Salsa festival

As I mentioned a while ago, Wegmans phased out their organic mango salsa and I haven't been to Wegmans lately to see if they rolled out their new salsa line.

We made nachos tonight with canned refried beans, cheddar, velveeta (a gift), and black olives on Archer Farms blue multigrain tortilla chips with flax seed. (These chips very much hurt my broken tooth, somehow chip ended up over there when I hadn't chewed on that side.)

I had a coupon for $1 off if I bought one 16-ounce Archer Farms salsa and one bag of Archer Farms chips. Hence the chips mentioned earlier. The chips were $2.99 before my discount(s) and coupon. The salsas were between $2.99 and $3.31 a jar. Odd price range.

I opted for two jars: one mild (raspberry with jalapeño, pineapple and red bell peppers) and one medium (corn, black bean & roasted red peppers with roasted jalapeño, red bell peppers and green chiles).

Both are tasty. Now the cheap salsa from Aldi has 10 calories per 2 tablespoons, 180 mg sodium, 2% RDA of vitamin A and no protein or other vitamins/minerals.

My favorite Wegmans mango salsa has 15 calories, 105 mg sodium, no protein, but 8% RDA of A and 15% vitamin C. Much more nutrition.

Archer Farms? Well...

The mild raspberry has 15 calories, 120 mg sodium, 1 gram protein, 4% vitamin A and 6% vitamin C. So it has some punch, but not like the mango. And the corn/black bean also has 15 calories, 220 mg sodium (holy cr*p), 1 gram protein, 2% vitamin A and 10% vitamin C.

Each year I plan my garden hoping to grow enough herbs and ingredients for homemade salsa. Hopefully this summer I'll learn to can and if I don't grow enough, I'll be visiting local farms and farmers markets. Let's make salsa!

Burritos for lunch

Friday night we went to a seafood restaurant with my dad, where my daughter ate and ate and ate: salad, shrimp, half of grandma's chicken, fries, sweet potato fries, bread and butter, water, pineapple juice, a few bites of veggies, ice cream, whipped cream AND a haagen-daaz bar. This was _after_ she had milk and three slices of watermelon at school (for red day) and a pumpkin scone for an afterschool snack and a couple handfuls of fritos because she caught me red-handed.

Yesterday she spent the day with her Mimi and we had a party for author Kaylie Jones to attend. Hence, no food entries.

Today we had bean burritos for lunch. To use up the nacho stuff from the other night. We had refried beans, lots of black olives, cheddar cheese and mango salsa.

Time for Nachos!

After a very busy morning of playing outside in the snow, we had nachos for lunch. When my daughter was a toddler, she adored three meals that she never seemed to tire of: nachos, salad and yogurt. And we're not talking plain old processed cheese and chips as nachos. We made nachos piled high with real cheese, refried beans, black olives, lettuce, tomatoes, sour cream and salsa- regular and mango!

Daddy makes nachos for dinner or lunch. We use canned vegetarian refried beans (though I bought beans to make my own and never got around to doing it.) We grate our own cheese. The organic mango salsa from Wegmans is the key. In two tablespoons of salsa (and we tend to eat 1/4 to 1/2 cup each instead of 2 TBSP), there's 15% of your RDA of vitamin C and 15% vitamin A, gotta love that mango!

So even though nachos traditionally seem like junk food, in my book, they are not. Real cheese for lots of calcium, tomatoes and lettuce for vegetable matter, beans for protein and fiber, and the salsa for the vitamin content.