Selfish Mom

Sweet Tweets – a lunchtime reminder that I love her

May 10, 2011 What's Going On

Just before spring break Fiona and I went to a great event at a really cute classroom/kitchen for kids in Manhattan called Taste Buds. We were there to get some tips on making lunches fun, and it was all presented by Sweet Tweets.

There were lots of supplies cut and ready for the kids to assemble (I could see that if we duplicated this at home, I’d be the prep cook and Fiona would get to have all the fun!). She went to town, packing the little metal bento box (which we got to take home with us) full of fruit-kebobs, veggies, and a turkey-cheese-carrot wrap sandwich.

Fiona & Danny (Heidi’s son) had a ball making their lunches

As Fiona would say, “Wah-la!”

Then it was time for my contribution: a Sweet Tweet! These little candy packages with room to write a message are perfect for Fiona. I used to write little notes or draw pictures on her lunch bag, but once she started using a lunch box that little tradition died.

I wrote her a note, but the sweetest part was, she wrote one for me too! I found it in my purse later. The candy itself is small and about 3.5 calories – the point isn’t the candy, it’s the message. I haven’t spotted these in stores yet, but they’re supposed to sell for about 99 cents a pack – that’s ten Sweet Tweets, enough for two weeks of school lunches.

Fiona’s creation – she at it in the car on the way home. :-)

We left on a Spring Break trip a couple days after the event, and didn’t get a chance to use our Sweet Tweets for almost two weeks. We got back into town in the evening, the day before school started back up again, and I wasn’t thinking school lunches. But Fiona can always be counted on to remember everything I’ve promised her, so the next morning I managed to gather enough stuff for her to fill her little bento box. The only problem? I couldn’t find where I’d stashed the Sweet Tweets! She was still excited about her little lunch packing job though:

I couldn’t find them the next morning either. I finally found them in time to put one in her lunch for a field trip, and she was so excited to tell me about it when she got home! She said that all of her friends were jealous.

We bought more lunch supplies, and ordered another bento box, this one with a divider – I wanted her to be able to pack some fruit on one side without the juices getting all over whatever else was in there. Some days she wants a big lunch, some days just some veggies and dip.  Some days she wants to do the work and other days she wants me to pack it. But she always wants her Sweet Tweet!

It’s been quite a while since I’ve had to pack lunches regularly. The kids have opted for the school lunch for a while, and their summer camp provided lunch, so I’ve had to get back into the swing of things. After some trial and error I’ve got a few tips:

1) Cut your veggies up (we do carrot and celery sticks) once a week, enough for five lunches. Doing it every morning makes it too easy to skip putting them in.

2) Buy tortillas or wrap bread – Fiona thinks a rolled up sandwich is way more exciting than square bread.

3) Pick up some lollipop sticks – they’re great for skewering fruits and sliced sandwiches. I have a feeling the school wouldn’t appreciate me sending in pointy wooden skewers.

4) Get a durable container that can take a little abuse. I loved the Lunchbots container we were given at the event so much, I bought another one.

Have fun with it! Mornings can be a bit hectic, but with the veggies ready to go and everything else at our fingertips we can get the lunch packed start-to-finish in five minutes. And don’t forget the Sweet Tweet! Fiona’s even helping to spread the word. I told her this morning that I was writing about the Sweet Tweets and her lunches and she had this to say:

“Everybody wanted one so I gave them the Sweet Tweet papers each day because the website is on the back, so they can give that to their mom and their mom can buy it and put it in their lunch.” And she didn’t even ask for a commission.

Thanks to Heidi for the great pic!

Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 1. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.

Tags: Food, pakcing lunches, Sweet Tweets

Healthy Choices

May 9, 2011 Paid/Sponsored Post

[The following post is sponsored by Healthy Choice]

Anyone who reads this blog fairly regularly knows that I’ve had some ups and downs with my weight. My goal is to once again be a size ten, which is the smallest I’ve been since becoming a mom. Totally reasonable goal. I can get back there again. But the three top things standing in my way are:

1) Portion control

2) Portion control

and

3) Portion control.

Past Success

I don’t know what happened to me that makes me eat past the point of being full, but I do. A lot. I’m sure Dr. Phil would have fun trying to figure out just what kind of void I’m trying to fill, but since I haven’t been invited on his show I have to figure out a solution myself.

