Recipe #3

Today's recipe is super simple and delicious. You can use it as a snack or side dish or even place along side a bagel for breakfast. With a little whipped cream it can be a super dessert on a hot day. So, without further delay...

Vanilla Berry Salad

4 cups of berries, (strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, or blackberries all work)
4 tbsp sugar
1/2 of a vanilla bean

Wash your berries and halve the strawberries into bite size pieces. Mix in a bowl. Split open the vanilla bean pod and remove the tiny seeds from half the pod. Mix the vanilla seeds into the sugar until combined, then add to the mixed berries and stir. Let sit for 20-30 minutes so that the berries begin to release their juices and then serve. This is also very good as a dessert with a little whipped cream on top. You can make a variation on this by adding sliced, fresh or frozen peaches. The fresh vanilla adds a subtle surprise to this and the extra sweetness makes this seem a lot worse for you than it is.

If you add up the calories in one cup each of blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries, the total is 259 calories! Think about that! There is more calories in a pint of ice cream than in FOUR CUPS of berries. If you just took that alone, the berries are looking like a winner, but lets not stop there. If you have one cup of this mixed berry salad, you will have almost 70% of your daily vitamin C and 22% of your vitamin K. There is Iron, Magnesium, Calcium, and Potassium. There is also Folate which is the natural form of Folic Acid which has shown to help reduce neural tube defects in babies and is strongly recommended for all pregnant and nursing mothers.

The addition of 4 tbsp of sugar to this dish adds 180 calories (total) which makes the approximate total calories for the entire 4 cups of fruit salad 439 calories, or approximately 110 calories for each 1 cup serving. Think about that...

Lets put this in perspective. There are 675 calories in one, small, cookie dough blizzard from Dairy Queen. There are 439 calories in FOUR CUPS of mixed berries, with 4 tbsp of sugar mixed in and that doesn't account for the high nutritional value that the berries bring with them. So, if you want to give your kids a dessert... give them a delicious bowl of mixed berries with vanilla sugar mixed in. If you want to really splurge, add a little whipped cream to the top. This is refreshing and sweet and not anywhere close to being the same amount of fat and calories as what you might normally have.

Don't get me wrong, my kids still get ice cream.... I'm not cruel. However, if you normally get ice cream once a week and you replace a mixed berry salad for one of those times... well... you've made an improvement.

Raising healthy children isn't about raising a child who is completely deprived of things like ice cream and cookies. It's about raising a child who knows how to eat healthy alternatives to those things, and eat fatty or sugary foods in moderation. That's it.

I hope you find this easy recipe helpful and can work it into your everyday meal planning!