Coast 2 Coast Mom

Cooking and Baking with Stonyfield Yogurt

Last week I had the pleasure of attending a cooking demonstration at the De Gustibus Cooking School at Macy's Herald Square with green nutritionist Kate Geagan, MD. I learned some of the healthy benefits of substituting organic yogurt or Greek yogurt for other ingredients like sour cream, mayonnaise or oil in recipes. I got to watch Kate cook up some delicious Tangerine-Maple Yogurt glazed chicken and tasted her roasted red pepper cold soup, salmon spread, blueberry muffin, and my favorite, pot de creme - all "healthified." with Stonyfield yogurt. Check out part of her cooking demonstration in the video below and definitely try the Pot de Crème recipe found on the Stonyfield site.
 

Lastly, I appreciated learning more about Stonyfield Organics, as my other interaction with the brand has been with Yo Baby Yogurt and the movie Food Inc. One of the most fascinating things that I took away from the event was less so about the yogurt and more about their organic farming practices and the creation of The Greener Cow Project. By simply changing the diet of the cows, which includes alfalfa, flax and grasses, they've been able to increase the milk's omega-3 content and decrease saturated fats organically. This diet has a side benefit as well, reducing cows' burbs, which as hilarious as that may seem, the burbs contain methane, and in great enough quantities are harmful to the Earth's atmosphere as the emissions are a contributor to greenhouse gases. You'll have to read it to believe it...

Cupcakes for a Cause this Saturday in Ridgewood

Okay, so I don't need a reason to stop into Cupcakes by Carousel this weekend, but now I absolutely cannot NOT stop in. This Saturday, June 5th, Cupcakes by Carousel will host "Cupcakes for a Cause," with proceeds from their S'mores cupcake benefitting Comfort Zone Camp, a bereavement camp for children ages 7-17 who have experienced the loss of a parent, sibling or primary caregiver.

The camps are located in New Jersey, Massachusetts, California, Texas and Virginia and the children attend free of charge. Cupcakes by Carousel's goal for the day is to cover the cost for a child to attend this summer, so there's no reason to feel badly about taking home a dozen . . .even if they are all for yourself. Cupcakes freeze well . . . right? ;-)

"Hours for indulging" at Cupcakes by Carousel on Saturday are from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. and they're located at 192 E Ridgewood Ave in Ridgewood, N.J. next to the Clearview Cinemas Warner Quad Theater.

We Figured Out How To Make Dinosaur Cupcakes

We did it! After days of searching for online patterns or samples, or locating a nearby bakery to make them, we came up with our own 3D dinosaur cupcakes for Li'l Boo to take into school to celebrate his summer birthday earlier this week. I kept asking him, are you sure they have to be dinosaur cupcakes? How about dogs or baseball cupcakes? Oh no, they have to be dinosaurs mom. I want dinosaur cupcakes. Gah! (I did find that YouCake has a dinosaur design, but alas they're made in Brooklyn and I didn't have a way to get them over the weekend before Monday.)

So I shared our cupcake decorating books, Hello Cupcake! and What's New Cupcake? with c2cDad asked if he thought we could adapt any of the designs to be dinosaurs. He was up for the challenge. So . . . off we went to A&P and spent way too much time in the cookie, cracker and candy aisles loading up on items that we thought we may be able to use in the dinosaur creations. (In hindsight we bought way too much and have a snack and treat pile to last us a month.)

Help Share Our Strength with the Bread Art Project

I took our budding little artist along with me into the city recently to learn more about the Bread Art Project, a program created by the non-profit Grain Foods Foundation and launching in 2010 with Food Network host Melissa d'Arabian and Share Our Strength, working toward the goal of ending childhood hunger in America by 2015. (Food Network fans may remember Melissa as the winner of season five of The Next Food Network Star and now host of her own series, "Ten Dollar Dinners.")

