ReadySetMom

Vote for Jilly's recipe on Epicurious.com!

Our friend Jilly is a Top 10 finalist for a Tailgating Recipe Contest at Epicurious.com. She needs our help to win! Please vote for her Teriyaki Burger with Wasabi Mayo (finalist #9). She assures us it's really quite good!!! Don't let hot apple chicken wings beat her!!

Looking for the perfect treat for a school birthday celebration

We've recently talked here about snacks at school and low-cost birthday party ideas.

I have a question related to both of these subjects: What special treats do you bring to school to celebrate your kids' birthdays?

Our school requires that only store-bought food be served. (Maybe all public schools have this policy against homemade goodies.) Treats must not contain nuts because some kids are allergic. Healthy snacks are encouraged.

That leaves us with ... birthday carrots!

Seriously, do you bring sugary frosted cupcakes to share on your kid's special day, because they're fun and traditional and maybe there will be one left over for mom? Or do you have a healthier, but still party-related, suggestion that's more exciting than a granola bar? What about non-food (non-junk) giveaways, like colorful pencils or little notebooks?

Four kids in my daughter's kindergarten class have birthdays this week, and they'll be celebrating them all on Friday. You can bet I'll be quizzing my 5-year-old on the treat selection.

What does your child bring for snack?

I had hoped that school snacks would be done now that my daughter is in first grade. It seemed like a necessary nutritional boost for kindergartners, but I hoped we'd outgrown it by now. So she did not get one the first day of school. Oops. We got a note from the teacher who asserts that children learn best when they are not hungry. OK. Fair enough. Yet, it's just that one more thing to remember to stuff in the backpack each day along with water bottles, jacket, lunch, notes and papers, permission slips, etc.

Things I usually pack for snack: slice of cheese, handful of crackers or cereal, a small amount of fruit. My daughter loves nuts but told me not to pack them since there are some nut allergies in the class. Generally we avoid things that would be messy like a yogurt. What do you pack for snack? And when, for the love of pete, are the kids old enough that we can quit packing daily snacks??

Over in the produce section ...

It's the little things that make a difference.

I went to a Haggen store yesterday to buy avocados. There in the produce section were two separate groups of avocados. The ripe ones were stacked underneath a sign that read, "To eat TODAY." The unripe ones were stacked underneath a sign that read, "To eat TOMORROW."

I was making a taco salad last night, so I selected three perfect avocados from the "TODAY" group without having to squeeze each and every one of them to check for ripeness. What a service! (Sometimes it doesn't take much to make me happy.)

Is an avocado a fruit or a vegetable?

Bravo for PPS Local Lunch!

Did you hear about how PPS is evolving the Harvest of the Month program to Local Lunches? For this school year, the cafeterias of PPS will serve meals once a month that feature local products. Their definition of local includes Oregon, Washington and California (north of San Francisco). While I loved the idea of Harvest of the Month, with a kid who wasn't keen on produce, it was hard to support the program last year. This year, it should be an easy sell. Here's the schedule and menu  for Local Lunch:

• October 22: Cheese quesadilla featuring Tillamook cheese and Don Poncho tortillas
• November 19: BBQ Draper Valley Farms chicken
• January 8: Country Natural Beef cheeseburgers
• February 25: Truitt Brothers Chili
• March 18: Grilled cheese sandwiches featuring Tillamook cheese and Shepherd's grain flour
• April 23: Roadrunner pizza featuring Shepherd's grain flour
• May 27: Zenner's hot dogs and Kettle chips

We try to eat locally as much as possible, so I'm please by this improvement in school lunches (although I'll not that we pack cold lunch 90% of the time). In any case, I feel this is a step in the right direction, and will help guide the days we do buy hot lunch. Not only do Local Lunches support local food producers, we know where the food is coming from, it's high quality and yummy, and doesn't rack up excessive food miles.

What do you think about Local Lunches? Are you buying it?

Have you tried the new superfood -- the acai berry?

I first bought this expensive bottle of juice called V8 V-Fusion because my son doesn't have enough fruits and veggies in his diet. It promises a full serving of fruit and a full serving of vegetables in an 8-ounce glass.

Both of my kids love it, so when they do get juice at home, it's usually this. Their favorite flavor is the Acai Mixed Berry, and if you haven't already heard, the acai (pronounced a-sigh-ee) is the new superfood.

