Celebrate the Game with Pillsbury

January 27, 2013 By Anne

The big game is about to begin and you need something to eat! Pizza is always a winner but why not make it healthier with Pillsbury Artisan Pizza Crust with Whole Grain. Easy to make and add your favorite toppings to make it a hit with everyone!

Pillsbury Artisan Pizza with Whole Grain has 16 grams of whole grain per serving. And while it used to harder to find, it can now be found at many local grocery stores. I found several stores in my area, where as a few months ago there was only one.

We don’t get to creative…cheese, pepperoni and tomatoes and onions. But if you want some fun ideas check out Pillsbury’s website:http://bit.ly/VleqXy

What’s your favorite pizza toppings?

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Pillsbury and My Blog Spark would like to give one Mommy Has to Work reader a gift pack to try for yourself!

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“Disclosure: The product, gift pack, information, and additional sample have been provided by Pillsbury through MyBlogSpark

Anne

I'm a mother of 2 who likes to get involved in too much! Besides writing here I started a non-profit, I'm on the PTO board, very active in my community and volunteer in the school. I enjoy music, reading, cooking, traveling and spending time with my family. We just adopted our 3rd cat and love them all!

Make Speedy Weeknight Dinners Even Speedier

January 27, 2013 By Anne

This is a partnered guest post.

Working a full or part time job can be exhausting for anyone, but that exhaustion level can skyrocket when you’re a parent in addition to a hardworking member of the workforce. After a long day at the office, it can be tempting to grab takeout or order delivery at dinnertime, but doing this too often can take a toll on your wallet as well as your health.

Instead of avoiding making dinner entirely after you get home, try making fast and easy meals that are still nutritious. Healthy, delicious and hearty meals don’t necessarily require boatloads of time in the kitchen or expensive ingredients, and there are shortcuts that can make cooking for your family even easier. Follow the tips below to help make your weeknight dinner planning a lot less stressful and hopefully a lot more enjoyable:

Prep Beforehand

Spend a couple hours on a Sunday night chopping up carrots, celery, onions, and other vegetables that can be used in various meals throughout the week to save you time later on. You can even go so far as to boil pasta or cook some chicken breasts and keep them in the fridge for extra-fast weeknight dinner prep.

Reduce Cooking Time

Choosing meals that take 2 hours to prepare and 5 hours to actually cook are probably not the best meals to plan for your busy weeknights. Instead, stick to recipes that can be made from start to finish in under an hour to avoid spending the whole night in the kitchen. Making smaller versions of main dishes is another way to save time, since smaller portions will cook more quickly.

Use Your Freezer

Pre-making meals on a weekend or morning and then keeping them in the freezer until dinnertime is an excellent way to save time after work. Casseroles, soups and chili recipes all tend to freeze nicely, and you’ll love just having to heat something up when you get home instead of starting a recipe from scratch.

Involve Everyone

Getting your kids to help out in the kitchen will not only make prepping and cooking dinner go a lot faster, but also creates an excellent opportunity to catch up on each other’s days. Choose basic recipes that don’t require complex kitchen skills to help even novice chefs feel comfortable in the kitchen.

This recipe for quick mini meatloaves from Hunt’s® is perfect for a busy weeknight when you’re craving a hearty meal in a flash. Because these mini meatloaves are made in muffin tins instead of a larger pan, they cook up much more quickly than your average meatloaf and the prep work required is extremely minimal. They also make great leftovers for lunch the next day, so double the recipe if you want to cook even less this week!

Hunt’s® Quick Mini Meatloaves

PAM® Original No-Stick Cooking Spray
1 can (8 oz each) Hunt’s® Tomato Sauce
3 tablespoons firmly packed brown sugar
1 tablespoon Gulden’s® Spicy Brown Mustard
1 pound ground chuck beef (80% lean)
1 can (14.5 oz each) Hunt’s® Petite Diced Tomatoes, drained
1/3 cup finely chopped yellow onion
3/4 cup Italian-style bread crumbs
1 egg, beaten
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper

Preheat your oven to 400°F. Lightly spray 6 medium muffin cups with cooking spray; set aside. Combine tomato sauce, brown sugar and mustard in a small bowl; set aside.

Combine all remaining ingredients in a large bowl. Add ¼ cup of the reserved sauce mixture to your meat mixture and mix together. Divide meat mixture evenly and place into prepared muffin cups. Place the muffin pan on a baking sheet.

Bake for 25 minutes or until meatloaves are no longer pink in the centers. Top each loaf with 2 tablespoons of sauce and bake for 5 minutes more, until the sauce is set. Serve with remaining sauce.

Author Bio: Meredith K. writes on behalf of Hunt’s®. For this easy meatloaf recipe and other timesaving tomato recipes perfect for busy weeknights, visit www.hunts.com.

Anne

Is it ‘Normal’ Menopause or Hypothyroidism?