We listened to Melissa speak about why feeding hungry kids is so important to her and how critical whole grains are to nourish growing bodies. (Whole grains being a good source of complex carbohydrates, fiber, vitamins and nutrients and can play a role in lowering a person's risk for heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.) I was surprised to learn that 17 million children - nearly one in four struggles with hunger, and the ways children can suffer because of hunger:

 

Me, Jacques Pepin and the Man-O-Manischewitz Cook-Off

I recently attended my first cook-off and celebrity chef event at the 4th Annual Manischewitz Cook Off in Manhattan. Perfectly timed before the start of Passover, the cook-off celebrated recipes that featured Manischewitz All-Natural Broth. The recipes were all certified kosher, though not necessarily kosher for Passover. (Though Manischewitz did display their new kosher for passover products and I nearly went silly once I got home hunting down the new cotton candy for the kiddo to try.) It was the first cook-off I've attended and I may be hooked!

The day began with a private media tasting with the legendary Chef Jacques Pepin. While I was familiar with him from his series on PBS Jacques Pepin: Fast Food My Way (and More Fast Food My Way), I learned that he began his formal cooking apprenticeship at age 13 (easy when your parents run a restaurant), and quickly earned respect for his creations, even serving as personal chef to three French heads of state - including Charles de Gaulle in the late 1950s. He moved to the US in 1959 where he made further contributions to the culinary arts and recently earned France's highest civilian honor, the French Legion of Honor. 

Cooking with My Kiddo

This post is inspired by the Silicon Valley Moms Blog monthly book club choice for March, Top 100 Finger Foods and Top 100 Baby Purees by Annabel Karmel. I received a copy of both books as a part of the book club.

I remember when the idea of cooking with Li'l Boo first came to me. I read in several parenting books when he was a baby that kids are more apt to try foods when they help prepare them. I made a mental note for when I deemed him old enough to assist me, and moved on. Then while living in Naperville, I saw a neighboring family of four kids from about ages 2-8 prepare dinner and a lightbulb went off.

There they were, standing around the counter in the kitchen on various step stools and chairs, each working on different stages of dinner prep. The oldest was chopping a carrot, two were ripping lettuce, another stirring something in a bowl near her mom at the sink. Aha! So THAT'S how she does it! That's how she doesn't lose her mind everyday during the late afternoon/early evening witching hour.  She's not breaking up wrestling matches and blowing up over crayon drawings on the walls upstairs or ushering wailing children indoors to check out a boo boo. She gives' em jobs and keeps 'em busy. These kids were focused and taking pride in what they're doing. . . and relatively happy and quiet. I vowed to copy her from that day forward.

Let's Move: Parents Take Action Against Childhood Obesity

Recently the Silicon Valley Moms Group contributors were invited to participate on a call with U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to discuss some of the new initiatives being put forth to improve the school lunch programs from a federal level.  This call took place in support of Michelle Obama's Let's Move initiative launch today. I was bummed to have missed the call (don't worry - I wasn't TOO bummed, being at Disney World afterall! ;-) )

I had access to the notes of some of the other SVMoms participants and have been reading their posts from the call this morning, and wanted to chime in myself as my perspective hasn't been reflected. The purpose of the call was to educate moms on the current state of school lunches and discuss reauthorizing the Childhood Nutrition Act and increasing school funding for more fresh fruits and vegetables in school lunches. (Which is a TOTAL no-brainer for most moms.) I learned that the U.S. provides lunches to 30 million children a year, and serves breakfast to around 10 million, making school lunches a critical component in the Let's Move initiative to combat childhood obesity. 

A Memory-Making Dino Dinner: T-Rex Cafe at Downtown Disney

During our trip to Walt Disney World for Disney's Social Media Moms Celebration, we had one open evening to plan our own dinner and we knew exactly where we wanted to go: T-Rex Cafe. We knew there was no way we'd be able to walk past the dinosaur-themed restaurant without Li'L Boo running and pulling us inside anyway, so we made reservations before we arrived for a dinosaur dinner. As if being at Disney World wasn't filled with enough special treats and excitement last week, the T-Rex Cafe was still a highlight from our trip.

