my husband worked long, evening hours for many years. most of the time, i was home with the kids by myself in the evening so that meant that whatever i had going on, along came my kids with me. that never bothered me, but there were times when i wish going to the grocery i could have left them at home-for there sake and mine!
anyway, my husband is home in the evenings now and there are many nights that i can escape for a couple of hours to get groceries and run errands and he gladly keeps them home with him. the other night i had to run for just a few things and when the girls asked if they could go too, i let them.
of course, taking your children to the store they ask for many things. my kids know well by now that they are not going to get a toy or junk, but they ask for lots of food items. as i am transitioning to making almost all of our food from scratch to avoid unnecessary chemicals that are found in foods today, you can imagine how this gets hard when you have kids at the store with you that are asking for frozen "kids meals" and yogurts with m & m's on top.
one of the items my kids asked for were wafflers which are waffles in the frozen section. i used to by these almost weekly, and thought it was a nutritious start to their day, especially when i bought the whole grain ones with blueberries. and then i took a closer look at what was really in the waffles.
here is what is in your average store bought, frozen waffle:
INGREDIENTS:
Enriched wheat flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate [vitamin B1], riboflavin [vitamin B2], folic acid), whey, partially hydrogenated soybean and/or cottonseed oil, sugar, eggs, water, leavening (baking soda, sodium aluminum phosphate, monocalcium phosphate), corn cereal, corn syrup, salt, modified corn starch, calcium carbonate, dried blueberries, dried apples, natural and artificial blueberry flavor, sodium citrate, niacinamide, reduced iron, yellow #5, red #40, blue #2 lake, blue #1, vitamin A palmitate, thiamin hydrochloride (vitamin B1), pyridoxine hydrochloride (vitamin B6), riboflavin (vitamin B2), yellow #6 and vitamin B12.
(source dietfacts.com) (grocery store food label)
there are so many things wrong with this.
for those of you who do not know about some of these ingredients, just google the first one that you can't pronounce. if you don't know what it is and you can't even read it, you probably shouldn't eat it. many of these ingredients are highly addictive which is one of the reasons we have an obese America. Companies know that once you are addicted, they have a customer for life.
you don't have to be a registered dietician to make good food choices. this is common sense!
i have taught my kids this and they understand, but they still get a little whiny at the store from time to time. it's ok to break the rules once in a while, but something like waffles, are very easy to make at home so that is what i did.
instead of buying the waffles, i promised them we would have a waffle making day and showed them where in the store they could find the ingredients for waffles. they thought this was acceptable :)
today, we made waffles. they were delicious and waffles make so much that i always have left overs to freeze. next time you want waffles, they will already be made. Simply grab one out of the freezer, pop it in the toaster and viola-you have waffles!
they put the homemade butter they made the day before on their waffles and all natural (high fructose corn syrup free) syrup on them.
our waffles ingredients were:
all purpose flour
whole wheat flour
almond milk
oil
baking powder
salt
and i added brown sugar and cinnamon to help get that "store bought" effect of the brown sugar waffles they asked for.
hopefully these ingredients are easier to pronounce and chances are, you have them in your kitchen. everyone had a full belly and a smile on their face, and i felt good about feeding them a wholesome food.
here is the link to the exact recipe i used ( i use veegan recipes because my son has dairy and egg food allergies)
http://www.grouprecipes.com/21727/easy-vegan-waffles.html
Join me on facebook today for "Make it Yourself Monday" and share your do-it yourself ideas!
https://www.facebook.com/stopandsmellhisroses
don't forget to take time to stop and smell His roses today :)
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