Survive Before 5 {Review}

For most of us, providing a healthy home cooked menu for our family means planning and preparation at some point. I have batch cooked and meal planned complimentary menu items in order to minimize prep work and share ingredients, but Trisha at Once a Month Mom takes meal planning to the next level. Her site provides recipe cards, grocery lists, and detailed instructions for a big day freezer cooking event each month and she recently added a whole foods option to the menu selections!

Just as exciting, she has a new ebook out - Survive Before 5: Toddler Meals for your Busy Days. Survive Before 5 provides recipes for healthy breakfasts, lunches and snacks - those pesky meals that aren't covered in the once a month menus on her website! In addition, you will find a sample calendar for organizing these meals and serving size recommendations. There are detailed plans for preparing your freezer meals as well as recipe cards, labels, and a grocery list that can be tailored to the number of children needing to be fed. One of my favorite features of the book is that each recipe includes toddler tasks. What a great way to get your little ones involved, excited, and learning. So much of our kitchen routine is method based, and that is what makes this cookbook so valuable - the methods and tips shared in these recipes can be extended to your own family favorites, making your time in the kitchen even more efficient and enjoyable.


Survive Before 5 is a great deal at $7.99, but for the rest of this month you can purchase it for $5.99 using the code OAMM599

More smoothie pops ideas!

I guest posted Saturday at BabyCenter, sharing 7 of our favorite healthy and homeade popsicle ideas. I am so excited to be working with BabyCenter -the first site I jumped on when I found out I was pregnant, and one of the first I read on a regular basis.

I had a few questions about my smoothie pops come out of that guest post, so I thought I would post a few more ideas and specifics about our smoothie recipes. Here are some of the fruit combinations we go to most often:

Banana, Strawberry, Watermelon

Canteloupe, Blueberry, Peach

Blackberry, Strawberry, Banana

Pineapple, Orange

It helps to freeze one of your fruits - we grow strawberries and blackberries, so most often we use last year's crop as the "ice" to keep our smoothies cool.

To add some extra fiber and nutrition, veggies are a great addition. Two handfuls of baby spinach, a half cup of diced kale or cabbage can be added with your juice at the start into your blender, then add the remaining ingredients.

To start, try a cup of juice with your greens. Then add in a cup of fresh fruit, a cup and a half of frozen fruit. After everything is well blended, try adding a half cup of yogurt or peanut butter.

As you can see in the picture above, smoothie making is a family affair at our house! The girls love helping to choose the ingredients, and as with most foods, helping with preparation makes them more adventurous eaters and excited to try their creation.

What flavor combinations do you like best?

Rain, rain and more rain...

means we've been enjoying a lot of these lately!