Taste Test!

The Mac n’ Cheese Challenge

 May 15, 2014

Did you know that 3 out of 4 kids prefer homemade mac n’cheese instead of Kraft?  Well, at least 3 out of 4 of my kids do! I recently decided to do a little investigating and taste testing on one of the food staples of every kid’s life: macaroni and cheese.  Here’s what I turned up in my investigation – Kraft macaroni and cheese is chock full of some crazy ingredients!  sodium tripolyphosphate, yellow #5, yellow #6, and many others!  How can such a simple dish contain so many items that I don’t recognize?

But here’s the good news, making your own mac n’cheese only requires a few ingredients and takes about the same amount of time as the boxed version.  The most time consuming part?  shredding the cheese.  If you can spare two minutes to do that, then there is really no reason to ever grab that blue box again.  Just look at the comparison:

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Taste Test! Strawberry water

 March 13, 2014

liam crop 3Since starting on our Junk Free Journey my boys have been the ultimate judges on whether a recipe is good, and whether they like it or not it’s always fun to see their reactions.

Recently my 4-year-old brought home a request from his preschool that I send in a powdered drink mix for him to have at school.  I spent some time looking at the ingredients of the ones at the store, and just couldn’t find anything that didn’t have a zillion different unpronounceable ingredients, which got me thinking….

Why not create my own drink powder by pounding freeze-dried fruit and pouring it into water?

The results were mixed but, as always, it was fun to see their reactions.  I think it’s pretty good, and the strawberries by themselves are a great crunchy, sweet snack. I used Crunchies Freeze-Dried Fruit Snack, which I like because they have a really great color and texture (all natural of course!).
If you try it at home, let me know what you think!


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