Just for Fun! – in thriver words

Make This Week Less Spooky

skeleton mask made of tile pieces in green, brown, and turquoise on black background

Let’s make this week less spooky for children! No matter how you feel about their parents’ work ethic, choices, or government subsidy programs, there are children who are hungry and about to be hungrier. This is not their fault.

Instead of leaving our most vulnerable in the frightening position of wondering whether there will be food to eat, we can choose to make their lives less scary. When a child comes to your door this week (if you have the funds available) consider one small action to make their next week better. Provide nutritious food along with treats.

You don’t have to break the bank or do anything heroic. Do whatever feels comfortable. Think of it as a community potluck. If we each add a nutritious offering to our candy bowl, we cumulatively provide a meal.

If your budget is tight, you may still have options: check the laundry change jar (or swear jar if that’s more lucrative); skip a meal out; or take the opportunity to clean out the pantry. This is also a great time to utilize discounts for purchasing in bulk.

Here are a few ideas for items to consider including: (Peanuts are a common allergen.)

Beef jerky or other meat sticks
Tuna pouches
Vienna sausages
Sardines
Snack size packages of nuts
Individual peanut, almond, or cashew butter
Peanut butter crackers
Cheese crackers
Instant oatmeal
Instant grits
Individual cartons of shelf stable milk
Individual mac & cheese
Ramen noodles
Individual cereal
Protein bars
Freeze dried vegetable snacks
Boxes of raisins or craisins
Applesauce pouches
Veggie and fruit pouches
Baby food jars or pouches
Microwave popcorn (the bulk helps fill a hungry belly)
Individual microwave rice

If you have survival food that needs to be rotated, you may want to consider a brown bag station that offers family meals containing items like beef, beans, mashed potatoes, green beans, corn, instant eggs, and powdered milk. Include those ketchup, mustard, mayo, soy sauce, and cheese packets you’ve saved from takeout meals.

You can make meal/supply bags using canned options as well – soup, chili, vegetables, chicken, and tuna. A real treat for families could include high quality instant coffee and flavored creamers plus packages of hot chocolate and pudding cups.

Funds don’t just go to pay for food, so providing other necessities can help increase household budgets. If you’re like me, you may have extra toothbrushes, travel toothpaste, travel shampoo, travel lotion, travel detergent, and fancy soaps in the cabinets you’ll never use. Why not have a toiletries treat bucket or make toiletries grab bags?

Other things you can include in a family supply bag are paper plates, napkins, paper towels, toilet paper, tissues, hand wipes, baby wipes, band-aids, hand soap, bubble bath, sandwich bags, and trash bags.

And don’t forget fun items like crayons, markers, colored pencils, notebooks, sketch books, glue, and glitter are treats that may not be purchased when money is tight. Having tools to express creativity can improve a child’s day when the rest of life feels uncertain.

This week may be ghoulish, but it can be less spooky. Support families in your neighborhood with treats that show you care!

Crunch Brunch

If you have little dinosaurs in the house, invite some friends over for Crunch Brunch! Getting kids to try new foods can be hard. Add some peer pressure and prizes and something difficult can become something fun!

Even kids who will eat beets as babies can turn into finicky toddlers. With busy schedules, it’s easy to fall into a groove of feeding them what they’ll eat. Once that routine is established, introducing new foods becomes a challenge. Breaking that routine may require thinking outside the box. One of the ideas I like to use to encourage children to try new foods is the Crunch Brunch.

Crunch Brunch is simply a mid-morning meal featuring crunchy food. You can invite friends or not, require costumes or not, decorate or not – it can take any form that you think will best motivate your children or grandchildren.

Three crispy tacos on board with white cup of pico de gallo and two red chili peppers.

To get the ideas flowing, here’s a starting point or two.

Invite a few kids to wear dinosaur costumes and come for brunch.

Establish some ground rules. Here are some I like:

You can eat any dish served alone or combine it with another food.
There will be prizes for certain combinations.
Every bite you take must crunch.
There will be prizes for different crunching sounds.
If you dressed as a carnivore, you must try at least two herbivore crunches.
If you dressed as an herbivore, you must try at least two carnivore crunches.
You can choose to spit out anything you try as long as you’re polite. A personalized dino spew bag will be provided.
To qualify for a prize, your bite must be as large as a spoon and must be both crunched and swallowed.

