Tips and Recipes

Build Your Own Dressing

Serving Size: 1 teaspoon
Ingredients

• Choose 3 tablespoons acid
  • Lemon juice
  • Rice vinegar
  • Red wine vinegar
  • Sherry vinegar
  • Balsamic vinegar
  • White wine vinegar
  • Cider vinegar
• Choose ½ cup or less oil
  • Olive oil
  • Safflower oil
  • Canola oil
  • Vegetable oil
• Choose ½ teaspoon add-in
  • Herbs
  • Spices
  • Dijon mustard
  • Minced shallots
  • Minced garlic
  • Parmesan cheese

Directions

1. Place all ingredients in a jar or plastic container, and shake to mix together.
2. Store in refrigerator. Separation is normal. Shake or stir prior to using.

Try these great combinations:
Lemon Vinaigrette

• 3 tablespoon lemon juice
• ½ cup olive oil
• ½ tablespoon oregano

Balsamic Vinaigrette

• 3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• ½ cup olive oil
• ½ tablespoon oregano

Source: Cooking with EFNEP

July is National Culinary Arts Month

We’re celebrating National Culinary Arts Month with some tips to make you more confident cooking nutritious meals on a budget for your family! Cooking can be a bit scary if you haven’t had much practice. Hopefully, these ideas will inspire you to give it a try and get creative in your kitchen!
Think of your favorite foods you’ve had eating out at a restaurant or at a friend’s house. Try re-creating one of those dishes at home. The great thing about cooking is that you can control what goes in it. If some of your family’s favorite foods are high in fat, salt, and sugar, you can make healthier versions at home. For example, macaroni and cheese is usually made with white pasta and a lot of fat from butter, whole milk or cream, and full-fat cheese. When you make macaroni and cheese at home, you can use whole wheat pasta instead of white pasta. You can also pick what shape pasta you want! Elbows are a traditional choice, but you can also try penne, rotini, and bow-ties. To lower the fat content, you can use plain nonfat yogurt instead of butter, skim milk instead of whole milk, and low-fat cheese instead of full-fat cheese. You can also add vegetables like peas, broccoli, or tomatoes, as well as white beans to add more filling protein and fiber to your meal. This is a great way to sneak a few vegetables into your family meals.
Spice blends add flavor to the food you cook, but store-bought blends can be expensive and high in salt. Instead, you can make your own homemade spice blends without salt by using individual spices you may already have in your pantry. For more ideas on how to cook with herbs and spices, check out this website. In addition to spice blends, you can add flavor to your food with lemon juice, vinegar, and small amounts of plant-based oil like olive oil.
Cooking a delicious, healthy meal can take time, but there are ways to make it easier. Plan your meals before you go to the grocery store so you’ll have on hand exactly what you need to cook for the week. Also, plan your meals around what ingredients are on sale at the grocery store that week. When you’re cooking, go ahead and double the recipe so you can have leftovers for the next day, or freeze them for another week. Getting five servings of fruits and vegetables in a day can be challenging, but canned and frozen vegetables can be just as nutritious as fresh, and sometimes cheaper when the food you’re buying isn’t in season. Make sure to choose canned and frozen fruits and vegetables without added sugar or salt. Drain and rinse canned vegetables and fruits before you use them to wash away some of the sugar and salt. Having canned and frozen produce on hand is a great way to add fruits and vegetables to any meal in case you don’t have fresh ones to cook with–plus the canned and frozen won’t spoil as quickly!
Lastly, involve your family in the cooking process! Even young children can help with mixing, measuring, stirring, and setting the table. This is a great way to bond as a family and make your family more willing to try what you made since they’ll play a part in the cooking process. Cooking doesn’t always have to be exact, so there’s room to be creative and customize your dishes to how you like them.
What can you cook in your kitchen this week?
-Cara Mowery

Relay Race

Relay races are a fun way for kids, especially preschoolers, to learn sportsmanship as they compete against other teams to win. They’re a great activity to include in your summer cookouts and neighborhood block parties with friends and family. There are many ways to play, but you usually will split into two (or more) teams with an equal number of players on each team. Leaving plenty of space in between teams, each team stands in a line as one player at a time goes from the start to a certain point ahead of them (perhaps 20 feet, more or less depending on your children’s age and skill level), and back to the start, doing a movement like running or skipping. After one player returns to the start, the next player takes their turn. The team whose players complete their turns first wins the game.

Before playing, make sure there’s enough room to race safely without obstacles like rocks and away from potentially dangerous objects like barbecue grills. An open backyard or field at a park away from the road are great locations to do relay races. Even the adults can participate with the children! You can make teams by family, who has a summer birthday vs. who doesn’t, and whatever other criteria you can think of.

Here’s a list of different relay races your children can try:

• Crab Walk Race: Each player will crab walk when they take their turn. To crab walk, sit on the ground and lift yourself up with your hands and feet. On all fours, walk sideways to the other side and back to the start.
• Three-Legged Race: Teams should be split into pairs. Tying one players right leg to another player’s left leg with a bandana or scarf, pairs of players go to the other side and back to the start with one of each of their legs tied together. The key is to move at the same pace as the player tied to you so you can move faster and without tripping.
• Spoon Race: Players will walk normally, but while carrying a spoon with a hard-boiled or plastic egg on it. If a player drops their egg, they have to pick it up and put it back on their spoon before continuing. You can also try this with other objects that are hard to balance, such as water balloons.
• Wheelbarrow Race: Like the three-legged race, each team should be split into pairs. One player (the wheelbarrow) walks on their hands while the other player holds the “wheelbarrow’s” ankles as they walk. After getting to the other side, players should switch places and then return to the start.

