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 tablespoon lemon juice

2 teaspoons lime juice

1/4 teaspoon Kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon onion powder or onion salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1 clove garlic, minced

1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper

Directions

Lay the fish in a greased ceramic baking dish. Combing all of the other ingredients; pour this mix over the fish. Bake at 400 degrees for 20 to 30 minutes.

This recipe takes a mild-tasting fish and adds piquancy through the onion powder and, especially, the crushed red pepper. You’ll be serving up a big helping of brain- and heart food at the same time.

Sarah Sandori is the food and entertaining columnist for the Solid Gold Info Writers Consortium. Have you ever wanted to be able to exactly duplicate a favorite dish from a favorite restaurant? Check out Sarah’s article where she reveals her source for the most mouth-watering secret restaurant recipes in America: www.solid-gold.info/most-wanted-recipes.html

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