Long time, no post. And popsicles!

It's been a long time since I've blogged. Fourth grade was a little busy!  But it's summer vacation now and I have lots of ideas for posts, so please come back and read all summer long.

Today I want to share one of my favorite summer treats - popsicles. Who doesn't like a frozen treat on a stick? Supermarket popsicles are good, but they're made in factories and have some weird stuff in them, like artificial colors and flavors. We make our own popsicles at home, using natural stuff and I think they taste just as good. It's really easy to do and I hope you try it at home!


The easiest way to make a popsicle at home is just to pour 100 percent juice into a mold of some kind (even just an ice cube tray) and freeze. Voila! Ice pops! My favorite is plain old orange juice --

Fill the mold, cover the mold with plastic wrap, and poke toothpicks through the plastic:

If you want to get a little more fancy, you can make berry pops. For these you need:


* 1 cup frozen berries (I used mixed berries, but you can use whatever you like)
* 3/4 cup lemonade
* splash of water


Put everything into a blender and blend until it's all smooth. Pour it into your molds and freeze.

When they're frozen, pop one out and enjoy!  You can come up with your own flavors too, using whatever fruit or juice you like. Try it. If you come up with a good one, leave a comment here with your recipe and I'll try it!

The Truth About Nuggets

I recently learned something that bothered me and made me feel gross. If you eat processed food, especially chicken nuggets, you should know this.

What you see above is chicken. No, really. It's called "mechanically separated" chicken!!!!!  (Sorry chickens...) To make this, they mash all the pieces of the chicken, and by that I mean literally every part of the body -  bones, skin, you name it, it's in there. It's all the parts we don't want to eat on their own. (The pink color is because of all the blood and other parts ground up in there.) Then they separate the hard parts of the goo from the soft parts of goo. Next they take the paste and make it taste good with chemicals and dye it to make it look like chicken again.  Finally, they roll it out and make it into shapes like nuggets, dinosaurs, stars, tenders...all the stuff kids love to eat.

Like I said, learning about this bothered me a lot. I do eat nuggets sometimes. And I like them! But I won't be eating them anymore - it's bad for me, I worry that the chickens used for this had a bad life, and it's all the parts I wouldn't eat alone. But I worry that not all kids agree with me. Here is a link to a clip of TV chef Jamie Oliver showing a bunch of kids how nuggets are made. I was pretty shocked at their response!