How do you eat Radicchio? Looking forward to hearing if you have any great radicchio recipes!

Happy Healthy Eating,
Kia

Kia Robertson is a mom and the creator of the Today I Ate A Rainbow kit; a tool that helps parents establish healthy habits by setting the goal of eating a rainbow of fruits and vegetables every day. Kia is passionate about creating tools that help parents raise healthy kids!

We’ve done this for two weeks now and it’s been a fantastic experience for us all but especially for Hannah because she glows with pride when we’re all sitting around the table ooh’ing and ahh’ing over her creation.  I thought her cheeks might explode from the giant smile on her face when I asked for a second helping of her pasta casserole!

Hannah has also learned that it takes a lot of planning and energy to make a meal for the family! By the time she is enjoying the meal she prepared she is tired (and she likes to let us know how much work it is to cook).  This has also made her much more appreciative and grateful for the meals we prepare for her because now she knows exactly what it takes to get dinner on the table!

The challenging part for us to to keep our mouths shut and let her make mistakes and find her own ways of doing things.  As parents it’s so easy for us to just do things for our kids because let’s face it, it’s faster, easier and usually less messy!  But when we let our children do things for themselves they learn so much more and take so much more pride in what they have accomplished.

Happy Healthy Eating,
Kia

Kia Robertson is a mom and the creator of the Today I Ate A Rainbow kit; a tool that helps parents establish healthy habits by setting the goal of eating a rainbow of fruits and vegetables every day. Kia is passionate about creating tools that help parents raise healthy kids!

Here are 7 ideas to eat healthy while sticking to your budget:

1. Make A Plan! Come up with some meal ideas for the week. Make a shopping list based on those meals and then stick to the list! If you don’t buy junk food and bring it into the house it will be easier to make healthy choices when it’s time to eat!

2. Shop around the perimeter of the store! This is where you’ll find all your important basics (fruits, vegetables, meats, dairy and breads) the middle aisles are where they keep the “convenient” processed food products that aren’t necessarily healthy and can wreck your budget if you’re not careful.

3. Make meatless meals at least once day a week. On those days you can easily get your protein from beans, nuts,veggies, seeds and grains.

4. Eat A Rainbow! Focus on buying and serving a rainbow of produce. Whether fresh or frozen, including colorful fruits and vegetables in your diet is a great healthy habit for the whole family!

5. Coupons! Watch for fliers and cut out coupons from your favorite grocery store…every penny you save makes a difference!

6. Shop on a Full Stomach! If you are hungry while you are shopping you are far more likely to buy more food so make sure you go on a full stomach.

7. Cook!! This has been the number one way we have reduced our monthly food bill. It is worth it to make the time to plan and prepare home cooked meals as often as you can, it is also healthier because you are in charge of the ingredients and you don’t have to worry about any unnecessary chemicals and preservatives and it’s better for the environment because you are preparing food that didn’t need to be packaged and shipped. So it’s a win win situation.  Besides the best way for your kids to learn the importance of healthy food choices is by your example so get the family together in the kitchen and have some fun!

Happy Healthy Eating,
Kia

Kia Robertson is a mom and the creator of the Today I Ate A Rainbow kit; a tool that helps parents establish healthy habits by setting the goal of eating a rainbow of fruits and vegetables every day. Kia is passionate about creating tools that help parents raise healthy kids!

By breaking produce down into groups of fire-engine red, bright orange, sunshine yellow, emerald green, and  rich blue/purples you can make eating fruits and vegetables fun and easy for your kids!  Even at a very young age, kids can easily grasp the concept of eating a rainbow.

So how do you get your kids to actually eat a rainbow? As parents, we need to get into the habit of serving fruits and veggies at every meal and snack! Start off with ones that they like (if they don’t like any…stay tuned for my next guest post!) then you can slowly try new produce! If you do the typical 3 meals and 2 snacks per day then you have at least 6 opportunities a day to get your kids eating colorful fruits and vegetable! I encourage parents to make this fun and keep it light, no pressure, no battles. If your child starts off by eating one color a day that is a great start…you can build up to a rainbow over time. Healthy bodies are made one bite at a time so celebrate every step towards the rainbow!

Breakfast: Always provide a fruit! Bananas, Apple Slices, Seedless Grapes, Pears Slices. If you eat dairy and your kids like to dip their fruit, yogurt works well! Sometimes I’ll incorporate the fruit into the meal, such as a bowl of yogurt, granola and apple chunks. Or I’ll add a handful of Raisins to a bowl of oatmeal. Or make a yummy fruit smoothie!

Snack: Veggie Time!! Cut up Celery, Carrots, Cucumbers, Bell Peppers, Cherry Tomatoes. Once again, a dip might help encourage your little one, try hummus, or perhaps you have a great homemade dressing, a store bought salad dressing works fine too! We like to serve this on a fun plate or in a muffin tray to make it a little more interesting!

Lunch: Sandwiches are a great place to add veggies! Sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, leafy lettuce, avocado slices all work well in a sandwich. If we’re not having sandwiches we always make sure there is a plate of veggies, based on the colors eaten at snack time, we then offer a color or two that hasn’t been eaten yet.

Snack: Fruit Time!! At this point in the day think about what colors still need to be eaten…then serve a fruit that belongs to the color group that is needed. A little bowl of frozen blueberries is a tasty treat!

Dinner: We always have a vegetable with dinner! Salads, steamed veggies, raw veggie slices all make their way onto our table! We also try to include veggies in our cooking; we add things like zucchini, carrots, tomatoes to spaghetti sauce.

Dessert: Fruit again! We think Strawberry slices and Raspberries make a great way to top off a meal sometimes we’ll have them on top of frozen yogurt! If we re-think what “dessert” is, we can see that it can actually be a fantastic time to get in another serving of fruit!

Happy Healthy Eating
Kia

Kia Robertson is a mom and the creator of the Today I Ate A Rainbow kit; a tool that helps parents establish healthy habits by setting the goal of eating a rainbow of fruits and vegetables every day. Kia is passionate about creating tools that help parents raise healthy kids!

We found a great whole wheat pizza dough recipe online, there are plenty to choose from, here is one that we have tried. Hannah had fun helping us make the dough! Then we used a very small amount of cheese and loaded our pizzas full of veggies such as zucchini, spinach, olives and red peppers.  We make individual size pizzas so that we can each create our own combo and it helps keep portion sizes down.  It works well to kids involved in the kitchen and it makes it easy to customize based on food preferences.

Just a reminder that making healthy choices doesn’t have to mean missing out on some favorite foods!

Happy Healthy Eating,
Kia

Kia Robertson is a mom and the creator of the Today I Ate A Rainbow kit; a tool that helps parents establish healthy habits by setting the goal of eating a rainbow of fruits and vegetables every day. Kia is passionate about creating tools that help parents raise healthy kids!