Hunts Ketchup Gets Down To The Basics

We are huge ketchup fans in this house.   Both of my boys always ask for everything with dip (meaning ketchup).  They dip their french fries, chicken nuggets, and fish sticks, so we find ourselves going through bottles of the stuff on a regular basis.  I always try to read the labels, and often times you cannot pronounce what is in your food.

We were sent a bottle of Hunt’s Tomato Ketchup to try, which boasts no high fructose corn syrup.  As a Mom, you are always trying to make healthy and conscious food decisions for your family without compromising the taste.  High fructose corn syrup is something I try to avoid because it isn’t really a  natural sugar in our diet.  Hunt’s ketchup now features five simple ingredients. Hunt’s reformulated recipe includes no high fructose corn syrup, and no artificial ingredients or preservatives and we all loved the taste.  It tasted just as good without all the extra fake fluff in our food (as I call it).

And to celebrate Moms and the choices they have to make for their family,  starting July 2nd, Moms have a chance to win a family vacation (up to $5,000) through a photo contest. To enter, go to facebook.com/hunts, submit a photo of you and your family achieving a “simple victory” and you could win that summer vacation you’ve been longing for.

Having basic and simple ingredients in our foods, doesn’t mean that you have to sacrifice the taste.  I am seeing more and more foods offered in local grocery stores that are getting back to basic ingredients, and I like having those choices for my family!

“I wrote this review while participating in a blog campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Hunt’s and received a ketchup sample to facilitate my candid review. Mom Central also sent me a gift card to thank me for taking the time to participate.”

Barilla Share The Table

Many families today are extremely busy, with having kids in sports, working. and schedules that are hard to line up.  Dinner isn’t the same these days, and is often eaten by everyone in the family at different times.  I know that we have a hard time sitting down to one meal together as a family through the week, with my husband working varying hours through the week.  We have made it a point to make dinner a meal that we could eat together, and catch up on how everyone’s day was.

Barilla has started a “Share the Table”  program to help families make the most out of their dinnertime together. Barilla has a Share the Table website,  that offers  recipes from chefs like Mario Batali and tips on how families can make meal times more meaningful in bringing families together.

To help families get started sharing the table, Barilla now offers “Pasta Friday Sweepstakes” with weekly winners of pasta and pasta sauce giveaways and has created the “Mealtime Moments Contest,” which gives families who commit to making a better mealtime experience,  the opportunity to share  stories and win select prizes throughout the summer. For everyone that becomes a fan of meaningful meals at ShareTheTable.com, Barilla will donate $1 to Meals on Wheels Association of America, helping seniors get the nutritious meals, that they often don’t get.

To help our family “Share The Table,”  we were sent a wonderful package full of all the things we needed to create a meal for the family.  We all love pasta in this house so it was easy to create something that we all loved.    Our favorite Barilla pasta is the Penne, and I mix it up with Barilla’s Garden Vegetable Sauce, hamburger, mushrooms, and sweet italian sausage.  It is rare that we have leftovers, and the whole family enjoys it.  There are so many great meals that you can create with pasta and Barilla makes it easy.

“I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Barilla and received products necessary to facilitate my candid review..”

Pringles Multigrain Chips

When it comes to snacking, we are a family that loves to break open a bag of chips to watch a good movie or just to have a little something with our sandwiches for lunch.  Snacking on chips isn’t exactly a way to promote healthy eating and I almost always skip the ones that say multigrain.

I will be the first to admit that I usually pass over the multigrain selections in the chip aisle because I feel like they are lacking in the flavor department or taste a bit like cardboard.  Recently, Pringles and Mom central gave us the opportunity to give Pringles’ new Multigrain chips a try.  I was eager to see if these chips would be something that my chip loving husband and kiddos could tolerate.    We were sent Truly Original, Cheesy Cheddar, and Creamy Ranch flavored Multigrain Pringles and let me tell you that, all three containers were gone within the week!  Not only that, they have a ranch flavor that I love, and for some odd reason ranch flavored chips are hard to find.  So now I have one that I love again, and its healthier too.   The one thing that I found which doesn’t effect the taste at all, was that the chips seem a little thin which seems to make them break more easily.  But they are definitely yummy and everyone here loved them.

Pringles is also part of a really wonderful initiative called U Taste. We Donate.  Supported by celebrity chef, Tyler Florence, the campaign seeks to aid Share Our Strength with its mission to end childhood hunger in America.  For the 17 million children facing hunger in America, every dollar counts, and I believe that no child should go hungry!

Here’s how it works. Enter the UPC code from any Pringles Multigrain product at PringlesMultigrain.com, and Pringles will donate $1 to Share Our Strength through June 30, 2010.  You can choose from any of the three New Pringles Multigrain flavors including, Truly Original, Cheesy Cheddar, and Creamy Ranch.  And to support this new campaign,  Tyler Florence created three unique and incredible recipes to go along with each flavor of Pringles Multigrain – a perfect snacking inspiration.

I cannot think of a better way to have your chips and eat them too.  You will be helping a great cause, eating great food and snacking on yummy multigrain chips from Pringles.

“I wrote this review while participating in a blog campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Pringles Multigrain and received a tote bag with samples to facilitate my candid review. Mom Central also sent me a gift card to thank me for taking the time to participate.”

Frigidaire A Word About Energy Savings

Energy savings has been on my mind since it seems like the economy is in trouble.  My husband and I have managed to get all of the light bulbs replaced with the energy bulb, which annoy me, but that is a different story.  But, in the interest of saving money, I thought I would include this little tidbit of information about our new Frigidaire Professional Refrigerator.

