Colgate's Oral Health Month Featuring The #BuildingSmiles Tour

On June 1st, Colgate kicked off it's Oral Health Month campaign! One integral part in this campaign is the summer Bright Smiles, Bright Futures tour.

 

The Bright Smiles, Bright Futures Mobile Dental Vans are making stops in Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Texas (check the oral health month site for dates, locations, and times) this month!

 

The vans are staffed by volunteer dentists and dental professionals that visit areas across the U.S., providing free dental screenings to children to children 12 and under. No instruments or x-rays are used, but children are given a dental screening and an assessment on their oral health is made.

 

We had the pleasure of meeting with the members of the west coast tour on one of their Phoenix stops.  Upon entering the van, we were greeted by "Dr. Brushwell", the tour's mascot, and checked out some great information about oral health care.  

 

The whole inside was very kid friendly. Yet, even still, Big Brother was a little nervous while waiting for his turn to see Dr. Jorge. Thankfully though, he did great up in the chair! The screening only took a couple of minutes and Dr. Jorge said all looks pretty well!

Following the screening, each child receives a diagnosis (we just need to make sure Big Brother's back molars are brushed a little better) and an oral care goody bag filled with a children's toothbrush, toothpaste sample, coupons, and a fun brushing chart!

I'm hoping the brushing chart helps get us into a better morning brushing routine with the kiddos. We're great before bed, but the morning is so unpredictable that we don't have a good routine established. We need to get better about that and it's our major takeaway from our visit! 

What are YOUR biggest challenges with your children's oral health care? Please share your best tips!!

If you're interested in discussing oral health and sharing tips further (and have a chance to win some fun prizes), you can join in the #BuildingSmiles twitter party on June 16th. RSVP here!
 

Disclosure: This project has been compensated as part of a campaign for Collective Bias and Colgate.  All pictures, opinions and experiences are my own.

Mulberry "Picking"

 

When we moved into our house a little over a year ago, none of the trees had leaves, so we weren't entirely sure what they were. Then, a few months later, we made the very interesting discovery that our lovely shade trees in the backyard are mulberry trees--two of which are actually fruiting mulberry trees.
We quickly learned about the mess our lovely shade trees give off! Patio stained; purple bird poop everywhere; and berries littering the yard. Instead of focusing on those rather glaring negatives, I wanted to make something fun out of it. So, we looked up how to harvest them and what recipes we could make with them. I'd never had a mulberry before and they're not bad. We quickly discovered that our dog loves them and so does Big Brother!
The harvesting method is a bit unusual--put down a large tarp or sheet and then shake the tree, collecting whatever falls down.

Our first harvest yielded a cup or two (not counting whatever Big Brother ate off the sheet). 

With our first little mulberry harvest, I made quadruple berry pie. Seriously delicious!

So, the time is upon us again for some mulberry "picking"--or maybe I should say mulberry shaking?! And, I'm on the lookout for other mulberry uses/recipes.
 

Do YOU have mulberry trees? Have any good recipes using mulberries?

Making your own baby food

Little Brother (who just turned 6 months) has now entered the realm of solids, which means it's time to start whipping up batches of baby food again. I'm always amazed at the reactions I get from people when I tell them we make our own--it seems some people think it is quite the undertaking, but I assure you, it's not.

Here are the two most common "myths" that I've heard about making your own:

1. You need a food processor or those expensive baby food machines. Not so!!  I don't own a food processor (though I would love to! :) ), nor do we have any of those fancy baby food machines. I have a hand blender that I use, but you could even use your regular blender.                       
2.  It takes a long time to make. Again, not so (well, depending on your definition of long I guess)!  It took me less than 5 minutes to prep the foods (sometimes prep can take longer depending on what & how much you are making) and I baked them while I was making dinner anyway.  Then, it took me less than 30 minutes to puree, fill my trays, and clean up.                                                                            

So, for little brother's first foods (other than plain 'ole rice cereal of which he was decidedly not a fan) we are doing orange "veggies" (yes, squash is technically a fruit), then green, then fruits.  Squash was on-sale for 49 cents/pound.  So I grabbed a couple acorn (I really wanted butternut, but they were out) and a yam.

I cut the squash in half & scooped out the seeds. (The yam wasn't cut when it went into the oven, just holes poked in it...it got cut in half when I was checking to see if it was done).   I baked them (on convection bake so it was a little faster than usual) at 350 for about 35 minutes (baking time can vary greatly depending on the size of the squash).

Once everything was fork tender, I took it out and let it cool just until I could handle it safely.  Then, I scooped out the insides of all the squash and placed it into a medium sized mixing bowl. To puree, I use a hand blender. (In these early stages of baby food eating, I add a little water to make the texture smoother).