For more relay race ideas, visit https://pbskids.org/zoom/activities/games/.

What’s your child’s favorite way to relay?

National Park and Recreation Month

July is National Park and Recreation Month! The National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA) exists to promote public parks, recreation, and conservation. Children with access to safe parks and recreation are more likely to participate in physical activity,¹ so parks play a critical role in children’s health. This month, get your children outside and utilize the plethora of activities provided by parks and recreational activities!

Here are some ways you and your family can participate in National Park and Recreation Month!

• Playgrounds: Playgrounds provide all kinds of activities that young children especially will enjoy. Equipment like monkey bars help children build strong bones and muscles. Also, taking turns on the equipment can help children learn manners and sharing.
• Fishing: Fishing is a fun way to enjoy the outdoors and get physical activity without overly exerting yourself on a hot July day. State parks with bodies of water are often available for fishing as long as you have a fishing license and abide by state regulations.
• Boating and paddling: Many state parks have bodies of water flowing through them. These provide great opportunities to see the beauty of the park while getting physical activity by boating through the park. Oftentimes you can rent a canoe, kayak, or paddleboat to explore the water.
• Rock climbing: While children should learn to climb indoors before trying outdoor climbing, rock climbing is a great strength-building activity. Older, more experienced children may enjoy climbing outdoors under adult supervision and with an appropriate permit from the park office.

Whether you visit a local park or a state park, you’re sure to find activities the whole family will enjoy! To find a park near you, visit https://findyourpark.com.

What will your children play at the park?

References

1. http://www.sophe.org/focus-areas/chronic-diseases/partnering-4-health/july-national-park-recreation-month/

Fad Diet Myth Busting

There is a lot of misinformation about how we should and should not be eating. Any diet that reduces the number of calories you eat can help you lose weight, but fad diets may leave your intake of important nutrients low because they strictly limit or completely leave out whole food groups. While fad diets are often meant to help people lose weight, in the long-run they can make your weight go up and down, or just make you gain weight–neither of which are good for your health. No one food or diet is a magic “cure-all” for all our health problems. Likewise, no one food or diet is a cause of all our health problems.
Fad diets are everywhere you look, and it can be overwhelming trying to figure out what a healthy diet looks like with all of these conflicting claims. Let’s take a closer look at a few fad diets you may have heard of.
Gluten-Free: Gluten is a protein found in certain grains: wheat, barley, and rye. A gluten-free diet eliminates these grains from your diet.

• Myth: Grains that have gluten make you fat.
• Fact: Eating a lot of refined white grains (such as white wheat and white rice) is connected to weight gain. Eating whole grains (such as 100% whole wheat, brown rice, quinoa, and oats) can help you lose weight.
• Fact: You only need to avoid gluten if you have celiac disease.

Paleo: The paleolithic diet (often called the “paleo” diet) can be summarized as “if the cavemen didn’t eat it, then neither should you.” It eliminates grains, legumes (beans and nuts), peanuts, dairy, refined white sugar, potatoes, processed foods, salt, and refined vegetable oils.

• Myth: The cavemen weren’t fat, so if I eat like them, I’ll lose weight and be healthier.
• Fact: People who lived during the Paleolithic period only lived to be in their 20s, on average. While the paleo diet includes nutritious foods like fruits and vegetables, it doesn’t allow you to eat other nutritious foods like whole grains and legumes. Eating whole grains and legumes can help prevent and manage health problems like type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease.

Low-Fat: There’s a lot of debate on whether a low-fat diet or a low-carb diet is better for you. While diet trends today are swinging towards low-carb diets over low-fat, many people still follow a low-fat diet.

• Myth: If I eat less fat then I’ll lose more fat.
• Fact: Eating fewer calories, no matter where they come from, can help you lose weight. While it’s good to eat less saturated and trans fats, our bodies need unsaturated fats. Unsaturated fats are found in plant-based oils, avocados, nuts, seeds, and fish. Low-fat diets have not been shown to help with weight loss. In fact, by eating less fat, you may end up eating a lot of refined carbohydrates and sugar, which can lead to gain weight. Because fat helps keep us full, avoiding it all together may make us feel hungry faster, making us eat more.

Low-Carb & Ketogenic: Low-carb diets, the Atkins diet, and ketogenic (“keto”) diets look a lot alike. All three of these diets limit carbohydrates and increase fat intake.

• Myth: Low-carb diets will help you lose more weight than other diets.
• Fact: In the short-term, you may lose more weight on a low-fat diet, but in the long-term, weight loss is about the same for low-fat diets as it is other diets. Eating fewer calories is more important for weight loss than the different amounts of macronutrients (carbohydrates, fat, and protein) we eat. The keto diet allows so few carbohydrates that it may be harmful to your health.

Before you start a diet like one of these, ask yourself these questions:

• Does this diet tell me I can’t eat a whole food group, or that I should avoid nutritious foods like fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes, fish, or whole grains? Or that I should be afraid of a certain food?
• If I followed this diet, would I eat a lot of sugar, red meat, saturated fat, or highly processed foods that I should be limiting?
• Could I really stay on this diet long-term?

If the answer to any of these questions is “yes,” you may want to reconsider trying that diet.
Try to avoid restrictive diets that tell you not to eat specific foods that we know are good for our bodies. Instead, focus more on the way you eat as a whole, choosing nutritious foods like fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, and low-fat dairy every day and letting “junk foods” have their place as well–just in smaller amounts and only sometimes. This can save you a lot of stress, time, and money that you might spend following a fad diet.
Fad diets will come and go, but a balanced diet including all food groups is the key to health throughout your lifetime!
-Cara Mowery