Del Monte FruitBurst review and #giveaway

No compensation was received for this post. DelMonte provided information for the post, a gift pack for my family and one for the giveaway. All opinions expressed are entirely my own or that of my family.

We recently had the chance to try a new product from Del Monte® - new Fruit Burst™ Squeezers. We tried Simply Fruit - Strawberry and Fruit + Veggie - Peach-Mango. As a mom, I really like the convenience of getting 1 1/2 servings of fruit or fruit and veggies in an easy to eat pouch. When we are enjoying them at home, we typically will have them right from the fridge, but when we are on the go, I like knowing that they are portable, easy to consume (no utensils required) and don't require refrigeration (unless you don't eat it all at once, then you should refrigerate the remaining product). I like that all of the sweetness in the product comes from fruit puree and juice concentrates. For me, the strangest part was the texture - it is a very smooth puree, but it has a great flavor. The kids consider them to be a treat (as a mom, I love when fruits and vegetables are a treat) and are excited when they are included in their lunch or as a snack. I have already been asked to buy more for them to have as snacks and in their lunches.

About Fruit Burst™ Squeezers

Made in the U.S.A., Del Monte Fruit Burst™ Squeezers contain 1 ½ servings of fruit or fruit and veggies and are an excellent source of vitamins A and C. In addition, Del Monte Fruit Burst™ Squeezers contain no artificial flavors or high fructose corn syrup.

Fruit + Veggie Varieties:

- Peach-Mango: Pear puree concentrate, water, pumpkin juice concentrate, peach puree concentrate, pear juice concentrate, carrot juice concentrate, carrot puree, mango puree concentrate, natural flavors, ascorbic acid (vitamin C), citric acid.

- Blueberry: Pear puree concentrate, water, pumpkin juice concentrate, pear juice concentrate, natural flavors, carrot puree, blueberry puree concentrate, fruit and vegetable extracts for color, ascorbic acid (vitamin C), citric acid.

Simply Fruit Varieties:

- Apple Cinnamon: Pear puree concentrate, water, apple puree concentrate, pear juice concentrate, natural flavors, ascorbic acid (vitamin C), cinnamon, malic acid.

- Mixed Berry: Pear puree concentrate, water, pear juice concentrate, natural flavors, strawberry puree, red raspberry puree concentrate, blueberry puree concentrate, fruit and vegetable extracts for color, ascorbic acid (vitamin C), malic acid.

- Strawberry: Pear puree concentrate, water, pear juice concentrate, strawberry puree concentrate, natural flavors, carmine, ascorbic acid (vitamin C), malic acid.

Also to kick off the school year, Del Monte launched the “First Day of School Photo Contest” through Facebook (facebook.com/delmonte)! The contest is closed now, but everyone was invited to upload an original photo of your child on their first day of school or yourself on your own first day of school. The top 20 Finalist photos were posted to the Del Monte Fruit Squeezers website, and fans had the chance to vote for their favorite photo. The winning entry will receive a $10,000 donation to a school of their choice!



Giveaway!
Courtesy of DelMonte, I have the opportunity to share with one A Busy Mom of Two reader a gift pack like I received.

The Gift Pack will contain:
* Two boxes of Fruit Burst Squeezers™ (one Fruit + Veggies 4-pack and one Simply Fruit 4-pack)
* One Del Monte lunchbox
* One orange-shaped eco-friendly shopping tote
* One strawberry-shaped eco-friendly shopping tote
* One Del Monte magnetic frame

a Rafflecopter giveaway


Giveaway will remain open through October 1st. Giveaway is open to residents of the US only. Winners will be selected through Rafflecopter. The winners will have 24 hours to respond or a new winner will be selected.

No compensation was received for this post. DelMonte provided information for the post, a gift pack for my family and one for the giveaway. All opinions expressed are entirely my own or that of my family.

Crsipy Green

I am not sure when exactly it happened, but I turned into a snacker. In many ways, this is not a bad thing. What it means mostly is that I don't tend to sit down and eat all at once. For breakfast, as example, I will start my day with a banana. Then, a little later in the morning I will prepare myself some oatmeal. Then, I'll have some other fruit a little later in the day. I started packing my lunch so that I could 'save' something from it for the middle of the afternoon. Then, the exception to my day tends to be dinner. I generally will eat my dinner all in one sitting and only very occasionally have a snack in the evening.

When it comes to snacks, I am generally try to keep them healthy - a piece of fruit, a cup of yogurt (or pudding :-0!), some carrot sticks, etc. But sometimes, I find myself craving something crunchy. Yes, you could argue that carrots and apples are both crunchy, but they don't meet that crunchy snack craving that I have. Perhaps they are too 'wet'.

