New Organic Snacks

I only promote products that meet certain criteria. Ecobrands asked me to review their new Organix Goodies Range for kids and my first response was naturally sceptical as I am quite often approached with products that don't make the grade. My curiosity was soon aroused with words like "no preservatives", "no colourants", "no sugar", "organic" and "pre-packed for quick and easy lunch box inclusion". The last statement intrigued me most as healthy lunch box alternatives do not come pre-packed in colourful packets and boxes. My sample box arrived a few days later. Eager to review the taste and ingredients for myself, I tucked in and started tasting the various snack alternatives. The packaging is unique with raisins and dried apples packed in tiny boxes and squeeze pack juice alternatives. They offer a wide range of organic snacks with foods consisting of biscuits, compotes, maize snacks, cereals, puree and fruit bars, catering for children from six months to 10 years, but even had my teen eagerly tucking into the box of gingerbread biscuits. Organix gives parents the choice of including safe, convenient, organic snacks in their childrens lunch boxes. Look out for this new range in Baby City Stores, selected Pick 'n Pay's and Dischem stores nationwide. I have a sample box of Organix goodies up for grabs, simply leave your comments below, share your thoughts or tell us where you have found them. All comments must be submitted before the end of October 2010 to participate. (This competition is only open to residents in South Africa.)

15 Snack Ideas for your healthy lunchbox

Adults and children alike love snack foods or snacks as we more commonly refer to them. They are eaten to reduce hunger pangs between meals or for pure enjoyment (which is usually the case). They provide some mystical feel good factor through spiking blood sugar levels and providing instant lifts when energy levels dip. Snacks foods receive far more advertising and media coverage than their nutrient dense counter parts and it is hardly if ever that a child or grown up will opt for an apple instead of a chip. So as part of your healthy lunchbox overhaul start reading the labels, don’t be conned by the bright colourful headlines that claim to be “sugar or preservative free”, as these usually contain other ingredients far more harmful to your health. Search for the actual ingredients and avoid any items that contain hydrogenated, or partially hydrogenated oils, sugar, preservatives, colourants, flavourants , MSG or any other numbers or letters that have no meaning. There is no half-healthy junk food, clean out the cupboard completely and replace it with some of the following healthier snack alternatives.

• Preservative free dried fruits
• Preservative free dried veggies
• Snack bars (Ideally make your own or include some natural way bars which are healthier alternatives).
• Raw unsalted nuts
• Raw unsalted seeds such as sunflower, pumpkin, sesame etc
• Homemade or preservative free trail mixes
• Replace regular chips which are high in salt and fat with corn chips or veggie chips.
• Rice cakes
• Sesame chips or bars (Opt for the sugar free variety)
• Oat cakes
• Vegetable crudités spiced up with some hummus dip
• Hard boiled organic eggs (You can draw on the shells or mould them into different shapes)
• Natural yoghurt flavoured with fresh fruit purees (Not for the lactose intolerant)
• Whole fruit
• Popcorn (use an air-popper if possible as stove popped contains saturated fat and microwave versions are filled with additives, flavourings and fat.)

The Right Smell for Your Lunchbox

Our sense of taste is greatly influenced by our sense of smell. Opening a lunchbox with a fresh pleasant smell can stimulate your tastebuds and make the contents seem more appealing. We have all opened a school lunchbox at some point and been overwhelmed with an unpleasant odour or the strong odour of a less favourite item and can remember just how this odour masks all the other contents of the lunchbox itself. Our hunger pangs disappear as we pick at the items somehow seemingly unaffected by the smell.

Our sense of smell plays a vital role in our sense of well-being and quality of life.

Try adding a small lunch of parsley, mint, cilantro, rosemary or other fresh herbs to your lunchbox for an instant lift. Place the herbs directly on top of your salad or sandwich to add colour and improve the smell. No more bad odours!

Heart Shaped Carrot and Zucchini Tarts for School Lunchboxes

This morning I packed 8 lunchboxes in 20 minutes and felt slightly pushed for time.The reason being I am not a winter person and waking up at 5am proves most challenging when there is no hint of sunlight. Every morning I seem to steal another 5 minutes until I find myself under pressure like today. The first think Kelsey says to me when she climbs into the car after school is "Mom I'm starving, have you got something for me to eat." At first, I thought that I was not packing enough substance into the school lunchboxes until it dawned on me that Kelsey is quite active at school and rarely finds the time to sit still and empty the contents of her lunchbox - this explains the daily starvation. I ensure each coolerbox is packed with an ice pack to preserve freshness everyday, but after 7 hours somehow the lunchboxes lose their "fresh" appeal. The reason being not so much due to the temperature control but more the wear and tear they have to endure daily tilted on top of the wheelie bags to free up hands for sports bags and other bits and pieces. I started making frequent trips to "Woolworths"en route to school everyday to grab a quick snack in preparation for the words "I'm starving!". Quite soon my grocery bill almost doubled, and the quality of the food I was resorting to for lack of better choice was extremely poor. It is actually quite frightning how little healthy choices are available when you start opting for fast food. So it has taken quite a few weeks for me to realise that I now need to prepare 8 lunchboxes every morning, keep two on ice and reach for them prior to my afternoon rounds. How will I survive the winter at this rate?

Pictured above some heart-shaped carrot and zucchini tarts prepared the night before, orange wedges, baby tomatoes, crinkly cut carrot fingers  and heart shaped green peppers. The carrot and zucchini batter whipped up in my Thermomix in less than 2 minutes. What a machine! It cooks, it makes sorbets and ice-creams, dips, kneads your bread dough, weighs, blends, mills, grinds and virtually cleans itself too. What did I do without it before? Drop me an email if you would like to see this piece of german ingenuity in action at one of my weekly cookery dems. Here is the recipe for you to try, please adapt it if you haven't yet discovered the TM31.

