yummy-ness

So lots of stuff has happened like Father's Day and T-Ray's first birthday (my baby is so grown up!), but no, I choose to blog about food. I have been on the endless quest for the perfect snack food that is good for you, no calories, tons of protein, and really really tasty. I haven't found it yet but these come pretty close. I thought I would share my hours and hours of "research".

First on the list are these tiny buddles of joy. The name is lame! but Think Thin bars are actually pretty tasty. They have 0 sugar and 20 grams of protein. The only flavor that I am not loving is the chocolate covered strawberry. The texture is too off for me.

These are yum yum yum! They are Pop Chips. They are so crispy and yummy and they are not that bad for you. For every 20 chips, there is about 120 calories and only 4 grams of fat (compared to 11 grams in regular chips). The kid love them too.

I have already raved about the Luna White Chocolate macadamian, which is still my fav, but I have found other flavors that are not bad as well. One is the berry n nuts, or nuts over berries, or something like that. It is purple on the inside. Oddly enough though, I havenot found a chocolate Luna bar that I think is worth the money.


Kashi for me is very hit and miss. I feel like a lot of their foods taste like bird food. Very crunchy and seedy but not much satisfaction. I do however really like the dark chocolate coconut granola bars:)

Sprouts is one of my fav. stores. I love their veggie chips. When you compare, they are not that great in nutrition, but they taste really good, including the green beans, which are my fav. CAUTION: I tried to make my own thinking that it couldn't be that hard, and it is. buy them, do not attempt at home.

Let me know if you have found any pearls for me to test out!!! Good luck

yum

more food continued...

These are actually really good, especially the peanut butter one. They are low sugar and are a good treat substitute, hint: put a table spoon of real peanut butter on top of the peanut butter one and you can trick yourself into thinking that it is dessert day :),

These are my absolute favorite!!!! One problem though, the tiny little 90 calorie pack is never, never enough. What I do is just eat the whole box and count them as a real dessert day. Yeah, they are that good (but only the mint chocolate ones). BEWARE, once you pop you really can't stop.

So good I put it twice (I should get paid for this advertising huh!)


These are really good. They are gigantic, probably cause they are around 350 calories but as a meal replacement they rock. Super low sugar and high protein so they keep you full for a while. The name is pretty fitting, oh yeah! Plus they taste like they actually have choclate syrup in them.

If you haven't tried Pirate Booty yet you need to. This actually started cause T-Ray chokes on almost everything and one day some one gave him a cheese puff and he did great. I couldn't justify giving him cheese puffs every day so I was looking for something similar. These are tasty and they melt in your mouth. You can get them on sale often and the best flavor in my opinion is the aged cheese!

the garden

So yes we are alive. We went on an awesome vacay to IF and I will post about that later. We also had strep and other sicknesses, we set up bubs to get tubes placed in his ears after the 9th ear infection this season and we planted a garden. So here is my garden story;

A while back our Stake leaders (can't remember if it was the president or the counsilor) told us that we should plant a garden regardless of where we live. We could do a little porch garden or Denver offers garden plots for rent through the denver urban gardens. This leader said that we could use this as a great tool in teaching our kids and helping them learn valuable lessons about the gospel and other such topics. I thought it sounded nice, but Drew was totally on board! The next day we emailed the garden rep and reserved a plot. Has anyone ever tried to garden with a 2 year old and an 11 month old? I wonder if this leader was thinking about families with older children when he gave the directive. I must have said to Drew at least 400 times in the last month, "this is not working". Let me explain. Over three days (not consecutive for sanity sake) we logged about 10 hours working on our garden plot just to get the soil ready. It was really hard clay and we had to do a lot. This already looks like a great lesson right? I can recite the parable of the sower and the seeds to my children, or tell them about how hard work can pay off, and relate it to how when they are on missions some people need more "prepping" than others, and that every little contact they make helps someone become prepared for the seed of the gospel. Oh, ya, I had some awesome lessons on the back burner. INSTEAD this is how it really went down. "Brooklyn get back here, we will play with the toys later, it is garden time" "No its not time to leave we just got here" "I thought YOU were watching him! Crap" "Get that out of your mouth, yucky" "Do you think organic means the same thing as non-toxic?" "If you run away one more time I swear..." "ug, lets just go home" " how much do you think a pre-made garden costs?" "I hate you clay" "fine, fine, lets just go home and forget the whole thing". And that was just the first 30 minutes. Drew however was faithful and patient with ALL of us (including me) and we finally got the whole thing prepped and planted. He keeps reassuring me that this is good for the kids and that they are learning through our example (which based on what I just described to you may not be a good thing). I will admit though, that when we went to water last evening. It was beautiful and Brookie really seemed to enjoy the hose and she only impulse stomped on the flowers once! So heres to the garden and to lessons learned. Maybe the lesson they will take with them is that it is truly a miracle when a family plants a garden together and is still talking to eachother at the end of the day :).