During February, yumPower offered a School Challenge at my kids’ school to encourage eating more fruits and vegetables. Each kid received a kit that included fruit & veggie tracking charts, healthy eating tips, and recipe cards with ways that kids can get involved in the kitchen. Very cool!

I’m always looking for ways for our family to eat more fruits and vegetables, and this school challenge kit inspired me.

The first recipe that caught my eye was apple chips. I’ve often eyeballed the bags of apple chips at the grocery store and dismissed buying them because they seemed expensive, but for some reason I’ve never attempted making apple chips at home. Now yumPower was nudging us to JUST DO IT. So we did.

It turns out that apple chips are super easy to make – just thinly slice 4 large apples, sprinkle with cinnamon sugar (I liked 2 T. sugar+1 tsp. cinnamon) and bake on parchment-lined baking sheets in a 225 degree oven for about 2 hours, flipping the slices over midway through the cooking time so that they dry evenly. I love that you can make these chips in the oven without needing to use a dehydrator.

You can choose to core or not core the apples. I used a chef’s knife to slice mine, but use a mandoline if you have one because you’ll be able to make more even slices and the thinner you slice the apples, the crispier they’ll get.

The apple slices may not seem completely crispy when you take them out of the oven after 2 hours, but once they cool, they firm up further.  Then, yum, it’s crunch time!

My biggest question was: which apple variety to use? There are many varieties at stores this time of year but some are more expensive than others and some are better for baking than others. Our family typically rotates between Fuji, Gala, and Braeburn for fresh eating. It turns out that these varieties, along with Granny Smith, are all good for baking as well.

All of these apples are fairly crisp. The difference is in the flavor – more specifically, the level of sweetness vs. tartness.  A primer:
Fuji – Sweet
Gala – Slightly sweet
Braeburn – Slightly tart
Granny Smith – Tart

It was time to experiment. We first made the yumPower recipe using their original cinnamon-sugar proportions (2 T. sugar, 2 tsp. cinn.) and Braeburn apples, then made a 2nd batch using Fuji and Granny Smith apples, using less cinnamon and more sugar.

In the end, there was little difference in flavor between apple varieties. As for the cinnamon-sugar ratio, I preferred less cinnamon and more sugar than the original recipe. But that’s just me; you should do your own experiments to see what you prefer. Maybe you’ll be stronger than me and decide to leave out the sugar altogether! That’ll be my next experiment…

Well, onto the big question: would my kids eat these chips? It turned out, no, they will not. My daughter ate one chip, then said she didn’t like it. My son took one nibble and immediately spit it out. That’s OK; all the more for me. I’ll just have to offer them another 10 times and the kids will crack, I’m sure of it.

***

Undeterred, I moved on to the recipe for overnight apple cinnamon oatmeal. Another super easy and healthy option, this recipe is quick to assemble, cooks overnight while you sleep, and most magically of all, is ready to eat when you wake up. What could be better than that?

Well, even better is when your kids will eat it. My daughter requests this for breakfast now.  It’s a keeper!

I’d recommend using Granny Smith apples for this recipe because I think the flavor stands up better to the long cooking time. I also tweaked the recipe’s liquid amounts because I felt the original recipe was too dry.

Topped with some chopped pecans and perhaps some fresh apples or pears, this breakfast will give you serious fuel for your day.

Thanks for the kitchen inspiration, yumPower!

Here are some of the items that caught my eye in the Internet sphere over the past week:

• Vegetables getting a bad rap:  Veggies to blame for the majority of foodborne illnesses (though contaminated meat and poultry cause the most deaths)
• Will kids still hit up the snack machines? New standards proposed for school snacks
• In defense of the proposed New York City soda size restriction, nutritionist Marion Nestle makes the case that Soda size cap is a public health issue
• While Wal-Mart talks local food, many local farms are not benefiting: Small farms aren’t cashing in with Wal-Mart
• The controversy surrounding gluten-free:  Gluten-free, whether you need it or not. See the comments for additional perspectives.
• I’ll drink a beer to this: The truth about common nutrition myths
• Considering the ethical and environmental costs of healthy food: Is healthy food ethical?
• Because we love Top 10 lists, two similar lists with slightly different tips: 10 Ways to Cut Your Grocery Bill While Eating Healthier and 10 Tips to Save Money While Eating Healthy
• Want to build a food brand empire? A fascinating case study: Andrew Zimmern, Inc.