Like the much-talked-about blueberry, it's small and bluish and packed with antioxidants. It's purported to have all the good stuff we want in a food - dietary fiber, omega 3, 6, 9, photonutrients and calcium. It apparently keeps your heart healthy, gives you abundant energy and slows the aging process. It may even help your sex life. Good for kids and their parents, it seems.

But don't go looking for the acai berry at any farmers markets around here. It grows in the Amazon rainforest and, not only that, fresh berries have only a 24-hour life span, after which the properties of the fresh juice become inactive. So acai products we find here -- and apparently there are many -- are made from freeze-dried or frozen berries.

Have you tried any acai berry products?

Fresh fruit on a stick is a big hit

The Beaverton Farmers Market was particularly amazing last Saturday. Luscious berries and peaches, beautiful blooming plants, shiny green zucchini and baskets full of ripe melons.

We had more to do than ogle the fresh goods, however, because we were going to a neighborhood get-together that evening and had signed up to bring a kid-friendly appetizer. I was already making teriyaki chicken skewers, so I thought I would also put fresh fruit on skewers.

We bought blackberries, blueberries, watermelon and cantaloupe. I cut the melons into cubes and washed the berries. Then I rounded up the kids and put them to work skewering the fruit in any pattern they liked.

My daughter, who ate a piece of fruit for every one she skewered, was into patterns. Blackberry-watermelon -cantaloupe, blackberry-watermelon-cantaloupe. My son, not the fruit lover, put together a few all-watermelon skewers because he will actually eat watermelon. I did a few, too, because it looked like fun (especially compared to skewering chicken).

The result was quite beautiful -- and popular. Kids at the party finished off the plate in record time, grabbing a skewer and heading off to play outside. (Small kids got a warning about the sharp end of the stick.) They were easy to make, easy to eat while mingling, delicious and healthy, too. Plus, my kids got to brag about making them.

I wonder what else I could skewer?

Still trying to sharpen my skills in the kitchen

If only I had sharp knives.

You may recall that my resolution back in January was to be a better cook. It's been months now and let's just say I'm still working on that one. I know I can be better. I try really hard. I print out recipes all the time. I watch the Food Network more than I care to admit. I plan menus. (Never mind that it's usually while I'm at the grocery store deciding what to make for dinner that night.)

I was cutting up some chicken the other day. Handling meat is one of my (many) least favorite parts about cooking. It was taking me a long time because my knives are so dull, and it came to me: If only I had sharp knives! Then I'd zip through carrots, potatoes and onions like an Iron Chef. I'd butterfly shrimp with a flick of the wrist. Tomatoes would shrink at the sight of my shiny cleaver.

If only I had sharp knives.

Seriously, does anyone know a good place to get knives sharpened?

Comparing apples and french fries

Over on Enviromom.com, Renee writes about an eye-opening book called "Hungry Planet," which describes what 30 families from 24 countries eat in a week. Not surprisingly, the American family's food spending was at the high end of the spectrum, perhaps largely because of the amount of processing and packaging of food that occurs in our country.

I've reserved the book at the library and I'm even more compelled to read it with my kids after seeing a recent ad for Burger King. The fast-food chain has just added apples to its kids' meal menu.

Apples cut and packaged to look like french fries, that is.

Just think of all the unnecessary handling, slicing and preserving of apples that is happening so kids can be tricked into eating fruit. Throw in the manufacturing and printing of the special packaging that the fruit surely comes tucked into. Lastly, consider the waste from the packaging and from the kids who throw away the apples uneaten because, come on, they're at Burger King and they want real french fries, not apples disguised as french fries.

I have a kid who eats very little fruit. He's even less likely to eat fruit sitting in a Burger King restaurant. If they really want customers to "Have It Your Way," then I prefer my apples whole and in their natural, fabulous packaging.

Free Slurpees today at 7-Eleven

Today is 7-11. There is a chain of stores called 7-Eleven. The store is honoring the day with free Slurpees, the 7.11 oz version, of course.

One of the current flavors is called Monster Black Ice and is billed as the first totally black Slurpee. I think I'll stick to cherry.

There's nothing like a cold drink on a hot day, especially if it's free.