WHAT IS THAT SMELL!?

Kitchen Cures!

Quite possibly the single worst smell in the kitchen is that awful mildewy sponge smell that never quite comes off your hands or your dishes. GRODY TO THE MAX! We caught quite the whiff this week just walking past the sink and thought YIKES! This seems to happen so quickly sometimes that we realized we needed to get to the bottom of it, lest we be forever avoiding touching the sponge or spending crazy money constantly replacing them!

So we did a little digging.

First, dirty wet sponges are the worst offenders. Rinsing and wringing out your sponge after every use will help keep bacteria to a minimum, as they thrive in moist environments. Prevention here is key, so make sure your sponge is stored somewhere where air can circulate around it – a soap rack is perfect for this! Sunny spots are a bonus given the sun’s natural bleaching power.

Alas, what to do when that smell has already arrived.  We tried a few of the most common tips out there, and here were our results.

Vinegar: Add the sponge to ¾ cup of distilled white vinegar, and let it sit anywhere from 10min to overnight. Rinse it out, and the smell and germs are gone.

Bleach: Make a solution of 5% bleach in water, or 2tbsp in 2 cups of water. Soak the sponge at least 5 minutes. Rinse thoroughly.

Microwave: Start by fully hydrating your sponge (dry sponge + microwave = no bueno) and then put it in the microwave for 2-4 minutes. Be careful here, the sponge will be very hot, so use caution removing it from the microwave! The bacteria-killing properties of this method were tested and confirmed by the Journal of Environmental Health 

Dishwasher: Great option works but sometimes this means you need to keep an extra sponge around if your dishwasher cycle is long or if you only run it every few days.  

Choose the method that’s right for you, and clean your sponge every week or so, replacing it every 3-4 weeks as needed!

Our Milkshakes beats all the others in the yard!

Creamy, rich, frozen milkshakes are the perfect summer treat! And we know the 4pm tummy grumbles coming from the kids in the backseat often means a stop at a fast food joint or a dairy shack, but these sugar bombs are often packed with calories, fat, and sugar, and lead to ruined appetites and cranky sugar crashes.

Our Frozen Milkshake Kits are the perfect alternative, with tons of protein, and less than half of the calories and less than half of the sugar of the leading fast food options! In fact, we did the math. First, we looked at the top 5 fast food milkshakes, and on average, they each contain a whopping 45g of sugar for just a small serving! That's over 10 teaspoons of sugar! 10 teaspoons of sugar is almost 3 times as much as the DAILY allowance for a child (4tsp per day recommended)! Just imagine 11 sugar cubes stacked up - no one would ever let their kids eat 11 sugar cubes! To compare, Peas of Mind Frozen Milkshakes have just 19g of sugar, and that sugar comes from all natural greek yogurt and fruit!

On top of the sugars, leading fast food milkshakes are crazy high in calories! They average out to 410 calories in a milkshake, or just over 1/4 of a child's calories for the ENTIRE day! In contrast, our chocolate milkshakes, loaded with a full serving of vegetables, have 200 calories. That's less than half! 

We did the math, which is why we created this new product. Our Frozen Milkshake Smoothie kits are the smart, healthy, convenient alternative to those warm weather sweet tooths! Peas of Mind is proud to offer these with a clean label - just 5 ingredients. Find them in your freezer aisle or ask your grocer to start carrying them so you and your family can have a healthy, happy Summer!

LOADED GUACAMOLE!

Greener Guac!

This month’s reci-pea is for guacamole, something you really don’t need a recipe for! Everyone has their own favorite mix-ins, but ours has a boost of vitamins and mineral. By swirling in some pureed spinach, or any green veggies you have on hand (kale! Swiss chard! Broccoli!) you can up the nutritional value of your guac, making it perfect for a healthy afterschool snack. Dip in some veggies, some pita chips, or even sweet potato chips!

We kept our flavors clean and simple for sensitive palettes, just lime juice and salt, but feel free to add extra spices like cumin if your family is adventurous. We also skipped onion, cilantro, and tomatoes, so that we could freeze half of our batch! That’s right, guacamole freezes really well if kept plain. You can always add the other ingredients once it thaws, but they tend to get icy if you add them before freezing. Saving half our batch in the freezer also makes it easier to stock up on avocados when there’s a great sale without feeling wasteful.

Ingredients:

5 avocados

1 lime

1 tbsp sea salt

1 package frozen spinach – use ½ cup of spinach puree

Instructions:

Partially thaw the spinach in the microwave on 1 minute bursts until you can break it up –no need to warm it through since you want your guacamole chilled. Place spinach in a blender and blend on high until pureed and smooth. Use ½ cup of this puree, and add to the flesh of those 5 avocados in one bowl. Mash gently until uniformly mixed. Add salt and the juice of ½ the lime. Taste! Adjust seasonings to preference. Enjoy on tacos, burgers, chips, and fingers.

They're HERE!

We’ve been working really hard…

To bring you our newest product, SMOOTHIE KITS! And of course, they aren’t just smoothie kits. Instead, we developed a frozen kit that takes the guesswork out of your smoothies by packing it with a full serving of fruit, sure, but also a FULL SERVING OF VEGETABLES in each kit!

On top of full fruit and veggie servings, each smoothie has 10g of protein!  The protein comes from an all-natural Greek yogurt we use that also makes our smoothies incredibly creamy.

So creamy, that we realized they taste more like milkshakes than anything else! So we ran with it and developed a chocolate, a vanilla, and strawberry flavor that each blend up into creamy, sweet, cold treats that you can feel good about giving your kids.

The best part is that they’re endlessly customizable! Choose any type of milk for your family and your diet, or add in a scoop of nut butter or a handful of spinach if that’s your thing!

Find them later this month in the freezer aisle, and pick up a kit! Each one makes 2-9oz smoothies and includes everything you need to just tear open the bag, pour the real fruit and veggies and yogurt chips into your blender, splash in some milk, and a quick whir of the blender later you have a foolproof milkshake that is actually good for you!

We can’t wait to hear what you think so give them a try and then give us a shout!

Hot and Cold!

As it warms up around the country, we’re all starting to think about frozen treats and switching to iced tea and iced coffees. Now think about how much sweetener you put in a hot mug of tea versus an iced coffee? Is it different? To think about it another way, would you drink melted ice cream or would you say yuck, cloyingly sweet?

The truth is, the warmer the food or drink, the stronger the perception of sweetness for the same amount of sweetener! That means as food gets colder, our taste buds perceive it as becoming less and less sweet. It also means it takes more sweetener to make very cold foods like frozen pops or cold soups (same is true for salt!) taste the way we want them to.

As a result, be careful seasoning food when it’s cold if you’ll be heating it up, like tomato sauce or a pot of beans, because those salty and sweet flavors will become much brighter and stronger with as the temperature increases.

Similarly, when making a smoothie or freeze pop or even homemade sorbet, add a little extra sweetener than you think you need while you’re tasting it at room temperature to make sure you hit the mark every time!

And if you’re craving something sweet but want to cut down on sugar, try a nice hot beverage with just a touch of sweetness to fool your palette! (Because science!)

Just another everyday tip from Peas of Mind