Cool Mom Picks has a great post today about a feature on Peapod by Stop&Shop that allows you to filter out grocery items based on your kids’ allergies. Or your husband’s shellfish allergy, if you have one of those like I do!

Check out the full post here:

Big Brands Doing Cool Things: Peapod Makes Shopping Easy for Parents with Allergic Kids

There’s a nice article on Epicurious called Back to School Lunches that goes along with today’s release of a new cookbook titled Real Food for Healthy Kids.

The article includes tips for packing lunches and offers recipes from the new book. My favorite tips are the ones called “Give Jr. Power” and “Vary the Menu” in the section of the article called tips for keeping picky eaters happy.

The cookbook itself contains over 200 recipes for kids, all of which are said to have been taste-tested by children.

Study: Restaurant kids’ meals loaded with calories

Like we really needed a study to tell us this!

The restaurants in this study are not ones that I would ever expect to offer healthy kids’ options (Taco Bell, KFC, etc.). But I was just out at a great, very kid-friendly, non-chain restaurant in my neighborhood the other night and even though there were vegetable options all over the menu, not one of the kids’ menu items contained a vegetable. This is very typical and of course very frustrating. My suggestion is always to order something off the main menu and share it with your child or split a regular entree between two kids. This usually seems to be a better option.

And you could always speak up to your favorite local restaurant and ask them if they’d be willing to change their menu. Or at the very least, I’m sure they’d be willing to substitute broccoli for the french fries.

I braised some artichokes for dinner last night using the following recipe:

Braised Artichokes With Pecorino

They came out really delicious. Although I definitely had to cook them longer than the recipe called for. Maybe about 30 minutes on the stovetop.

I will fully admit to you that I am not a pro when it comes to artichokes. I’ve only prepared them maybe once or twice before. So you can be assured that this is a pretty simple recipe.

I also found a great blog post about how to prepare an artichoke:

How to Clean, Cook and Eat an Artichoke 

I bought these “chopsticks” for the kids the other day while I was away on a short business trip. Lucie, especially, loves all kinds of Asian foods and is always practicing with regular chopsticks, so I thought they would be a good idea. We ended up ordering Thai food (even Ronan, who eats almost nothing likes Thai food) when I got back last night, so the kids got to put their zoo sticks to use. They worked great and the kids both loved them. I got Lucie a purple panda and Ronan a yellow monkey.

It may seem silly to you, but I am totally getting myself one of these asap!

And just in case you want one too, you can get them at Amazon.

Ohdeedoh is giving away a Flair Highchair from Boon to one very lucky winner!

Visit the giveaway here and enter by 5pm on Monday, July 21st.

Every morning, about an hour or so after I eat my breakfast, I’ve been making myself a big glass of watermelon juice. It’s sooooo good and so easy to make. I made it for the kids the other day. Lucie (4 1/2) didn’t like it but Ronan (20 months) loved it. Here’s what I do:

-Put a large piece of watermelon, cut into smallish chunks, into the blender

-Add about 1/2 fresh squeezed lime juice

-Add about 2 or 3 tablespoons of water

-Blend away!

I serve it over ice in a big tall glass. It has become my favorite mid-morning summer snack.

One of my favorite local blogs, A Child Grows in Brooklyn, just posted a review of some children’s flatware that I thought you would be interested in. I don’t own any of the sets myself, but have seen some of them in various places over the years. I too like the idea of the ones from Bambu and the ones from Williams Sonoma look like they would make a very nice gift.

Here’s the review: Children’s Flatware that is Fun

I’m posting a link to the AllergyKids blog that contains some really interesting and useful information about food additives:

Step 1: Cleaning Out Your Kids! (as seen on Good Morning America)