Food of the Month - Avocados!

Loaded with potassium (more than a banana!) and vitamin B6, avocados are our superstar food of the month. Technically, avocados are giant berries with just one seed, making them a fruit, not a vegetable. But whatever you call it, remember how good it is for you!

Alongside potassium and B6, avocados are also loaded with good healthy fats, vitamin K and folate. They are usually available organic, and about 95% of avocados in the US are grown in Southern California, especially San Diego County. More fun avocado facts.

Avocados are getting the spotlight this month because they are so versatile. Their mild flavor and rich creamy flesh go way beyond tacos. They are one of best ways to sneak veggies and vitamins into kids diets because they can be added to sweet or savory dishes. Our recipe for chocolate freeze pops have avocado in them, and they add an extra element of creaminess to blended drinks like milkshakes or smoothies. Chicken or egg salads can get a healthy boost from avocados when half the mayo is replaced by our food of the month, and avocados can also be swirled into cold summer soups to thicken them.

Now that you're dreaming up new ways to eat them, stay tuned for this month's reci-PEA for a great way to use your avocados!

Seuss-ically Speedy Breakfast!

Green Eggs and Protein!

The hardest part of our day is usually just making it out the door in the morning!  To streamline our mornings and stop the “just grab a bar” approach to breakfast, we decided to make a few varieties of easy egg cups to get us through the week.

They are endlessly customizable depending on the vegetables you have on hand, and they can also be eaten on-the-go or turned into a quick breakfast sandwich with just a slice of cheese and some toast. (herbs and hot sauce optional for an adultified version!)

Ingredients:

12 large eggs

3/4 cup chopped steamed broccoli

½ cup chopped frozen spinach (thawed, excess water pressed out)

1 tbsp Dijon mustard

1 cup diced ham (nitrate-free!) or turkey sausage

1 cup diced red bell pepper

Salt and Pepper

Optional

1 cup cooked quinoa

½ cup shredded cheddar cheese

Whole wheat English muffins

Sliced cheese (muenster, swiss, cheddar)

Process:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees

In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, mustard, and salt and pepper. Spray out your muffin tin with a non-stick spray. In each muffin cup, evenly distribute the chopped veggies and ham. Pour the egg mixture over the veggies until nearly full. Give each cup a quick stir with a fork to evenly distribute the mix-ins and to get rid of any air pockets. Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Microwave or toaster oven in the morning, melt a slice of cheese on top and place between toasted whole-wheat English muffin halves for a healthy, on-the-go, green eggs and ham breakfast sandwich!

NonGMO Project Verified!

Peas of Mind is now NonGMO Verified!

Peas of Mind is excited and proud to announce that our Veggie Wedgies have been certified GMO-free by the Non-GMO Project!

So, what does this mean? Well, we started this process nearly a year ago, which sounds like a long time, and it is! The process takes that long in order to be incredibly thorough. Luckily, our fries have so few ingredients that we were able to finish our certification in a series of months. To give you an example, we ensure that not only are there no genetically modified organisms in our products, but that any facility that our ingredients pass through are inspected to guarantee that none of our products could possibly be contaminated by another company’s GMO ingredients.

Our broccoli is real broccoli, grown here in the US, and never genetically modified.   Same with our carrots. And our cauliflower. And our potatoes.

Every aspect of every ingredient we use has been combed through with a fine-tooth comb to bring you, our customers, the absolute safest, healthiest veggie fry we can make! It’s been our pleasure to work with the Non-GMO project on this verification and we are delighted to see it completed. We hope this gives you and your family some peas of mind!

Pantry Experiments!

Snow Day SCIENCE!

It’s been a long winter for much of the country, and that can mean hours of indoor time for the kids, and those exciting or dreaded SNOW DAYS! So how to entertain them once cabin fever has set in and the snow is up to the eyeballs? SCIENCE!

We’ve put together a few easy activities that require only the ingredients in your pantry but pack in a little learning as well.

Baking Soda Fizzle Rocks!

This one has just three ingredients – baking soda, vinegar, and food coloring! Add water a little bit at a time to the baking soda in a bowl until you have a very thick paste, toss in some food coloring, and mold into shapes using your hands. Rocks, blobs, or get fancy and use a gingerbread man mold, any shape works, then just leave them to air dry for a few hours until they’re hard as….rocks!

Now comes the fun part – once they’re hardened, pour some distilled vinegar onto a plate and let the kids drop their rocks! They’ll watch them fizz up and then melt away!

Monster Veggies!

Grab some celery stalks (with leaves is best) or napa cabbage leaves and some food coloring for a demonstration of capillary action (transpiration) and how plants take in water! Fill a few glasses halfway with water, and add a different color food coloring to each one. Place a celery stalk or cabbage leaf into each glass so the liquid is covering about ¼ to 1/3 of the vegetable. Now sit back and watch - results start after just a few hours and are dramatic overnight! The veggies will begin to pull the colored water into their stalks and leaves until they’ve changed colors and then you can let the kids “dissect” the celery to see the bright interiors.

Oobleck!

This one can be little messy so it’s best done in a plastic tub or extra storage container, but it’s also really easy to make. Just take a box of cornstarch and slowly add water until you have a consistency like thick maple syrup. Now grab a few small toys (plastic little army figures etc.) and let the kids have at it! They can tap or punch the Oobleck and it will feel hard and solid, and the toys will even sit on top of it for a time. But if they touch it slowly, pressing their whole hands onto the surface, they will be sucked under! This unique substance behaves as a solid AND a liquid!

ENJOY!