Sunday, March 16, 2008

Substitutions?

Ok dear friends, I need ideas.  Substitutions actually.  Just wondering if you have any good exchanges for these frequent visitors to our family table:

  • Pancake syrup  (I know fruit is an option, but personally, that is not a fave of mine...still willing to try...)
  • "Catalina" salad dressing.  The kids love to dip just about everything in this, but it's first ingredient is that high fructose corn syrup.  Sprays work for salads, but is there a dressing that doesn't contain something more man-made than God-created?
  • Lemonade.  I know there's nothing inherently wrong with this one, but Cryst.al light is pretty expensive, has that aspart.eme thing, and we went through a LOT of this last summer.  They love their milk, but I'm looking for another drink option.
  • Any good "dessert" ideas?  We usually don't have dessert after dinner, but the kids love  a treat after bath nights, and so we've slowly worked our way through Hallow.een candy (eek, I know.) They like cookies, (who doesn't?), but is there another sweet treat that isn't going to sugar them up too much?  (this might be asking too much!)

Thanks in advance y'all!

5 comments:

trevsmom said...

Growing up we always had pudding as a dessert. Trev loves it too. For snack before bed we usually do a "helfree" (healthy) snack, either fruit cups, blueberries or a pear. Sometimes we do the whole grain bumble bee grahm things, a special K bar or honey grahm rice cakes.

The only thing we have done with syrup is gone to the light version.

Juice: We love Juicey Juice. My sister get the Meijer version for way cheaper and just as good of ingredients.....and NO hight furctose corn syrup. I have just tried Light Grape Juice with Trev too. I dilute it like 7/8 water to 1/8 juice and he really likes it. Anyhow I don't know why I keep rambling, we can talk more about this. :-)

Jenni S. said...

Juice - OK this stuff is a little more on the pricey side too, but we LOVE the V-Fusion juice. You can get it at Costco for a better price if you have one near you. But in it is a full serving of fruits AND a full serving of vegetables and it's delicious. And if you get the V-Fusion light, it's only 50 calories for 8 oz!! We also do Juicy Juice for the girls, so I agree with "Trevsmom."

For desserts, sometimes we do the sugar free jello and cool-whip free (sugar free and fat free), and sometimes put fruit in it - berries, peaches, etc.

Oh, and for dippers, have you looked at the Ken's Steakhouse Honey Mustard? We *love* that stuff around here!

Hope this helps!

Beth said...

For juice, we like the 100% juice from Aldi. It's really cheap and really well-liked.

Can't help you on the syrup or the dessert. We only have it sparingly and it tends to be the chocolate and the ice cream. Yum!

andrea said...

Syrup: Applesauce, Strawberry sauce, a touch of powdered sugar, or even more unhealthy, chocolate chips!

Desserts: Ants-on-a-log (ya know, the celery with peanut butter and raisins?), homemade granola bars (my own recipe--add ingredients to suit your taste) oatmeal, peanut butter, honey, and raisins/chocolate chips: melt ingredients in pan until the consistency is thick enough to set and the oatmeal has had time to 'cook' a bit, and wrap chunks in wax paper). Sorbets and sherbets made from sugar are sweet and not as bad as traditional ice cream.

Lemonade: well, even 100% juice can have a lot of sugar. If you want something refreshing on a hot day, you'll have to stick with the lemonade, but you could squeeze it yourself, but that's time consuming and you'll still have to add a sweetener!

Dip: Well, my favorites are creamy poppyseed and southwest veggie dip, so I'm afraid that's not much better for your kiddos and you! :)

PS: back from the Coral Sea yesterday.

Mary@notbefore7 said...

Finally catching up on blogs...

Pancake syrup - be sure to use the 100% pure maple syrup to avoid the "junk" and use sparingly ;)

lemonade - water with lemon?

desserts - popsicles? we buy the cat cookies and trader joes and they can have 3-4. they are small.