Enter to Win A Tassimo Suprema

The big gift I wanted for the holidays was the Tassimo single-cup beverage system, and I was fortunate to find it early on Black Friday. The sale price at Bed Bath and Beyond, the additional store 20% off, plus the Tassimo $50 rebate, meant I could splurge on the T65 Titanium version over the Suprema. Not because it's that much noticeably better, but just because the price was right. :-)

I had wanted a Tassimo for an entire year, ever since my friend Lauren received one for Christmas LAST year. What is a Tassimo? It's Kraft Foods' proprietary home brewing system manufactured by Bosch that allows you to make coffee, tea, hot chocolate, cappuccino, espresso, or lattes to your liking - one cup at a time (you insert what Tassimo calls a T Disc with a readable barcode specifying how to brew that particular drink into the machine ). Never having had our own coffee maker, I was so eager to try it for myself and share it with c2cDad that we decided to open it and begin using my Christmas present right away - a month early! He was just as impressed as I, and we've used it nearly everyday since. We use filtered water at our home, so we chose to forego using the included water filter in our Tassimo. My favorite drink is of course a Chai Tea Latte, and my hubby has been experimenting with cappuccinos and macchiatos. Here's a full list of the beverages available to purchase for the Tassimo system. Li'l Boo even likes the Tassimo with the Milka hot chocolate drinks - and he usually only likes hot chocolate made the old fashioned way on the stovetop!

You may imagine my surprise to receive a holiday gift of a Tassimo Suprema from the good folks on the Kraft Foods team at DKC Public Relations. As I already bought a Tassimo that I am happily using daily, what does this mean for you? Ah, YEAH! I'm giving this one away! Just leave me a comment below telling me what drink you'd most like to make with the Tassimo. I'll use Random.org to choose a winner on Friday January 8th at Noon EST. I'll ship the package to the winner via USPS to enjoy the following week. Only one comment per person, scroll down to the end to post a comment. Good luck!

What do I like best about my Tassimo?

• The speed and simplicity of making myself a coffee drink. Drinks are ready in about a minute, and there is often nothing to clean up, so I toss out the empty T Disc, grab my mug and go. I clean the machine about once a week, or whenever the clean message appears.

• The flexibility: you can make coffee drinks and adjust the amount of milk or creamer to your liking by holding down the button for more coffee or creamer at the end of the brew cycle. The other thing is that you can make a single 8-ounce drink, or fill a tall travel mug to go.

 

 

 

 

Try Pedialyte Travel Packs To Take Along On Holiday Travel

Just in case you're traveling over the river and through the woods with your kids this holiday season, I thought I'd share with you a new travel version of Pedialyte that I checked out while at the Garden State Plaza today. If your family is anything like mine, someone is bound to get sick on the return trip, or a week later.

Pedialyte was giving out samples of their new powder packets near the photos with Santa, and offering tastes of the grape, strawberry and apple flavors (they offer tropical punch as well, but it wasn't available to taste). Li'l Boo tasted the strawberry flavor and liked it - I was shocked seeing as how he hasn't eaten a strawberry in about two years. You just pour the Pedialyte powder packets into water (8 oz of water per packet, so two packets to fill a normal 16 oz water bottle), shake it a bit, then drink. Kids must be 1 year or older to drink it.

In a nutshell, Pedialyte quickly replaces lost fluids and electrolytes due to dehydration when sick, and it contains less sugar than juice or regular soda, which can make dehydration worse when sick.

It makes perfect sense to me. I was one of those Airborne purchasers over the years, dissolving the tablet in a water bottle just before take-off, and I carry the Propel powder packets with me to mix into my water bottle on the ride home from the gym. Though I have to admit that I've been carrying the current packets in my purse for a looooong time as I haven't been to the gym in several weeks.

If you'll be at Garden State Plaza tomorrow (Saturday 12/5), stop by the table near Lord 'n Taylor to sample it and see if you like it. They also have coupons for $1.50 off a purchase of a Pedialyte product. Oh, and Westfield was also handing out Westfield Wednesday  WFamily loyalty discount cards to save money at a list of stores in the Garden State Plaza every Wednesday of the year. Westfield is also promoting their 12 Days of Shopping with special activities and discounts each day.