So, a while back, when I came across Crispy Green, I thought this is a snack that I must try. Crispy Green are 100% freeze-dried fruit. Now, when I think of freeze-dried, the first thing that comes to mind is that astronaut ice cream we used to get on field trips to the science museum. The first that I tried was the Crispy Mangoes. The first thing that I noticed on the package is that indeed, the only ingredient is Mangoes. The Crispy Mangoes have just 40 calories in a bag. The sweet and crispy bites of fruit were both sweet and crispy, offering just the right combination of sweet and crunchy to perfectly fit my snack craving.

I soon came to find that there is a whole variety of Crispy Green products. In the crispy fruit product, they offer five tasty fruits - Crispy Apples, Crispy Bananas, Crispy Asian Pears, Crispy Pineapples and Crispy Mangoes. In addition, they also have a line that they is called FruitziO, which is also freeze dried fruit, but with a bit of cane sugar added for a light, sweet and crunchy taste. The FruitziO line offers - FruitziO Apples and Strawberries, FruitziO Apricots, FruitziO Kiwi, FruitziO Peaches and FruitziO Strawberries.

At first, I wondered about the addition of cane sugar, but realized after tasting that it didn't make the product 'sweet' but mostly balanced the tartness of the fruits. The bags, which are resealable, only have 100 calories in them. So, it still makes for a yummy snack without much guilt. In fact, they are labeled as containing 2.5 servings, which based on the bag I took to work seems about right. I found myself enjoying the strawberries a handful at a time. The slightly sweet, crunchy snack was just what I needed mid-afternoon to get me through the rest of the day.

My kids have been very excited to try all of the different flavors and have share many bags. My son's favorite: Crispy Apples. My daughter's favorite: Crispy Bananas. My son says that he likes them because they taste exactly like an apple. My daughter says because they taste like the fruit that she is having. As a mom, having them excited about fruit is a good thing (not that they don't request fresh fruit too, but bags of freeze dried fruit are more portable).

You can find a store near you that carries Crispy Green, by using their product locator. Interestingly, the store that I bought them at, Earth Fare, was not listed. You can purchase online through Crispy Green. They are currently offering free shipping on orders over $75 and if you purchase in bulk, they work out to be less per bag than you would pay at the store.

No compensation was received for this post. I received a variety pack of their products for the purposes of trying and sharing with my family. Images are from the Crispy Green Website. All opinions expressed are my own or that of my family.

Clearly Fresh Bags - helping produce last longer

Recently, I was contacted about trying out Clearly Fresh Bags. Clearly Fresh Bags are designed to help keep you fresh fruits and vegetables fresh longer. They use BreatheWay technology which allows fresh produce to breathe naturally and last longer. The technology allows fruits and vegetables to create their own ideal environment within the bag, naturally slowing the ripening and allowing them to stay fresh longer. You can read more about the technology here.

At my house, the biggest challenge that we have is eating bananas before they get overripe and brown, so of course, this is the product that I decided to test the aging on.

When the bags arrived, I had already purchased bananas and decided that I would use them to check out the bags. The pictures below show that we started with bananas that were already pretty ripe, but still the results were great. I decided that I needed a control. So, I placed all but one banana inside the bag and pushed out the air. I set them next to each other on the counter to ensure that they had a common environment. Each day, I opened the bag, took out one banana and then resealed it. After 6 days, I had consumed all but one of the bananas in the bag and ate the one that was not stored in the bag (my control). Despite my normal banana a day habit, I left the last banana sitting to see how long it would stay fresh. After 10 days, I decided to end the experiment and eat the banana. It was still in great shape and not overripe, although the flesh was a little soft, but not mushy.
Day 1:

Day 1:

6 days later:

6 days later:

10 days later:

Here is a second set of bananas, just to show that it wasn't a fluke. This is day 10:

This is day 11:

This is my third bunch of bananas through the bag, and likely the last - I think I will go to a new bag for the next bunch. If you are using the bags for whole, dry produce, you can reuse them a couple of times. For rinsed or cut produce, I'm guessing that you wouldn't be able to use it more than the one time. You can not wash the bags though, as it would ruin the BreatheWay membrane.

My conclusion is that these bags work. They are also useable for other produce, like apples, broccoli, lettuce, berries, mangoes, etc. I didn't test them on those items, because I don't generally have issues storing those items. Although, it could come in handy when I do purchase fresh produce for recipes at the end of the week - to ensure that they are as fresh as can be when I get a week removed from shopping.