When I think of big appliance, it like I can almost envision a cloud of money floating out the door.  We have a lot of power outages here in our new house for some reason and we had considered a generator.  When you look at some of the more expensive generators they only run a few of your appliances.  That gives you an idea of the amount electricity these things take to run and along with that comes the lovely bill to pay for running them!

Our new Frigidaire Refrigerator has a really awesome feature  called Energy Saver Plus Technology.  This is how it works:  if the refrigerator door is not opened for 24 hours and the refrigerator system is set to a 12-hour defrost cycle, then the system automatically goes to a 96-hour compressor run time defrost cycle to conserve electricity.  This comes in handy when you are away on vacation or just away for a couple of days.  It is just like the vacation setting on your hot water heater, and turning your ac down.  Now you can save a little more vacation cash with your refrigerator!  I think this is a wonderful feature and very energy conscious.  It makes perfect sense!

FYI:   Frigidaire just received  the 2010 Energy Star Award for Excellence in ENERGY STAR Promotion. The award recognizes our commitment to smart energy management, a cause that helps our customers save money and help the environment.

“I wrote this review while participating in a Test Drive Campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Frigidaire and received a Frigidaire Refrigerator to facilitate my review.”

Frigidaire Getting Your Refrigerator Organized

Since getting our new Frigidaire, I had basically stuffed all the things we had in our old refrigerator in the new one with the intention of getting the space better organized.  The Frigidaire is a little smaller than our previous fridge but it has more than enough ample space and some really neat features that make up for the difference.

Before our big grocery trips, I usually do a thorough clean out of both the refrigerator and the freezer to get an idea of what I have, what I might need and toss out all the things that are outdated.

Here are some useful tips for organizing your fridge!

When you are cleaning out the fridge and getting ready to go to the store, it is the perfect opportunity to clean it out and sanitize and wash all the shelves and such.  I like to get all the bottles out and clean them off because usually you have stuff that somehow gets caked to the bottom and it sort of winds up in the rest of your refrigerator.

If you have meat that you are going to be storing, I typically like to put that on a bottom shelf.  With my Frigidaire, there is a drawer at the bottom that I like to toss it in.  That way if the meat juices and stuff leak, then the clean up is as simple as wiping the drawer out and it isn’t busy dripping all over everything if you were to put it on a shelf.

You can wash and put all your produce away and ready to go when you first buy it.  I admittedly don’t do this, because I am usually in a rush, but this will help your lettuce and fruits stay fresher longer.

I throw out anything that is expired.  yes, ok, I am a little paranoid about expiration dates.  The minute the clock hits midnight the day after the date on the bottle, it gets tossed.  My husband makes fun of me because he will eat it if its half green  lol.

Have a place for everything.  How you want to organize where to put things is strictly up to you, but if you designate a place for your condiments, and your eggs etc, then you always have a place to put them and it keeps your fridge looking nice and neat.  Ladies, this is great for your husbands who can never find a darn thing.  If they learn the place, then they will leave you alone when they are looking  ha!

Put your taller items in the back.  This way, you can see those bigger items easily without blocking the view of your smaller things.  This is better than standing there looking like you are scouting a boat out at sea, with your fridge door hanging open, a look of confusion on your face (knowing that you just bought the item you are looking for) and then you just give up.  This is usually when the alarm on the door to our new Frigidaire starts to beep at me.  I love the feature though, especially with kids…if they leave it open without me knowing then there is a reminder…I love it!

For the freezer, I pretty much do the same.  I try and keep items grouped together, and go through it once a month.  I try and keep bagged items together, flat boxed items in one area with the label facing out.  This makes it easy to see and reach and nothing is falling out at your feet.  There isn’t anything worse than frozen meat hitting your toes  ouch!

Lastly, I try to keep things decluttered.  If you have something in a box and the something can be removed and put away it will usually free up some space in the refrigerator.  For example, I always have sick butter in the house for baking, and usually it comes four to a box, instead of hanging on to the box with only two sticks, it will free up a little more room to take them out.  If the expiration date is on the box, get a permanent marker and write it on there.  I do this with everything, especially with meats in my freezer that I divide into smaller portions for the family.

Here is a little video of my organized fridge!

I wrote this review while participating in a Test Drive Campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Frigidaire and received a Frigidaire Refrigerator to facilitate my review.

Frigidaire Getting Acquainted With My Beautiful New Fridge

For the past couple of weeks, we have been adjusting to a new addition in the family.  We have been getting acquainted with our new Frigidaire professional line refrigerator.  It is a tad smaller than the one that we sent to garage but the storage areas seem to make up for the space that we lost.  There will be more in the future on organizing the fridge to make more space.  You might be a little scared at the moment because I haven’t had the chance to make it all pretty and organized on the inside.

I am loving the stainless steel look in the kitchen.  When the guys from the appliance store were installing the fridge, I told my husband that I may need to change all of the appliances over to stainless steel.  All the men in the room laughed together.  I guess that was a no.  What do men know anyway!  I guess I will leave that discussion for another day  ha!

The fridge is beautiful.  I was a little worried about how easy the stainless steel would get finger prints.  But, I have found that it is extremely easy to clean.  I just take a damp paper towel half wet and half dry and they come right off and it looks great.   I really like having the temperature display on the outside of the fridge.  On our GE Profile, they were inside the door, and I felt like I was forever adjusting the temperature to get it to stay.  You will see the display on some of my pictures.  At the time the fridge was working its way to the proper temperature after we got everything in it.  But it took very little time and everything was nice and cold.

We are getting used to all the new features, and I particularly like the little shelf that is above the ice maker.  You can fit your Ben and Jerrys up there (which is critical) and a pizza.  I love that!   I will cover more of the features in a later post.  In the meantime, let me introduce you to my (our) new baby!  I know you will fall in love too!

Turn Up Your Sound 

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