Your wheat bread is not whole wheat bread

I've told many friends and family "If you care, the bread you bought is not whole wheat bread."
They say "What do you mean? It says wheat bread right here on the label."
I say, "Bread made with white wheat flour (as opposed to barley flour or rye flour for example) and flavored with Carmel coloring is wheat bread. You need to look for the word "whole" or preferably "100% whole" wheat bread. Your bread is colored white bread."
I still occasionally get fooled and come home with the colored bread. Oooooh that makes me mad when that happens. I'd much rather eat a good (not wonder) white bread then a fake colored bread, since they have the same nutritional value. Be extra careful on things like English muffins and bagels. They are much more likely to be colored wheat. Also, just because your bread has a lot of seeds and stuff in it and looks super healthy does not mean it's whole wheat. My beloved Boston Brown Bread is very seady, but only the second ingredient is whole wheat. Here's what to look for.
1)100% Whole Wheat or 100% Whole Grain This is what you want. This will be on the front of the package. This means the bread has all whole grain flour and not white flour.
2)Whole Wheat Bread This means that there is at least some (I'm not sure legally how much.) whole grain flour in the bread.
3)Look at the list of ingredients on the back. The first ingredient (or at least the second) should say Whole. Whole is the magic word you are looking for. If the first ingredient is whole wheat flour, it has to be made with at least 51% whole wheat flour. If the second ingredient is whole wheat, the recipe could go something like this..3 C white flour, 2 T wheat flour, 2 1/4 tsp yeast....
Cornmeal also must say whole to be a whole grain. You might also be interested in my post on whole grains or the post below on chocolate vs. milk chocolate.

Hershey's Kissables not milk chocolate

Hershey's Kissables (a candy covered chocolate mini "kiss") are no longer legally considered milk chocolate according to this link. Where the package used to say "candy coated milk chocolate", it now says "chocolate candy". If you want to eat real chocolate, it looks like looking for the phrase "milk chocolate" on the label is a good idea. It appears to me that chocolate refers to the flavor (like in tootsie rolls) and milk chocolate means it's real chocolate. I wish labeling was more clear in the US. See the above post on wheat bread.

Summer Drinks

These are a few of the drinks I've been enjoying this summer.

Leinenkugel's Summer Shandy. It's like a lemonade beer. But in a good way.

Cave Creek Chili Beer. My new Uncle brought it back for me from Wisconsin. It's a lager with a chili pepper floating in it. It's got quite a kick. Most people drink it with tomato juice, but I personally don't like red beers. Both beers are great in the heat.

All of the Celestial seasonings fruit tea sampler flavors are good iced. They don't need a lot of sweetening either. I've been adding a 1/2 c of the corresponding juice to each quart of iced tea to sweeten. There are enough tea bags of each flavor to brew a quart. Raspberry zinger, country peach passion, cranberry apple zinger, tangerine orange zinger, black cherry berry. Another variation is to replace some of the water with mineral water. It makes a nice fizzy drink. I got my fruit tea sampler at Target.

Milk from Sterling

Go _____? Sisters... anyone...what was Sterling's mascot? I know they were Blue and White. But I digress. I was in Dan's Supervalue North today and they were handing out samples of milk from Sterling, N.D. A.K.A. Bessy's Best. There were samples and a schpeal and I was interested, but in a hurry. (Lost season finally tonight. *spoiler alert* Bus driver...Move! That! Island!) I looked on the web and they make and bottle fresh whole milk. Nothing added, nothing taken away. If you have toddlers, you should be extra excited. There is some kind of stuff (that's the technical term) in grass fed whole milk that makes it especially good for toddlers. I don't whether the cows are grass fed or not, but I'd put my money on grass fed if I were a betting woman. If you want to know for sure or have any other questions, there is an e-mail address in the above link. Had I been thinking ahead this would have been great to make ice cream out of and homemade yogurt to make into frozen yogurt. Next time...
Here is an article from KX 12
Hey Lora- Did you find an article on grass fed milk and beef and stuff that is really long and you have no idea whether or not it's reliable? I Sure did. Click here.
Another Lost spoiler alert. Hey why are you putting all that metal in that thingy? Blerk...Blerk...Blerk....Blerk....(storm alert). Hey I sure wish we could get rid of 200 lbs from this helicopter. Blerk...Blerk...Blerk...Blerk... There was another well timed one too, but I can't remember it now. Each announcement went on forever and I don't know why they have to read them to you when they are scrolling across the screen. I heard the blerks. I can read them myself. Erg!

Eat Local

For those of you who don't know, eating local ingredients is good for the environment. It takes allot of gas and causes allot of pollution to bring blueberries from South America in February. So, it is always better to eat local ingredients. I always thought that was a great idea, but I live in North Dakota and the local produce is slim when there's no farmers market. (or Gary and Sue's garden, thanks Gary and Sue) I came across this post on Rhubarb and Venison, an awesome local blog with a great name, where the author cooked an all local meal. She also has this post about eating locally in Bismarck. As I was driving home after visiting Julie last weekend I thought I would give it a try some day, maybe in August. I was tired after the drive and made boxed mac and cheese for supper. After cooking, I realized, mission accomplished.

1. Dakota Made Mac and Cheese
2. Land O' Lakes milk
3. Land O' Lakes butter

I think Land O' Lakes is still semi local. After condidering it today, Cass Clay is a better choice. The cost is the same and I don't have a taste preference between Cass Clay and Land O' Lakes. So, I'll buy Cass Clay from now on. (at least that's my plan now). As far as I can tell, Cass Clay comes from Fargo and Land O' Lakes comes from Arden Hills, Minnesota, on the Wisconson Border. I also plan to buy Dakota Made products. (flour, pasta, mac and cheese, etc.) I had mostly been doing that before anyway. But, now I plan to do it even if Dakota Made is 5 cents more when the competing product is on sale. I also get eggs at Cenex, so they're local. Someday I'll make a Local meal that's not mac and cheese.

Jiffy pop

Pop-pop-pop. What's the secret ingredient? Silicone. Yep, last ingredient on the list is methyl silicone. Yum. Still works great for camping though.

Supermarket Pizza Sauce

Who knew? I thought that all pizza sauces would have corn syrup. Flavorite pizza sauce doesn't have any. In fact, it's made from real food (well, it has "natural" flavors and citric acid, but I'll let that pass). In contrast, the Contadina has corn syrup as the second ingredient and also had modified corn starch. Other brands are probably corn syrup free, but I haven't checked.

Old Orchard Juice

Old Orchard Juice which was previously 100% juice now sells a line of juice that is mostly corn syrup. I used to just grab old orchard frozen juices without looking at them too much because they were all 100% juice. Now I'll have to pay attention. Just letting people know.