January 26, 2013 By Anne

This is a partnered guest post.

The thyroid is perhaps the most oft discussed gland in the human body, mainly for its association with weight issues, as well as for its relevance in connection to female-specific health problems. Many women will explain their excess pounds by chalking them up to a ‘lazy’ or ‘underactive’ thyroid gland, yet the number of females who actually get a thyroid test at a medical facility remains relatively low. The truth is that underactive thyroids, or hypothyroidism, affect millions of women the world over, while the condition itself is considered under-diagnosed by health care experts. Being informed of one’s thyroid activity levels is important, and not just for the impact that they have on body mass, but for a host of other issues, the most important of which is menopause.

The connection between a correctly functioning thyroid gland and menopause is subtle and multi-faceted, especially because low thyroid levels manifest themselves in much the same way as menopause. Menopausal women often put on weight, experience loss of hair, are generally fatigued and have trouble concentrating. Not that many women, however, stop to think that maybe this is their thyroid acting up, instead of the ‘normal’ effects of menopause. The thyroid gland is in charge of regulating numerous life-sustaining body processes, including weight loss and gain, speech, thought formation processes and, last, but certainly not least, the ability to reproduce.

A normally functioning thyroid will communicate with the brain, which will release TRH – the thyrotopin-releasing hormone – as well as TSH – the thyroid-stimulating hormone. These two hormones will effectively inform your thyroid gland that it has to start producing several active hormones, called thyroxine (T4) and triiodothyronine (T3). The levels of these hormones can be easily tested via a basic thyroid test, available at testing centers. After the thyroid produces T4, the body works hard toward turning it into T3, the form under which human cells best recognize the hormone and are able to make use of it most effectively.

However, during menopause, several things occur within the female body, which impede the thyroid’s ability to produce T4 at its full capacity. Essentially, the organism of menopausal and perimenopausal women produces smaller quantities of the female reproductive hormone estrogen, as the body has reached the age where it ‘knows’ it’s going to need fewer such hormones. Since TRH production and relay is favored by estrogen, which helps it do its job, the result is a slowing down of the thyroid function. Lower estrogen levels translate into less T4 available for the body’s cells to be turned into T3. A thyroid profile with lower levels of T3 usually entail less support for the metabolism to break down macronutrients and other nutritious substances into energy, as well as a host of other symptoms. These other symptoms, as you may have already guessed, include a lower sex drive, the inability to sleep properly, mood swings, hair loss, weight gain and chronic fatigue – or, more simply put, just the same symptoms as menopause!

While it can be difficult to discern between menopause and hypothyroidism, regular screenings of the thyroid function are important, since certain lifestyle factors, such as smoking or improper nutrition will take a hard and heavy toll on the thyroid. And this will certainly not make for a smoother transition through menopause, pointlessly complicating an already difficult situation.

Anne

Packaging Warnings Might Inadvertently Promote Chocolate Binges

January 25, 2013 By Anne

This is a partnered guest post.

Chocolate is such a double-edged sword, as many women (and especially on-again, off-again dieters) would tell you. On the one hand, it’s rich, creamy, and delicious; on the other, it is highly fattening. On the plus side, some varieties of chocolate seem to present health benefits, if eaten in moderate quantities. On the minus side, chocolate is, at least for some consumers, a highly addictive substance, which will perpetuate a cycle of guilt, depression and excess. So, then, how does one go about this? Is there a solution to alleviating the distress of a chocolate addiction? And, as a matter of fact, does science actually acknowledge that as an actual medical issue? Let’s take a look at what some researchers and experts have been saying.

A chocolate addiction, or chocoholism, as it has come to be known as, might sound like a mild issue. However, there is a fair amount of scientific research out there, which confirms that several substances in the composition of chocolate might be addictive enough for this to qualify as a problem. More often than not, however, chocoholism is emotionally-founded. Research has found that the United States is the world’s most chocolate addicted country, the one where people most often acknowledge a craving for chocolate. At the same time, 40 per cent of women and 15 per cent of men are self-diagnosed chocolate addicts. Chocolate in its purer forms (i.e., baking cocoa or dark chocolate) contains an important quantity of antioxidants, ‘wonder’ substances that can substantially aid in the prevention of certain medical conditions and have even been touted as useful in combatting the effects of aging. There are no specifically addictive substances in most varieties of chocolate, save, of course, for sugars and fats. Highly refined and processed sugars and fats will cause blood sugar level spikes, followed by directly proportionate drops. During those drops, humans experience feelings of intense, disruptive hunger, as well as ‘cravings’. If such behaviours also come to be associated with periods of emotional distress, during which chocolate intervenes as a pacifier and alleviator of negative feelings – you may well be looking at an addiction in the making.

