I’ve become so disgusted with the entire food industry lately that I just want to scratch someone’s eyes out. And then I want to stick a fork in my left eye for falling for their lies. I mean, I knew in my heart processed food was nothing but crap but until I really started to think about it and did a little research did I really understand how the entire low – fat food industry boom (along with subsidies from our government and a food pyramid that is built on lies) has poisoned us all.

I’ll get off my soapbox now but I will tell you that after I read The Perfect 10 Diet and Nourishing Traditions I completely restructured how my family eats. They fussed for a day or two about the absence of granola bars, rice crispy treats and chips but they got used the fresh fruit, nuts and seeds quicker than I thought. The result is that my kid is calmer at night and the hubs has lost a few pounds of course.

The most missed thing our new cleaner eating regime is boxed mac and cheese. I have made a promise to myself that I will never again feed my child something so full of dye that every time he eats it his eczema flares up. True story.

Here is how we do it in our house now. It’s no longer a convenience food but it is something my entire family looks forward to every few weeks.

Easy Homemade Mac and Cheese

• 8 ounces uncooked elbow macaroni
• 2 cups shredded sharp Cheddar cheese
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese or whatever else I have in the fridge
• 3 cups milk
• 1/4 cup butter
• 2 1/2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Cook the pasta and set aside

Melt the butter in a pan, mix in the flour slowly to make a rue. Add the milk in slowly and stir until you have a thick sauce. Add shredded cheeses in slowly. Stir over medium heat until you have the most delicious looking cheese sauce that you really want to stick your head in a take a big slurp.

Pour the finished sauce over the pasta in a baking pan. 350 for 30 minutes and viola! Your family thinks you are freakin’ Betty Crocker.

You can also add extra cheese and breadcrumbs on top if you like but my picky kid needs it to be as close to the crap box stuff as possible to enjoy. Again…my fault. Wishing I had never introduced him to that non-food like substance that is crack in a blue box to a five year old.

My entire family is craving good food. You know when your five year old wants a home cooked meal that all of you have indulged enough over the holiday. So starting last night the hubs and I decided it was time to stop celebrating and feed our kids healthy again.

This is never a problem with the girl because she is just one of those freak-of-nature good eaters. The boy on the other hand would just as soon eat Ramen Noodles and ice cream for every meal. And while we are on the subject..Campbell’s please please bring back your baked ramen noodle soup. Then I wouldn’t feel like I force feeding a heart-attack and high blood pressure on my five year old.

Anywho…last night we made one of the few family dinners that the boy likes. SLIDERS. I reluctantly got dressed and went to Kroger on the day after Christmas (ugh!) to find the very last pack of slider buns and lean ground beef and turkey. The boy and the hubs had beef and the girl and I were going to have turkey but she turned on me at the last minute and ended up scarfing down half of daddy’s second slider.

I ate mine on lettuce with some low fat cream cheese and few olives. The boys melted yummy full-fat cheese and theirs and we heated up some butternut squash soup too. No desert either. Everyone went to bed full, happy and unbloated.

Yes! I’m getting my parenting groove back after 8 days of Christmas M&Ms and ramen.

And yes, I am aware of how much better this big, juicy beef slider looks than my healthy and lean turkey burgers. But that’s ok. Momma has to stay  on top of her game.

SLIDERS

I’m not even going to give you a recipe for this. It’s just small patties of meat and whatever seasoning you like. This is one of the few things that he hubs always cooks so there is definitely no recipe.

I will tell you if you are using lean turkey you need to cook it in some kind of oil because it dries out fast. Also season the turkey really well. Garlic and sea salt are my favorite or sometimes soy sauce. When we are feeling real fancy we mix BBQ sauce and cheese in the patties before cooking.

I don’t know what’s going on at my house, but I haven’t really cooked in weeks. Oh, I’ve thrown a few pork chops in the oven a few times and I did make a batch of Chinese Sweet and Sour Chicken that went straight to the trash can, but in general it’s been eating on the fly.

And the hubs and the boy are getting sick of it. Everyone is over couscous and chicken, taco night is…as the boy would say…an epic fail, and I still can’t anyone to eat a vegetable to save my life.

Time to open my Pinterest Real Mom Recipe Board and get creative.

Here’s the first thing on my list to make. The boy and the hubs will tear these up on game day, and even the girl will eat the hot dog out of the middle.

I don’t have a recipe because I just saved this picture…but here is what I plan to do.

One box Jif cornbread mix…and hot dogs. I know..I am such an overachiever.

This recipe is so easy and such a no brainer that I shouldn’t even post it. But I am…as a public service announcement to all.

Pepperoni, cheese and a crescent roll. Bake at 375 for ten minutes..simple, no?

Yes..if you use shredded cheese. Not if you use a chopped in half stick of string cheese. The cheese didn’t have time to melt before the rolls got brown.

You live and you learn. And you eat un-melted cheese for lunch.