 Once you have the desired texture, scoop out & into your containers to freeze.  With Big Brother (3 years ago), I used ice cube trays.  This time around I wanted something a little more functional and I found the solution...Wilton's Bite-Size Squares Silicone Baking Pan! Love it!!  It's much more versatile than ice cube trays (since we have an ice maker & don't need them) and the food comes out MUCH more easily.  If you fill each well completely full, it is 1 oz.  So, you can fit about 24 oz. in each pan.

 After filling the pans, put them in the freezer (it only took mine a couple of hours to be solid).  Then, pop them out and place them in baggies.

Then, just take out however many you need.  Right now, he's eating about two at a time.  

So easy and healthy!  I love how vibrant the colors are compared to the baby food in the store.  And, it is SO much cheaper than store bought!!  I got the squash and yam for $2.40. It yielded 44 ounces of baby food--equivalent to about 12.5 servings of the large Gerber containers at the store.  Even if you found them for 50 cents each (on sale), that would still be $6.25--so that's a savings of almost $4 for just this batch alone!  While $4 doesn't sound like much on it's own, if you consider how much baby food they go through, that savings can really add up! And, that works for me! :)

Do you make your own baby food?

(And, just in case you were wondering...Yes, I have purchased store bought baby food--especially for long distance travel situations and for a few fruit flavors that are a little more difficult to do yourself because of the season & availability of the fruit.  Also, I am only recently a "stay-at-home" mom.  I did this when I worked full-time outside the home with Big Brother--I just did BIG batches on weekends.)

Zoo Pops!

Wild fun! 

My sister found these adorable popsicle molds while out shopping this summer and thought her favorite nephews must have them! 

The molds come with a little recipe booklet, but thus far, we've just made smoothie pops!  On mornings when we've been making smoothies, I add some extra fruit, juice, and ice to increase the volume. Then, we just pour our extra smoothie into the popsicle molds and pop in the cute penguin holders.

 

We let them freeze for about 6.5 hours and they're ready after naptime!  Big brother gets so excited when they are ready! He chose the polar bear for his first ever zoo pop--a fitting choice, I think.

So far we've done some triple berry smoothie animals and pineapple-orange-banana smoothie animals. And, they really do look like the animals--even in the dark colors. 

Even though we've had a couple of issues with getting them out, overall, I'm loving how easy & inexpensively we can make such fun, healthy popsicles. Plus, the kids LOVE them!!!

My head has been swimming with other popsicle possibilities!  I definitely think we need try some more popsicle molds!

A different kind of heartbeat...

...little heart beat beet cookies! :)

The idea for these comes from a great site for healthy kid food recipes called Weelicious.  A friend came over yesterday armed with a little bunch of organic beets (and her little one).  

Her daughter loves these "sweet beet cookies", so she brought over some beets for us to make some. Aside from the beets, all the ingredients are things you would normally have on hand (flour, sugar, oil, baking powder, salt).  So, they are very easy to make, and the kids can totally help too.  They LOVED rolling out the dough and cutting out the shapes! Truly edible play-dough! :)

We decided on hearts and stars--thus discovering the cute name of "heartbeet cookies". :)
How perfect are these for Valentine's Day?!


The recipe calls for All Purpose flour, but I only had whole wheat on hand.  I would definitely recommend using the AP or half AP/half whole wheat at most, as the wheat flavor overpowers everything else in ours.  And, the sugar content is very low, so these "cookies" don't taste very cookie-like to the adults.  However, that being said, the kids (ages 2 & 3) LOVED them!  Seriously, my little guy has been asking for them everyday--multiple times a day.  What's not to love about a healthy, low sugar "cookie" with a vegetable in it?! (This would also be a really great thing for families dealing with egg allergies)

Your kids will LOVE baking these!  

Here is the Weelicious recipe:

Sweet Beet Cookies (Makes about 50 – 1 inch square cookies)
1 Cup All Purpose Flour
1/2 Tsp Baking Powder
2 Tbsp Sugar
1/4 Tsp Salt
1/2 Cup Raw Beets, shredded fine*
2 Tbsp Oil
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Combine the first four ingredients and stir to combine.
3. Using your hands, add the beets to the flour mixture coating the beet pieces with the flour.
4. Add the oil and work with your hands to bring the dough together (the salt and sugar will fall to the bottom of the bowl so make sure you knead the dough well to combine everything — the outcome will be a smooth dough).
5. Form the smooth, sweet beet dough into a flat rectangular disk and roll it out 1/2 inch thick on parchment paper or a dry clean surface.
6. Using a knife, cut the dough into squares or use small cookie cutters to cut out shapes.
7. Bake on a Silpat or parchment-lined cookie sheet for 15-17 minutes.
8. Cool and serve.
*You can only use RAW fine shredded beets for this recipe. Using canned beets will not work because of the thickness of the beets and they are already cooked.
*These cookies are best stored on the counter in an air-tight container.
Check out Weelicious.com for other great, healthy recipes!