Happy Friday!

Ouch. I’d been modeling some new PJs I’d bought last August. Stopping mid-twirl, I looked at my five-year old. That was painful to hear. But you know what? He had a point. My butt WAS huge. Leave it to kids to call it like they see it.

Over the past few years of blogging, I’d slowly gained a few pounds here, a few pounds there. When you’re a food blogger, you’re either constantly cooking food, photographing food, reading about food, writing about food, talking about food, or thinking about food. Food is front and center in your life. Or at least it was in mine.

But food itself wasn’t the only issue. It was also the hours spent hunched over a laptop in the evening, staying up late to write, not getting enough sleep, tiredness the next day fueling unhealthy food cravings, skipping workouts over the lunch hour because I wanted to work on my blog posts. A vicious cycle.

Can I blame my weight gain solely on blogging? It probably isn’t that simple. Forty is creeping up on me. (Well, not actually creeping. It’s ready to blast in my face this March.) Over the last year, I didn’t seem to be eating more than the previous year but the weight was piling on at an accelerating rate. If it’s true that the average person gains a pound a year and your metabolism slows as you age, I was in trouble. I had gained somewhere between 15 and 20 pounds over the last couple of years.

That exchange with my son was the final straw. I needed to do something. And one of the somethings was to (temporarily? permanently?) give up blogging.

My new regimen consisted of getting up at 5 am to go to the gym before work, five days a week. Getting up so early meant that I needed to go to bed early. With my kids’ bedtime around 8, that meant most of my free time in the evenings disappeared. I also started going to strength training classes twice a week during evenings/weekends. So, that time disappeared. And I started going for walks over lunchtime whenever I could. No time at lunch…you get the picture.

When you’re a working parent with young kids, time is a precious commodity. It all comes down to priorities. You can only do so much. Which choices are going to serve you the best?

A long way of saying — this is another reason why I haven’t been blogging these past several months. How ironic that my goal was to lead a healthier lifestyle, and blogging was getting in the way of that.

But I’m ready to take a crack at it again. I may not post as frequently as I did in the past, but I do want to keep sharing stories, recipes, food news and other cool things I come across with you all. I’m excited to rejoin the conversation.

After I return from the gym, that is…

Blogging life for me has always been like a faucet. I’m on or I’m off. During some periods, the ideas swarm and words pour onto the page effortlessly as fast as I can type them. During others, it’s like a mental drought has set in. I have nothing new to say. That’s when I take a break.

As you may have noticed, I’ve been taking a long social media slumber since July. Last summer I decided to step back from this blog, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to gain some perspective on why I was doing any of it. I stopped taking food photos, I stopped tweeting, I stopped Instagramming, I stopped caring about any of it.

I poured my energies into my family, work, and other personal projects. I researched our car purchase. I did yoga. I became a political junkie. I raced to meet work deadlines. I hosted multiple birthday parties. I watched helplessly as a close family member’s health deteriorated to the point that he passed away just before Christmas.

I lived life in the here and now, attending to what matters.

But then the itch begins again. To write, to share, to inspire. It starts with friends and family asking me, why haven’t you been blogging?

The answer is complicated. Among the many reasons–

A macro view: There are tens of thousands of food blogs and information overload. Local, seasonal food no longer feels like a fresh topic. Why elbow in to an increasingly crowded Internet conversation? Why contribute more to the Internet clutter?

A micro take: I don’t have the spare time right now to develop my own recipes from scratch. I haven’t succeeded in fully walking the local, seasonal, sustainable talk. And anyway, what do I have to offer that’s unique? I’m never going to be a food superstar. Why bother doing it at all?