Just for full disclosure…this is turkey pepperoni and light string cheese. Not the healthiest lunch…but the girl is chomping the bleep out of it so I’ll definitely make again with a less processed filling.

Another great super easy Halloween treat to make for and/or with the kids. The only un-Real Mom ingredient in these Halloween Pretzel Treats you need is something called orange coating disks….I’m assuming you can find these at Michaels?

Wow…at what point in my life did it become necessary to know where to buy orange coating disks??? The things I do to give the boy a  happy lifestyle are sometimes mind numbing. But in a happy mommy way, of course.

You Need:

8 ounces white baking chocolate, chopped

1 package (10 oz) pretzel rods

1 cup orange coating disks

yellow, orange, brown sprinkles

In a microwave, melt baking chocolate; stir until smooth. Dip each pretzel halfway into chocolate allowing excess to drip off. Place on waxed paper; let stand until set.

In a microwave, melt candy coating disks; stir until smooth. Dip pretzel tips into coating allowing excess to drip off; sprinkle with jimmies. Let stand until set. Store in an airtight container.

Yield: about 2 dozen sticks

When it comes to baking I sometimes think I have a black thumb…I can’t ever seem to time the cookies just right….my cakes fall in the middle and no matter how hard I try I rarely get special treats to turn out looking they should.

Instead of just admitting that I am a bad baker, I let the kids get involved then my excuse for the mess is, “The boy had so much fun making these and he is so proud of them. Aren’t they beautiful?”

Ever since I went to the Metropolitan Cooking Show I have been dying to try my hand at making some of these trendy, cute cake pops. Then a few weeks ago at the boy’s end of year party one of the fabulous moms made these adorable Panda Pops. I mean really? Have you ever seen anything cuter?

While I was hanging out with my sister and all our kids at Mimi’s earlier this week, we decided on a whim to make some brownie cake pops. Because we had tons of brownie mix and more truthfully, I was having a major chocolate craving that only a dense, thick brownie was going to cure.

Here’s what we used:

2 box of snack sized brownie mix

large container of chocolate icing

candy quick melting chocolate

tons of sprinkles

chocolate marshmallows****

My sister baked the brownies, let them cool then crumbled them up. Then she mixed in the chocolate frosting until we got the brownies to a consistency that would somewhat form into a ball. It’s a little fuzzy now because we were doing this around bedtime but I’m pretty sure she put the entire bowl of brownie/frosting mix in the fridge for a while to cool and get a bit more firm.

(I’ve told ya’ll several times this is a Real Mom Recipe blog…I rarely have formal recipes!)

Then we formed the brownie /frosting mix into balls, stuck craft sticks in each one, and line the kids up. They dipped in melted chocolate and then made a huge mess with the sprinkles. In hindsight it would have looked much prettier to use while chocolate with the sprinkles…but when I’m in the middle of a serious chocolate fit it’s all chocolate all the time in my crowded head.

So, no where near as pretty and cute as the Panda Pops that I fell in love with, but we all had a blast making them. It’s worth the not so pretty result when your kids are being creative and enjoying actually creating something instead of playing video games.

***sidenote***these don’t really work well with brownie mix..it’s too heavy and we had some trouble keeping the bigger ones on the sticks. Also…light colored melted chocolate or frosting would have been much prettier covering the round pops.

***I have no idea why I grabbed the chocolate marshmallows at the store..but everyone had fun dipping these as well. Marshmallows taste surprisingly good when drenched in chocolate.

As the girl and I were cruising through Target today wasting time before we picked the boy up from school, a random thought came to me. ‘Go check the Mexican section for Spongebob Taco Kits‘

You may recall I’ve been looking for them for ages. The last time I researched them another mom told me they had found them on clearance somewhere so I thought that was the end of that. A five year-old boys dreams…crushed.

So I wheeled us over to the ethnic isle and there he was…that annoying sponge staring up at me.

Being the good mom that I am, I shelled out the $3 for the taco kit I was sure the boy would be excited about…but not in a million years eat. I have mentioned this kid is worse than **Mikey, right?

Not only was he UBER excited to cook dinner tonight, he did not fuss about washing his hands which was a nice treat.

Of course the entire thing is just a regular Ortega Taco Kit. The only difference is that the seasoning packet had a picture of Patrick on it and the taco sauce had the sponge. The box also boasted of ‘two free taco holders’ which sounded cool in theory but ended up looking like this:

I didn’t have high hopes for dinner tonight. I was sure I was going to be making a grilled cheese or hot dog immediately after he saw these…but guess what?

He ate THREE!!!!!

And all because of that ridiculous sponge that drives me INSANE on a daily basis. After I did the mommy happy dance all around the house celebrating the fact that we now have one more food to add to his very limited five year-old approved foods list, the hubs reminded me of something.

Sometime last year just after the boy discovered Spongebob and the magical world or Bikini Bottom, he actually ate his very first cheeseburger..which he of course called a Krabby Patty and continues to do so to this day. In fact, I don’t think either me or the hubs have called a burger a burger since that day. We are all about Krabby Patties in this house. And well…now Krabby Tacos.