The last time I lost a significant amount of weight was a little over a year ago, when our kitchen was being installed. There was a month where we didn’t have a sink. Actually, we had a sink, but it was sitting in a box waiting for the counters to be made and installed, which took a month. Without a sink, I couldn’t really cook, because I couldn’t wash anything. I think it drove my husband crazy – he got a lot of take-out that month. But luckily for me, I love frozen meals. It was like a free pass to just microwave something for every meal and not feel bad about it.

That’s the hole where our sink was supposed to be

I wasn’t really trying to eat less during that month, and yet I ended up losing twelve pounds! I was exercising a few times a week, but nowhere near enough to cause that kind of weight loss. It was the portion control. I’m usually home alone for lunch, and I don’t always want to go through the trouble to cook just one portion of something, so I make enough for a few meals…but more often than not the extra portions don’t make it into the fridge.

However, I would never make more than one frozen entree. Ever. That would just be weird. I eat one and I’m done and I’m full like a normal person. Hence the fairly effortless weight loss during the sink-less month. I can make and eat an entire pot of pasta, or I can microwave and eat an entree that’s under 300 calories, and either way my brain tells my body that it’s full.

A recent study by Healthy Choice had 60 participants replace ten meals (lunch or dinner, not breakfast) a week with Healthy Choice meals, and add two or three fruits or vegetables to their diets. After one month, participants had lost an average of six pounds! Plus, they had  increased their intake of dietary fiber, and significantly reduced their intake of saturated fats, cholesterol, and sodium.

Healthy Choices

In an effort to lose some weight I’ve been making some small changes. The first one has been the easiest: drinking more water. I really don’t like water, but I do feel significantly better when I drink it. However, I will never give up diet pop (I will also never give up calling it “pop”). Now, I make myself drink a glass of water for every can of pop. It’s an easy way to make sure I’m getting enough, without really feeling deprived – I know if I finish that glass of water, some pop is waiting!

I’ve made a conscious effort to run more errands each day on foot. I’m really lucky that I live in Brooklyn, within walking distance of grocery stores, banks, the post office, pharmacies, and other places where I can get things done close to home. I still need the car if there’s something heavy to haul home, but now that the weather is nice again I’ve been on foot more and more. It’s definitely time to get my bike in for it’s spring tune-up so that I can tackle some of the errands that are a little farther away, as well.

I’ve also been buying more individually packaged snacks for myself, instead of big bags – there’s that portion control thing again! I find this works especially well with desserts. A hundred calorie pack of cookies tastes great and leaves me satisfied. On the other hand, if I open a sleeve of Girl Scout Thin Mints cookies, the entire sleeve will be gone within an hour, guaranteed.

Taste Test

I picked up the Creamy Basil Pesto and the Roasted Red Pepper Marinara, both from the “All Natural” line. I’d stayed away from them before because they’re made with nine-grain pastas, and I’m a white pasta girl and was a little wary. Both of these steam cook, which means you don’t pierce the plastic cover before cooking – there’s a special vent that releases steam.

The first one I tried was the Roasted Red Pepper Marinara, which was very good. It’s like a regular pasta with chunky marinara sauce, but with a kick. It already had three kinds of cheese on it, so I didn’t add anything – it was tasty just the way it was, nine-grain pasta and all. At 270 calories it was very filling – there was a lot of pasta in there!

The Creamy Basil Pesto, at only 240 calories, surprised me right out of the box: it looked good frozen! There were lots of tomatoes and broccoli pieces. It tasted even better than it looked, with a delicious but light sauce and, again, tasty wheat pasta.

I was surprised that I like the pasta in both of these, and when I checked the label for a clue I was suspicious of the main kind of flour used, something called Ultragrain. A little research and I discovered that it’s a white wheat flour. That explains it! That’s why the pasta wasn’t heavy and gummy like some regular wheat pastas I’ve tried. I buy “white” bread made with whole grain white flour that even my picky picky Jake loves, and I add some white wheat flour to a lot of my own bread recipes. I never though of using it in pasta. It definitely works.