Carrot and Zucchini Tarts
Yields: 9 Servings
Ingredients
350 g Zucchini cubed
100 g cheese cubed
5 eggs
80 g olive oil
2 small carrots
1 large onion quartered and roughly cut
50 g cornflour
70 g wholehweat flour
10 ml baking powder
5 ml rosemary leaves
3 cloves garlic
3 cm piece of ginger
1 red capsicum roughly cut
Salt & pepper

Instructions

Place cheese into the TM bowl and grate for 3-5 seconds on speed 6. Set aside.
Place onion, ginger and garlic into the TM bowl and chop for 4 seconds on speed 6. Saute for 1 minute at 100C on speed 1.
Place zucchini and capsicum into the TM bowl and grate for 3-5 seconds on speed 6.
Place carrots into the TM bowl and chop for 10 seconds on speed 8.
Add all other ingredients into the TM bowl and mix for 10-15 seconds on speed 4. Use spatula to scrape down the sides of the bowl.
Bake in a well greased ceramic dish or shapes of your choice in a moderate oven for 30-40 minutes or until golden brown.
Great to eat warm or serve cold for picnics or lunchboxes.

More quiche like ideas for your school lunchbox.

Lunch Box Ideas: Packing the Right Lunchbox Beverage

We can live for weeks without food but only a few days without water. It this forgotten transparent substance we all take for granted until disaster strikes and it is not quite so readily available. It is then under abnormal conditions that we often crave water and long for a nice hot bath to soak away our daily stresses and long for that tall glass of ice cold water to pour down our throats. We have forgotten what a wonderful nutrient it is and how essential it is to life and our everyday bodily functions. So, if your child is not having enough water on a daily basis they could be suffering from a mild form of dehydration causing ‘brain-stress’ which can cause them to simply “switch off” exacerbating many learning difficulties and affecting optimal daily functioning and performance in many other different ways.


We know that we have to encourage our children to drink more water yet as you unpack their cooler boxes for the fifth day in a row to discover that their water bottles are untouched or only slightly sipped we realise what a challenging and arduous task this could prove to be. How are we going to get the message through to them that water is the first choice when thirst hits? Don’t think of making a simple statement and highlighting all the virtues of a pure glass as I have often wondered if the following statement ” if mom says it don’t do it” has formed part of the national curriculum.

I have sourced a few excellent ideas to camouflage water and help make it the delight that it should be, but first things first, the beverage container. Opt for a bottle that seals properly and is small enough to pack inside their lunch or cooler box. There are many different colours, shapes and favourites out there to choose from or if you are pressed for time opt for ready to go pre-filled spring water bottles which you can grab each morning. One of my personal favourites is the Cool Gear Hourglass bottle with flip top spout, it is small enough to fit into the cooler box and comes with freezable ice sticks that fit neatly into the inside of the bottle to keep the drink cold.

There are many great ways to add some excitement to water here are a few of our lunch box ideas. Simply infuse a bottle of water with a slice of one of the following:

• Lemon or lime

• Tangerine

• Orange

• Cucumber

• Cucumber and lemon

• Mint leaves

• Berries (Raspberries, blackberries or strawberries)

Slip a single slice of one of the ingredients listed above inside the water bottle, you can also squeeze a small amount of juice directly into the water to flavour it slightly. Don’t be tempted to fill the bottle with too many slices of lemon as most children are not too fond of this taste and the attempt at disguising the flavour might then backfire.

Citrus Pig and Sugar Free Muesli

Today Melissa and Kelsey have a citrus pig made from a naartjie, banana pieces, a grape and some raisins. They also have some sugar free muesli (rolled oats. chopped cashew nuts, raisins etc.) with a plastic spoon. A bunch of grapes and some kiwi fruits finish the lunchbox today.

Filled Cucumbers

Today the girls enjoyed hollowed cucumbers filled with cream cheese I also pulled out the cookie cutters and shaped some pineapple into daisies and popped in some strawberries to fill the lunchbox.

Perfect for school lunches Pea, Feta & Mint Frittata

Having no lunchbox basics in my pantry cupboard this morning I stumbled across this quick and easy recipe perfect for school lunches. The Pea, Feta & Mint Fritatta, the consistency resembles that of a quiche and is quite tasty and delicious getting a thumbs up by both girls and dad. I also added a handful of sumptious cherries, sliced peach and some heart shaped pineapple slices which I made using the heart shaped cutter from the Sweetheart Cutter collection. Its possible to  quickly and easily create fun shapes with fruit and veggies  for school lunches which liven up a boring lunch.

Raw Picnic Punch with Baby Potato Salad

A box filled with raw baby carrots, freshly podded green peas, sliced yellow pepper, naartjie, minneola and a few strawberries pack a punch today. I also included some baby potato salad and sliced red salad onions in a separate container to help calm the carbo cravings, see the small insert in the bottom right of the image. I recently had my body composition tested and to my surprise my body fat percentage was above norm despite my ideal body weight and water percentage way below norm. I have never really been a drinker and often a whole day will pass without me consuming any liquid at all this resulted in me being virtually dehydrated. We are now making a concious effort to up the water intake back to 6-8 glasses per day and so the girls once again have a bottle of spring water packed in to still the thirst.

Strawberries and Cream

Both girls devoured this lunch. Kelsey arrived home and requested that I pack these exact same contents everyday. This lunch took exactly 5 minutes to prepare and I was almost tempted to do just that as it would drastically reduce my workload in the early morning rush hour. A bowl of hulled and sliced strawberries drizzled with a hint of cream is definately a winner, nachos (corn chips) and a cup of raw crudites (baby tomatoes, sliced beans, and yellow pepper sticks complete the meal.