Then I receive emails from readers like you, saying that what I shared made a difference to them. And ultimately, that’s what matters to me and what keeps me going – that I inform and inspire others.

So, that’s what I hope to start doing again.

We were in the neighborhood that evening to celebrate my husband’s birthday. The plan was to mosey down to the Minneapolis riverfront, have a drink on the patio at Aster Cafe, then head to dinner at Restaurant Alma. We’d taken the bus from our home in northeast Minneapolis and, with the kids tucked away at their grandparents overnight, the night was ripe with possibility. It was a night to BE.

But there they were, those bright fluorescent green Nice Ride bikes queued up, ready for us to hop on. No matter that I was wearing a dress; the urban trails were calling our names. It was a night to DO.

(For those of you who live outside Minnesota, Nice Ride Minnesota is a bike share program with stations scattered throughout Minneapolis and St. Paul. You can purchase a 24-hour subscription for $6, 30 days for $30 or 1 year for $65. The program is meant for short trips and you’re charged for the amount of time the bike is unplugged from the docking station; trips under 30 minutes are no additional charge.)

While we lounged on the Aster Cafe patio, we downloaded a Nice Ride iPhone app. Tonight was going to be an urban adventure.

First, dinner at Restaurant Alma- one of the top restaurants in the Twin Cities serving local, seasonal, organic food, helmed by James Beard award-winning chef Alex Roberts. This place rocks—the food, service and atmosphere are stellar each time we visit. Tonight was no exception.

Time to saddle up and get our Nice Ride on.

Saxophone notes rippled through the sultry night air as we crossed the Stone Arch Bridge.

This is where the city of Minneapolis began. It’s here that the Mississippi River powered the legendary flour mills which eventually grew into food giants General Mills and Pillsbury. Those mills now lie in ruins along the riverbank, with the Gold Medal Flour sign still blinking overhead each night.

Five minutes to spare, we pulled up to a docking station near the Nicollet Mall and parked our bikes.

Masses of people gathered along the mall (yes, people actually stay up late and go out, imagine that!).

We snagged a table on the lively patio at The Local and soaked in the sights and sounds of the surroundings: a bored-looking pedicab driver clad in a tuxedo muscle shirt, idling in a long line of pedicabs parked at the curb; a young couple with that awkward first date vibe; a disheveled woman walking by, urgently asking our server to give her some spoons (to play music with, she said).

Clip-clop, clip-clop, a horse-drawn carriage ambled by.  Another sax player belted out a Brazilian number in the slip of space between two buildings as a man shouted randomly behind our backs, with us unable to make out a single word he said.

City life.

Once again, five minutes to spare as we climbed off our Nice Ride bikes for a final time. Cabbed it the rest of the way home. And collapsed into bed, humming Do. Be. Do. Be. Do.

***
Like I’ve said before, biking helps you see your city with new eyes. Nice Ride makes it an effortless experience to do. If you live in the Twin Cities, what are you waiting for? The website has a list of self-guided Minneapolis biking tours, with themes ranging from art to architecture to beer.

There are also a couple of fun bike + food events coming up:

-Nice Ride is hosting its next Nice Nite event at Rye Delicatessen tomorrow – Thursday July 26th 7-9 pm, with live outdoor music by local ska band Umbrella Bed and New Belgium beer on tap. Website says “the first beer is free with a Nice Ride key or a printed slip from one of our stations.”  If you can’t make this one, Nice Nite #4 will be at Amsterdam Bar in St. Paul, date TBD.

-IATP is hosting this year’s Bike and Bite 2012 on Saturday August 18th 10 am – 2 pm. This year’s theme is Year of the Cooperative and gives a sneak peek at Kim Bartmann’s new restaurant, among other things.  Judging from how much fun I had at the 2011 Bike and Bite event, I’d recommend this.

Have you tried the Nice Ride bikes too? Tell us about it. And, please share any other fun biking events that are happening this summer.