Potential prize categories:

Loudest crunch
Strangest sound when chewed
Weirdest flavor combination
Tastiest animal creation
Bravest bite
Most adventurous taster

Ideas for prizes you can purchase:

Rice Krispies Treats® or Annie’s® Original Crispy Snack Bars (gluten-free)
Chocolate covered pretzels
Bite-sized CRUNCH® Minis
Treat size Cadbury Crunchie bars
Individual servings of CAP’N CRUNCH cereal
Individual bags of Pirate’s Booty or Cheetos
SkinnyPop Skinny Pack® Popcorn
Individually wrapped popcorn balls
Cracker Jack®
Snack size packs of crunchy cookies

Ideas for prizes you can make:

(Check for nut allergies.)
Caramel apples
S’mores (GF cookies, breakfast biscuits, or graham-style crackers can be used)
Trail mix
Chex® Mix
Chex® Mix Puppy Chow
Crunchy cookies of your choice
Brownie bark

Plan the Menu. The goal is not to overwhelm or make the kids uncomfortable so be sure to serve things the kids like along with any novel items.

Perhaps you choose a Crunchy Taco Brunch. What could the menu look like?

Tacos, obviously. Your taco filling can be whatever you normally use – ground or shredded beef, chicken, or shrimp. The crunch will come from hard taco shells and toppings like lettuce, jicama, or radishes.
Tortilla chips. If the kids love dipping their crunchy chips in queso, serve it alongside dip they don’t normally sample, salsa verde, black bean hummus, or spinach artichoke dip. Or keep it familiar with a twist by serving things like pico de gallo that includes zucchini.
Salad. Carrot, apple, and raisin would have been my grandmother’s choice, but some version of more traditional fruit salad may be preferable. Just make sure it’s full of crunchy apples and celery or has nuts available to sprinkle on top.
Ants on a log. Stuff celery with cream cheese and top with raisins.
Bowls of crunchy stuff. These items can be eaten on their own, used as toppings, and consumed for prizes. Plantain chips, banana chips, sweet potato chips, pretzels, celery, pickles, crackers, cucumber slices, sweety drop peppers, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, snow peas, crispy lettuce, sliced bell pepper, candied pecans, mixed nuts, cereal, granola, freeze dried vegetables or fruit, crostini or pita chips, and cabbage slaw.
Dips and toppings for crunchy stuff. Hummus, tzatziki, ranch dressing, honey mustard, pepper jelly, honey, and sprinkles.
Dessert. Toffee, chocolate brittle, cornflake brittle, crunchy candy bars or cookies.
Drinks. The easiest way to make a crunchy drink is to buy a bag of Sonic ice and turn regular juice or milk into a crunchy treat. You can also add a cocktail pick with caramel popcorn across the top of the glass. If the kids are younger, just add ice to their sippy cups so they have crunchy water.

Crunchy Taco Brunch is only one idea. There are millions – Crispy Pizza Party, Cereal Bowl-a-thon, Crunchy Flatbread Spread, Bring Home the Bacon, or Lettuce Wrapped are a few that stay in the crunchy lane. But you can branch out any direction – creamy, cheesy, orange, green, red, fried, baked, boiled, etc.

Crunch Brunch can double as a playdate and mom catch-up. Don’t hesitate to ask the other moms to bring something crunchy or decorate a dino spew bag.

When you see your friends enjoy something you’ve never tried, you’re more likely to sample it -especially if there’s a prize to be won. And keeping food experiments playful and fun remove the pressure from trying something new.

Do a little planning, then relax and have fun. You’ll also have some great bonding opportunities at your first Crunch Brunch.

Going to the Dogs

Should we be going to the dogs for gluten detection? Gluten-detecting service dogs have recently gained interest and followers on social media. Enough so that the Society for the Study of Celiac Disease felt a need to post a Statement on the Effectiveness of Gluten Detection Dogs for Patients with Celiac Disease earlier this year.

The idea is great! It could feel so carefree to walk into a restaurant or party and not have to ask any questions or read any labels! We might even feel like regular people again rather than gluten sleuths. And if you already love dogs, I mean, what’s the downside?

But maybe we should ask a few questions before we all start going to the dogs:

How are dogs trained to detect gluten?

Nosey Dog Detection Partners trains dogs to alert to scent. Here’s the standard described on their website.

“Allergen and gluten detection service dogs will be trained to the following standards:

The dog will be tested on 10 items: 5 will be non-scent and 5 will contain the scent the dog is trained to detect. Of those 5 scent items 1 will be a strong source, 1 will be a mid-level source, 1 will be trace source, and 1 will be an item that is typically safe but is contaminated with the scent source.

The dog and handler team will be required to pass this test prior to certification. This will be a blind test for the handler, meaning that the handler will not know which items are source and which are not.