You can purchase them direct from www.clearlyfreshbags.com the package of 10 1-gallon size bags sell for $3.99 / pack.

These bags work for me!


No compensation was received for this post. A package of Clearly Fresh Bags was provided, so that I could try them out and share my experience. All opinions expressed are my own.

Peeled Snacks - Review and Giveaway

I like fruit. I think I mentioned that before. I don't eat much dried fruit, but on occasion like to pick up some dried fruit. The kids, of course, enjoy raisins and usually, if I buy a bag of dried fruit for me, they eat it too.

I recently had the opportunity to check out Peeled Snacks. Peeled Snacks offers a line of organic dried fruit snacks and they contacted me because they are now available in store in Ohio (you can always buy them online too!). In fact, they recently became available at Marc's Deep Discount stores and will soon be available at Acme and Giant Eagle.

They sent me an Organic Fruit Pouch Sampler to check out all of their great products.

Organic Fruit Pouch Sampler

-Enjoy our 8 new organic fruit pouches including 4 brand new varieties
-Each stay-fresh, resealable pouch contains 2 to 6 servings (depending on the variety)
-Natural source of vitamins, minerals, iron & fiber
-Contains 8 pouches: 1 each of Apple-2-the-core (2.8oz), Apricot-a-lot (5oz), paradise found (3oz), much-ado-about-Mango (2.8oz), Banan-a-peel (3oz), Raisin expectations (8.4oz), farmer's market trio (4.5oz) & GoFigure (5oz)

When the package arrived, my kids could not wait to try it. I asked my son to at least wait until I was home, because I wanted to get to try them too!

The first variety that we tried was the Banan-a-peel. The first thing that I noticed was that the banana aroma when you open the bag was intense, in a good way. When I tried the first one, I was surprised to discover that the bananas were chewy. When I think of dried bananas, I actually normally think of banana chips (based on some quick research, banana chips can be dried or deep fried - interesting). Looking at the bags, I noticed that they say "gently dried" and "nothing added". I'm guessing the gently dried is the difference between chewy and chip. I was pleasantly surprised by the dried banana - it had a rich flavor and a good texture. Visually, the bananas are a little brown and at first, my kids hesitated, but after eating one, they immediately grabbed another.

Over the course of a few days, we worked our way through sampling all of the varieties. The overall consensus was good. The dried fruit seems to be plumper and moister than other brands that we have had in the past. The raisins in particular were a much larger size fruit than the raisins that we regularly consume. The product delivers well - most offer a good fruit flavor and are just the right sweetness, using just the natural sweetness of the fruit.

According to the package, the product is made with organic fruit from sustainable farms. As a mom, I love that the ingredient list is only the fruit in the bag. The varieties that I am currently viewing, have about 120 - 130 calories and 2 - 4 g of fiber per serving.

As my husband was standing in the kitchen, sampling from the various open bags, he asked aloud, "what is the advantage of dried fruit?" and then proceeded to answer his own question and I kicked in. His first thought is that it can be shared. You would rarely offer someone half of an apple (or other fruit), but you could easily pour out a handful of dried fruit. The next thought is that it is less messy. Our children are uniquely qualified (okay, probably not unique, but they are certainly pros) at making a mess of even the most innocent looking food items. With the dried fruit, there is none of the juicy, sticky mess that you can achieve with their fresh fruit counterparts. The next answer is portable. It is a lot easier (and the experience at the end of the day probably much better) to throw a bag of dried fruit into a back pack or diaper bag before heading off to school, a hike or a day at the park, zoo, etc. My answer it stays fresh longer. No worries about the bunch of bananas getting brown in a few days time, the bags of dried fruit (at least the ones I have) are good until late in the fall. That's five or six months vs five or six days.

My favorite is the much-ado-about-Mango and the variety paradise found which includes Mango, Pineapple and Banana. My kid's favorite is definitely the Apple-2-the-core, although they seemed to really enjoy them all. My husband didn't really select a favorite.

Want to give them a try? There is a deal that is available until sometime on Saturday on Gaggle of Chicks, you can get a $40 voucher for only $20 to purchase from the Peeled Snacks website. Click on bonus deals to see this offer.

For those of you that are local and shop at Giant Eagle, you will definitely want to check out the giveaway that Peeled Snacks will be doing to promote their launch at Giant Eagle. To enter, you must "like" Peeled Snacks on Facebook and then complete the entry form on their website (not there yet, starts tomorrow). They will be giving one lucky winner a $100 gift card for Giant Eagle!