Perhaps the only truly efficient way to address the complex issue of chocoholism (a blend of emotional addiction, improper nutrition and binge eating) is by making use of considerate, up-to-date therapeutic practices. In other words, an addiction to chocolate should be regarded as any other form of compulsive, potentially harmful behaviour. It is repeated with instant gratification as an end goal, but its less healthful effects are quick to turn it into a self-destructive behaviour, with a pattern likely to repeat itself into infinity. Szmerling explains that treating this addiction is best handled through a combination of mindfulness therapy, clinical hypnosis, and cognitive behavioural psychotherapy. This mix stands to help the patient regain their emotional balance and ‘fill the void’ they had been trying to fill with chocolate through more healthful means.

The need to approach this issue through alternative methods has been recently highlighted by a study completed by scientists from the University of Western Australia, in collaboration with several researchers from the University of Strathclyde. According to their research, people who are not actively dieting, and, as such, not limiting their food intake, nor avoiding any specific foods, might be very negatively motivated by warnings on foodstuff packaging. This is because women in particular have developed a pattern of response to food commercials featuring thin models, coupled with negative interventions on labels. This pattern is called ‘reactance’ and says that women who are not dieting will be upset by attempts to disrupt freely determined behaviours, such as chocolate consumption.

Anne

Things You Never Knew You Could Recycle

January 25, 2013 By Anne

I signed up for Earth911 a long time ago. They have some interesting stuff on there. Yesterday was 30+ Things You Didn’t Know You Could Recycle. It was broken down into categories. I picked a few out of those to share with you….

Plastic Baggies:

Now I knew I could take those plastic shopping bags to my local grocery store and recycle them, but I did not know I could take sandwich baggies too. According to Earth911 you can recycle all of those gallon bags, snack bags and sandwich bags all at the same place! You o need to make sure they are cleaned. I try not to use them, but with kids in school, I do end up using a few. I try to use containers instead.

There are over 15,000 drop-off locations around the country for plastic bags, which helps make recycling them much easier. Some stores take bread bags too!

Old or Unwanted Dishes:

You can always take old or wanted dished to the thrift store and donate them. Or even Freecycle them.

But broken dishes? Broken ceramic dishes can be donated or used for art projects such as mosaics. Check your local artists’ organizations to see if they’d like your dish pieces.

Another option is to check with local recycling facilities that accept concrete or brick. Some of these facilities may accept ceramic plates, National Geographic reports, in addition to broken construction materials. Often, ceramic materials are ground up and turned into gravel.

Old Pillows:

I wrote a post about this last year. I had some old pillows that I hated to throw a way, so I repurposed them to make pillows for my patio. I cut the pillow in half and placed in some pretty material I found at the store. perfect!!

Pillows are not something that you can just donate. You could turn one into a dog bed or use while gardening to pad your knees.

Glasses:

I worked at an eye doctor for many years and always had people calling in asking where they can take their old glasses. Lions clubs will accept glasses through their Lions Recycle for Sight program, which collects the glasses, sorts them by prescription and sends them to people who need them. Some optical stores will collect them, ours did not, but my son’s school would take and donate them to the Lions Club. So I always had a bag under my desk with glasses.

Shoes:

You can donate old shoes to a thrift store, but if they are too worn out, you can still donate them to a different cause.

For those athletic shoes that you’ve worn out, you can send them to Nike’s Reuse-a-Shoe program, which will actually shred the shoes and use the materials. The rubber, foam and fabric can be used in many ways and often find their way into athletic surfaces and playgrounds.

My son’s school used to have a donation box where you could drop off those old, unwanted shoes.

Hair:

Really? Yup! Human hair is compostable and recyclable. My son’s new roommate also says doggy hair can be used to put around your house to keep critters away. She is a groomer and saves her dogs fur for just that reason.

Donating your hair could help clean up future oil spills. San Francisco nonprofit Matter of Trust collects human and pet hair to create booms that soak up oil. Currently, warehouses are full, but you can be placed on the email alert list when the need arrives again.

Wine:

Another, really? But thin k about it. After you drink the wine, the glass is recyclable. The corks are recyclable. And any leftover wine can be tossed in the compost pile! Look for drop off locations for your corks at ReCORK America

Keys:

This is a great idea! We all have a drawer full of miscellaneous keys, but you don’t have to toss them in the trash. They’re made of valuable metal, after all. Keys For Kindness is a small, family-run program designed to raise money through metal key recycling for the Multiple Sclerosis society. The donor pays for shipping, but we’re sure karma points are said donor’s future.

Trophies:

We have lots of these! We even threw some out last week! I never knew I could donate them to be recycled. I will not throw another on away!

Total Awards & Promotions, Inc. has a trophy recycling program to benefit charities. Through a mail-in program, the company recycles your defunct awards or re-engraves and donates them to nonprofit organizations. One of many trophy recycling programs offered nationwide, the company also manufacturers its own awards made of recycled glass and newsprint.

Want more ideas? Check out Earth911.

Most pictures and information taken from Earth911. I added my own opinions and thoughts as I saw fit.