The dog and handler team will be tested both in our training facility and in a public venue. This is to ensure the dog and handler team can work in any environment. We will use our own scent items to ensure that we know for certain which items the dog should be alerting on. We will not pull items from the shelf in the grocery store. It is too difficult to know if the package has been contaminated or if the glue or packaging contains the scent.“

I appreciate the detailed description, but I’m left with a couple of questions:

What scents are they learning to detect? Gluten is odorless. If the dog is taught to alert on wheat, rye, barley, oats, and malt, it would identify many problem foods. But would it detect gluten in caramel color, glucose syrup, or edible coatings? Would it flag oats that were certified gluten-free? And what happens when scents are mixed?

How can we know whether the training is effective? No testing is done in real world conditions using common food items. If “it is too difficult to know if the package has been contaminated” in a test, then it’s going to be too difficult to sort out when I take the dog somewhere IRL. This could be enough to nullify any potential effectiveness. In fact, it feels like it would make my life more confusing, not less.

Are all detection dogs trained using a common standardized criterion? Reading through the American Kennel Club information on service dogs, I’m not sure whether gluten detection really falls under service dog criteria. It’s not really a medical alert dog in the traditional sense. The more accurate parallel may be drug detection dogs.

Would handler bias enter the picture? Research has shown that drug sniffing dogs may alert in error when the handler believes drugs are present. Stands to reason this might be a problem for gluten detection dogs as well.

Willow Service Dogs L.L.C. offers testing in which the controls are blinded or masked to the handler until after the dog is presented with the control and indicates the presence of gluten or gives and all-clear. This would help minimize handler bias.

This company also offers a wider range of testing in more realistic conditions. Still, a false alert is considered acceptable. And the searches are scent based bringing me back to my previous questions.

Is there anything wrong with getting a gluten detection dog? No. We all use a variety of tools to identify problem foods. Adding another tool is fine as long as you understand its limits and are willing to pay the estimated $20,000 to purchase a fully trained dog or put in 1000s of hours to train one on your own.

Because I believe it is vitally important to my health to remain gluten-free, I do not feel comfortable solely relying on a gluten detection dog to keep me safe. There are just too many remaining questions about standards and efficacy.

For now, I won’t be going to the dogs!

Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Boo on a Budget

Given the high prices of groceries, you may have to boo on a budget this year. Here are some tips for making Halloween budget friendly, even when your kids are gluten-free.

1)Right size your candy purchases. If you have lived in a neighborhood for a while, you probably have an idea how many trick-or-treaters you average each year. Don’t buy too much. You can always limit what each child gets if you see more traffic than usual.

2)Consider bulk pack candy or bubble gum with lots of small pieces when buying for a large group. Bubble gum is gluten-free and can be purchased for as little as $.07 per piece. Dum-Dums® are gluten-free and can be found for $.08 each. Other bulk candies to consider are Tootsie Roll® Midgees $.075 and Charms® Mini Blow Pops® $.05 each. Both are gluten-free, peanut-free, and kosher. Smarties® are a long-standing popular gluten-free choice $.075. If you lean toward chocolate, Snickers® Mini Chocolate Bars can be found for $.20 each when purchased in bulk.

3)Get the neighbors together. There’s economy in numbers. Have several households gather on one front porch. Block your home’s entrance with a decorative spider web that holds a sign telling trick-or-treaters where to find the treats. Create a costume theme and dress up as a group or simply pass out candy.

In my neighborhood, we’d choose the biggest porch and have a signature cocktail. Each household buys less candy, but we’ll still make the kids happy we’re their neighbors.

Don’t worry about children getting less candy. They don’t technically need candy in their diet. It’s much more about them feeling powerful through getting adults to do their bidding, enjoying the costumes and decorations, and getting a treat. They’ll enjoy the experience even if the treats aren’t large.

4)Make a witch, goblin, ghoul, or werewolf photo companion. Use cardboard from boxes. If you’re like me, it won’t take long to amass enough cardboard to create a witch cutout. I have some house paint I can use for the large surfaces and paint markers to fill in the details. Create a few ghosts using white balloons draped with white trash bags and hang them by your cutout. Let all the kids pose with the cutout and ghosts for a photo. An optional takeaway can be a single sticker, sucker, or plastic skeleton.

5)Make crayon bundles. Boxes of 800 crayons would yield 50 bundles of 16, 100 bundles of 8, and 200 bundles of 4. The crayons can be purchased for $.05 each. Secure them together with a rubber band, black & orange ribbon, or string.

Some of us remember a time when it was okay to accept a homemade treat. Having the flexibility to prepare something at home without all the packaging made it easier to keep costs down. If you use these tips to spark your own ideas, you’ll find Halloween doesn’t have to be scary. It’s still possible to provide a good boo on a budget.

Happy Halloween!

Ten Halloween Treats for Any Child – in thriver words (cooking2thrive.com)