****Don’t remember who “Mikey” is…check it out after the jump…vintage commercial coolness….

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The latest movie that they boy is addicted to is Shrek: Forever After. Not only do we watch the movie at least twice a day, he plays the XBox Shrek: Forever After game maybe twenty times a day.

So I know alot about Shrek. And Donkey. And Fiona. And Puss. And Gingy..I could go on but I won’t. I’ll just say that I know that Donkey loves waffles and now, thanks to Dreamworks…so does the boy.

The cool thing is…he actually likes my Vans Gluten Free Waffles. He always begs for two but he only ever eats one..but he can’t stand to have just one thing for a meal…so as a “side” he likes to have a big  honking spoon of peanut butter. Cute, no? It’s ok by me. This is a healthier meal than he usually eats.

Incidentally, I love waffles too and had planned on having two for breakfast today along with some egg whites..but since we only had two left we shared. And I borrowed some of his PB for my waffle too.

Yeah..I ate on the froggy plate…so what?

I’ve spared you the picture of how I really ate it. I have this weird left over pregnancy thing where I like to eat peanut butter on eggs but it grosses most people out. I love love love a scrambled egg and peanut butter sandwhich. Don’t judge..it’s not any stranger than folks eating ketchup on eggs is it?

It’s a been a while since I had an entire afternoon to spend alone with the boy. We used to run this town before the girl came along.

We had playdates, we went to lunch, we saw movies, we went to story time, we played at the park, we went shopping, to petting zoos, to any and all kid function in the tri-county area. Ok, we don’t live in a tri-county area but you get my point. We were BFF’s. Then the girl came along and the boy went to school and now everything is all topsy-turvy.

But every once in a while we get the opportunity to do something, like this week we took my SUV for a much needed and way overdue detailing. I’m talking sticky cupholders, ground up goldfish and various Disney World vacation detritus in the carpet, ya’ll. While the boys at the carwash were cleaning my ride (for over two hours FYI..it was that dirty) the boy and I walked next door to McD’s for some lunch and play. I don’t really enjoy eating at McD’s so I was tickled beyond pink that there was a ..wait for it…STARBUCKS...two doors down. Mommy heaven, Life source in a cup..whatever  you want to call it.

The boy got bored at McD’s quick because there were no other kids there to play with so he happily escorted his momma to the Buck for a brownie. He remembers what sweets every single restaurant has..and also where the bathrooms are.

I had just seen an announcement that Starbucks had lowered the calorie count on the Turkey Bacon & Egg English Muffin so I jumped at the chance to try one. With a Skinny Vanilla Latte please. :sigh: I get all gooey just thinking about it.

For 320 calories and 7 grams of fat you get a very healthy and filling whole wheat english muffin with a few eggs whites and two fat turkey bacon strips. It gets a major thumbs up from me. I normally eat the Spinach egg white feta wrap when I am there but I think I liked the english muffin better.

I’m not sure the middle-aged men on laptops trying to look busy were too pleased that me and my chatty date took over the sunniest corner of the joint…but we cared not. The Starbucks girls were fawning all over my little man and his hip glasses and a stranger even told me to get him in commercials..stat! It was a good day.

It was the tastiest fast food I’ve had in a long time, then again maybe it was just the company.

I had planned on making cute little sliders tonight for dinner. The boy would have loved them and it would have made a great recipe post.

But you know how it goes, it’s close to dinner time and you realize you don’t everything you need and the kids are screaming for food and the hubs, who is already sick, is getting faint from not eating for two days. So you switch gears and make something else.

Since the hubs is sick I decided to make his favorite comfort food. (Really I decided to cook Sloppy Joe Spaghetti because it’s super easy but don’t tell him that. He thinks I’m the bees knees for making his favorite.)

Ingredients:

1 large box spaghetti

1 can of Sloppy Joe mix

Ground beef (optional)

Three easy ingredients and you have a quick, filling dinner that I’m guessing any man would grunt over and kids always love pasta. I do have to make the boy’s plate without any meat but he does love the Sloppy Joe sauce.

Brown the ground beef, drain, add the sauce and simmer until hot all the way through…toss with cooked pasta.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know it’s like cooking for simpletons..but I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.…this is how a real mom cooks. And while I am sure that any mom out there can cook everything I do without my help..sometimes we just get in a rut and cook the same old, same old for months at a time.

When the kids get bored with a food then you have a hard time getting them to eat. At least that’s how it goes at my house. That’s where I come in. I’m your ‘Need some new easy recipes Fairy Godmother’!

:side note: this is probably one of the least expensive meals I make for my family. we buy big packs of pasta, sloppy joe mix and ground beef at our wholesale club. I don’t know exactly what it comes out to per meal…I barely cook and I don’t do math…but it’s cheap! Add that to the free bread we got at the store this week for buying something we already normally buy and I am suddenly a money-saving-frugal-housewife! At least today.