My Spending Diet: Week One

Posted on March 19, 2010 - Filed Under Budget Eating, Raising Healthy Kids, meal planning, organization | 1 Comment

Let me run you through a normal week in my eating life:

Saturday: Glance through cooking magazines, cookbooks and notebooks to try to decide what to make this week. Ignore all of it and make a rudimentary meal plan … write a grocery list, trying to remember everything I need. Go grocery shopping with the kids [...]

Raising a Healthy Family: Diabetes in Kids (And My Annual Survey)

Posted on March 12, 2010 - Filed Under A Little Help, Raising Healthy Kids | Leave a Comment

NOTE: At the end of this post is the 2010 survey for Sarah’s Cucina Bella. Please take a minute to answer the questions. Thanks!
Recently, I was researching for an article on diabetes in children, and I came across some statistics that really got me thinking.

Roughly 186,300 people under the age of 17 have diabetes in [...]

Raising a Healthy Family: Develop Your Own Filter

Posted on March 5, 2010 - Filed Under Raising Healthy Kids | Leave a Comment

As part of my job, I spend a lot of time interviewing people. Lately, that has meant conversations with chefs, authors of eating-related books, nutritionists … people who are trying to help Americans live better, healthier lives. I am so passionate about this that I even devote space here every Friday to share nuggets of [...]

Raising a Healthy Family: Teaching Kids about Food

Posted on February 26, 2010 - Filed Under Raising Healthy Kids | 3 Comments

Watching the Jamie Oliver TED talk the other day, tears came to my eyes. In the video, Jamie talks about how he visited a West Virginia school and the children couldn’t tell a potato from a pear from an eggplant. He showed clips of the kids earnestly guessing what veggies he was holding up. It [...]

Cooking with Kids: Chopped Salad Recipe

Posted on February 23, 2010 - Filed Under Raising Healthy Kids, Recipes, cooking with kids, salad | 3 Comments

The kids and I made a Mexican Chopped Salad today. It was awesome, and they gobbled it up. Actually, we gobbled it up. But what was more awesome was our conversation while we cooked.

While making it, I made a last-second trade-out of an ingredient, substituting agave nectar for honey. Will immediately asked me why, since [...]

Raising a Healthy Family: Make Over Your Fridge and Freezer

Posted on February 19, 2010 - Filed Under Raising Healthy Kids | 5 Comments

A few years ago, I convinced my husband to purchase an extra freezer. The space in our upstairs freezer (attached to the fridge) just wasn’t cutting it. So, one evening he and his friend lugged a good-sized chest freezer into our basement — exactly what I wanted.
For awhile, I was meticulous about using it and [...]

Raising a Healthy Family: Making Family Dinners Doable

Posted on February 12, 2010 - Filed Under Feeding Kids, Healthy Eating, Raising Healthy Kids | 2 Comments

Do you eat dinner as a family? We do, nearly every night. It’s important to me, and studies show that the benefits of eating as a family are huge. Unfortunately, with packed schedules and big work commitments, many families have abandoned the family dinner. It’s time to get back to it though.
I’ll be the first [...]

Raising a Healthy Family: You Are In Charge of Your Kids’ Health!

Posted on February 5, 2010 - Filed Under Healthy Eating, Raising Healthy Kids | 3 Comments

As parents, one of the greatest gifts we can give to our children is to raise them to be healthy in all elements of their life. We have the power to teach them about healthy eating, inspire them to be active and encourage them to live well.
First Lady Michelle Obama recently unveiled an official campaign [...]

5 Healthy Things For Your Family To Do This Weekend

Posted on January 22, 2010 - Filed Under Raising Healthy Kids | 7 Comments

If you made a New Year’s resolution to be healthier this year, now is a critical time … or so says the barrage of emails I have been receiving. Apparently, this is the time when people start abandoning those healthy vows and going back to their old ways.
I haven’t given up yet. Have you? I’ve [...]

Healthy Family: The Authors of Sneaky Fitness Dish on Kids and Fitness

Posted on January 8, 2010 - Filed Under Raising Healthy Kids, weightloss | Leave a Comment

Dear Readers, as I mentioned last week, I plan to write more about raising a healthy family this year (see my interview with Dr. Oz from last week). This week, I have tips on getting active from Missy Chase Lapine and Larysa Didio, authors of the new book Sneaky Fitness: Fun, Foolproof Ways to Slip [...]