Giveaway!
Thanks to Peeled Snacks, I have the opportunity to share one Organic Pouch Fruit Sampler with one A Busy Mom of Two reader.

To enter: Visit the Peeled Snacks website. Come back sharing something that you learned about their products and let me know what variety you are most interested in trying.

Additional Entries (be sure to leave a comment for each entry):

Like Peeled Snacks on Facebook.

Follow Peeled Snacks on Twitter. Please be sure to include your user name in the comment.

Follow A Busy Mom of Two on Twitter. Please be sure to include your user name in the comment.

Tweet about this giveaway. You can copy and paste this directly: I just entered to win a @PeeledSnacks Organic Pouch Fruit Sampler #Giveaway. http://bit.ly/ko0alk hosted by @ABusyMomofTwo, ends 5/24. This can be once daily, please be sure to leave a link to the tweet in your comment.

Post about this giveaway on your blog and leave a comment with a link to your post.

Sign up to receive daily updates. Leave a comment letting me know you subscribe (or that you already do).

Add my button to your sidebar or my blog to blog roll. Leave a link letting me know where you added it.

Share this giveaway on a link-up and come back and let me know where you shared it. (This can be done five times)

The Giveaway will run through May 24th at 6pm and is open to residents of the US and Canada only. Winner will be selected using Random.org random number generator. The winner will be contacted by e-mail (Please make sure that your email address is either in your comment or clearly visible on your profile or blog) and will have 48 hours to respond or a new winner may be selected.

No compensation was received for this post. Peeled Snacks provided a complimentary Organic Fruit Pouch Sampler so that my family could experience the product and share our reactions. In addition, they are providing the same sampler to the winner of the giveaway.

Keeping It Fresh

When I was younger, I remember eating fresh fruit, but I don't remember a lot of variety. I know that we had oranges, apples, bananas and grapes. I'm not sure, but I'm guessing that many of the fruits that are available at the store now, simply weren't as readily available. We always had our share of fresh strawberries, some of which we even picked. I can remember picking apples, but I think we made most of those into apple sauce. I remember having apples at Grandma and Grandpa's house. I was always impressed that they could peel a whole apple in one continuous strip - I still can't do that to this day. I can remember fruit salad, made with pomegranates and kiwis, every Thanksgiving at my aunt and uncle's house. When I was pregnant with my son, I craved fruit. I think I mostly needed more fluids and I couldn't drink another cup of water, but I could eat fruit in all of it's moist deliciousness.

There are so many wonderful things about fruit. They are cool and fresh. They can be sweet or tart. They can be crunchy or soft. You can even eat them to fill a salt craving (know anyone that salts their watermelon?). They can be eaten on their own, or with cheese, or prepared in a recipe, or on a salad.

I try to make sure that we always have fresh fruit in the house. As seasons change, so do the types of fresh fruit that we have on hand. Making it a quick, easy to reach for snack (or dessert), helps me make sure that my family is eating healthy and getting a variety of nutrients.

I love fruit on my cereal - bananas, strawberries and blueberries are the most common fruits that we have. They are also good on oatmeal or cooked into pancakes. In the summer, we pick up extra blueberries and freeze them. We love to add frozen blueberries to our cereal. The milk crystallizes around the blueberries and they are cool, frosty and bursting with flavor.

Nights when I pull out the blender and make a quick smoothie with just fresh fruit (generally that fruit has been frozen) and some yogurt, the kids think it is a real treat. I read over on Money Saving Mom, how she uses smoothies to sneak in ingredients - I haven't done that, but it probably is a great way to get nutrients that your children otherwise avoid. Who would notice if you added a few carrots or a little spinach. You would need to minimize for the color, but it would be easy.

Some of my favorite desserts are fruit based. Whether it is a crisp, a cobbler or a pie - count me in! There is just something so satisfying about the taste of a fruit dessert. My grandma also used to make apple cake, apple strudel and a rhubarb cake - all super delicious. Of course, you can't forget banana bread or banana cake! Yum. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it.

I have this salad from time to time that is simply greens topped with strawberry slices, mandarin orange slices, tomatoes and banana pepper rings. It is such a juicy, flavorful salad that I never use salad dressing for this salad (best part is, now that fresh fruit is Zero PointsPlus Value on the new Weight Watchers - it is Zero PointsPlus values for the whole salad - yum!!).

Fruit is so versatile and so yummy and as an added bonus is pretty good for you too! That works for me.

This post shared at Works for Me Wednesday.