Food Tidbits

Fighting cancer, one meal at a time

A new website from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center offers tools to help you add more fruits and vegetables to your meals. At www.mcancer.org/recipes, you can click on your favorite fruits and veggies, add your dietary restrictions and see which recipes the site has to offer.
The recipes are developed by healthy-eating crusader Graham Kerr, the "Galloping Gourmet."
Here's one to try.
Oranges and kiwis with a glossy glaze

Serves 4.
2 medium navel oranges 6 or grapefruits
2 kiwis
6 1/2 cup cranberry juice cocktail (or white grape juice)
1/4 cup dried cranberries
1 tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon cornstarch mixed with 1 tablespoon cranberry juice
Peel the oranges, removing the membrane. Cut into 1-inch chunks. Peel the kiwis and cut into 1-inch chunks. Combine fruit in a bowl and chill oranges and kiwis in a medium bowl in the refrigerator. Combine juice, dried cranberries, honey and rest of ingredients in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, to thicken and clear. Let cool. Pour the glaze over the chilled fruit and serve.

The SnackerTracker
 Parents prodding picky children to eat healthier will try just about anything.
SnackerTracker is a simple scoreboard-style system intended to encourage children to track what they eat each day, with an emphasis on getting more produce, dairy and whole grains.
The product (intended for ages 2 to 8) is a magnetic dry erase board with different boxes for checking off the correct number of servings from the various food groups.
The idea is that as children eat, they check off each serving. And that's it. Which is why I expected my 3-year-old to use the SnackerTracker as a fancy doodle pad.
And at first, he did. But as my wife and I talked to him about being able to check off the healthy produce boxes, his interest grew. After about a month he was eating more produce, and asking, "Can I check off a vegetable?"
If a dry erase board gets a kid to eat more vegetables, I'm willing to wallpaper the kitchen with it.
on the net:
>> www.SnackerTracker.com

>> WHAT'S COOKING: We want your favorite recipes, whether it's your original or something you stole from Great-Aunt Martha. Spice up our e-mail box at ­csimmons@oaoa.com.