I’ll be buying both of these entrees again, and I can’t wait to try more. There are a few that I’m dying to buy but haven’t been able to locate in any stores near me, like the Grilled Vegetables Mediterranean, and Tortellini Primavera Parmesan, as well as several of the Fresh Mixers. If I can find enough of the vegetarian varieties to make things interesting, I might just try my own Healthy Choice one-month experiment!

Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has Compensation Levels of 1 & 13. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.

Tags: Food, Healthy Choice, Weight Loss

“Bar & Sheet hit the Street” with Bounce

May 6, 2011 Paid/Sponsored Post

[The following post is sponsored by Bounce]

So I’m a Bounce girl – it’s pretty much the only fabric softener I’ve used since…well, since I started buying my own laundry products, I guess. I even went through a period in my early 30s when my skin was super-duper sensitive, and the only fabric softener that didn’t make me break out in hives was Bounce Free. And sitting in my laundry room right now is a Bounce Bar – I can’t wait to try it!

Bounce has a really fun feature on the Bounce facebook page right now called Bar & Sheet Hit the Street, and they need your help: You can suggest things that “Team Sheets” and “Team Bar” can try to get people to do with the Bounce sheets and bars outside of the laundry room, and if they use your idea they’ll make a video out of it!

Should they put up “Apartment for Rent” signs with the phone number written on dryer sheets? String a bunch of sheets together and make a kite? Try to pay for a hot dog with a Bounce Bar at Nathan’s? Personally I think they should go up to people on the subway who stink and stick a bar on them, but I’m guessing they’d get hit a lot so I won’t officially suggest it on the facebook page.

Here’s how it works: Each week, Saturday through Monday, go to the Bounce Facebook Page (“like” them if you don’t already!) and leave a comment on the wall telling them what you think they should try for the videos. The three best ideas will be picked, and then you can vote on which one of the three will get made into a video.

On Tuesday through Thursday, while you’re waiting for the winning video to be made and announced, you can enter for a chance to win a special, limited-edition “B-shirt” (get it? B for Bounce?).

On Fridays, the winning idea and video will be posted! And this will happen every week until May 27th. Your crazy idea could get you internet fame and glory!

Watch this short video – it will give you an idea of what’s going on:

And there you have it! Get creative, you could get internet famous!

Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 13. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.

Tags: Bounce

No family deserves this

May 3, 2011 What's Going On

Later today when I get a chance I’ll be blogging about all of the wonderful things happening in my life. Our cat, who had been missing since Friday, is back – thanks to a network of cat lovers in the neighborhood. Today is Fiona’s seventh birthday, so I’ll be bringing cupcakes to school and we’ll be going out to dinner, Fiona wearing a fake fur coat on a 75-degree day, because she’s seven and wants to be fancy. Our backyard renovation is halfway done. I’ve been on fantastic trips that I’m itching to write about. My life is charmed and blessed and lucky and a bunch of other adjectives that I probably don’t deserve.

I try not to think about what would happen if the kids got sick. It’s just about the scariest thing I can imagine. I have a couple of friends whose kids have cancer and other problems and it’s a kind of hell I hope to never come near. I’ve been following Florence’s sad but hopeful story since my friend Liz mentioned it on her blog a year and a half ago (Florence is Liz’s niece by marriage). Her history is on a site that sadly I’m very familiar with from other friends’ fights with childhood illnesses, and her parents recently moved her story to a new site.

I’ve cried when Florence got worse and smiled when she had a good week, all the while being very selfishly thankful that it was happening to somebody else’s kid. How awful is that? As if another family’s pain kept mine safe. Still, I’d hoped against hope that they would finally figure out what was wrong with this precious, feisty little girl, and that with a diagnosis they could find a treatment. It hasn’t happened. And now Florence has had a bone marrow transplant. The whole thing is heartbreaking. Liz has written about it again, and her pain is leaping off of the page.

If you can visit the site and read Florence’s story and help her family out with a donation, I know a whole lot of people would be grateful. If you can’t, and want to leave them a kind word instead, I have a feeling they need that too. I don’t know what  kind of strength it takes for her parents to wake up each day and face more doctor’s visits, more pain for their daughter, more nights in hospitals, more wondering what’s going to happen, and all of that is piled on top of jobs and another daughter and all of the other things that we all have to deal with to keep our lives running. I don’t know how they do it. Let’s all try to help make it a little easier for them.

Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.

Tags: Kids