Links and Things

An obvious choice for eating healthier is to is to change out high calorie, low nutrition snacks for their better versions.

I really like crunchy snacks, but chips or crackers can go wrong really quickly. They are a lot of empty calories. There are alternatives at the store, but many are a little pricey and portion control is still tricky for me.

Enter the easy swap – healthy cereal. A little label reading goes a long way here. High fiber, vitamin enriched cereal like wheat squares or fiber twigs are two that we like. Crunchy, a little sweet but not too sugary, and very filling. I can easily eat an entire box of Cheese-Its. There’s no way I can eat an entire box of Wheat Chex.

To make it even easier to stick to the plan, I put the cereal that’s for snacking into containers on the counter, right where the crackers used to live.

I’m a big fan of kitchen gadget stores. I love to browse the catalogs, websites and the actual aisles, looking at tools, appliances and decorator items.

But I rarely buy anything. I like to be resourceful and use what I have. Sometimes you just have to think outside the box.

Take microwave splatter shields. Really good idea. I hate, hate, hate to clean the microwave (true fact: more than once I’ve thought about just buying a new one instead of scrubbing something off the ceiling of the existing one). But they seem really expensive for what they are.

Last winter, in a fit of organizing, I threw away or gave away all my mismatched plastic food storage containers and switched over to glass. At the last second, I snatched two very sturdy lids back from the pile.

Why? Because they were the perfect size to use as splatter shields for my  bowls. They cover almost all of the top of the bowl, but let a little space exist on the corners for steam to escape.

And they are sturdy enough to use as a placemat/trivet for the hot item to be carried from the microwave to the coffee table.

You do eat all your meals on your coffee table, right? 🙂