The giveaway stuff is all the way down at the bottom but the review is good too, so don’t just skip over that, K?

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If you’ve been reading this blog for anything length of time, you may have picked up on the fact that I’m a bit of a lunchbox freak.

No really — it’s true!

I’ve met very few lunchboxes that I haven’t wanted to fill up with tofu, strawberries and a whole wheat roll, so when the folks at OOTS! contacted me to see if I wanted to try out their Lunchbox Deluxe system, you can be sure I jumped at the chance.

An Overview:

The OOTS! Lunchbox is a hard-sided box with a removable, semi-transparent lid on the top. The version we got was bright green with a purple strap. The lid of the Lunchbox is shaped to keep a water bottle in place under an elastic strap. The deluxe version comes with five inner containers — one big and four small.  It’s made of  BPA-free and phthalate-free polypropylene plastic and safety tested for lead. I washed the inner containers in the dishwasher several times and they didn’t warp. The company says that the inner containers are microwave safe too, but I haven’t tried that so I’ll just take their word for it.

The first thing you need to know is that if you filled up all five of the boxes this set comes with, you will be sending WAY too much food to school for your average kid, especially if you’re only sending him off with lunch. I found that using three of the the boxes — the big box for lunch and the two little ones for snacks — was just right.

I left out the remaining two boxes and that worked pretty well because it gave me a little extra space at the top of the box to pack a drink. It also gave me room for a couple of ice packs — one on top of everything and another sandwiched in the middle of the stack of boxes.

You can still fit an ice pack in the box if you use all the containers, but you would need to use one of the thin, gel kinds because there is only about a half inch of clearance between the inner containers and the top of the lid when it’s fully packed.

Another thing to know is that if you are planning to pack your lunch bento-style, this system will present you with a few challenges. The inner containers are almost twice as deep as the bento boxes I normally use which made packing the food tightly enough to keep it from moving around and mixing together difficult. My beloved silicon baking cups only reached about half-way up the sides of the box, so they didn’t work too well as food separators. The handles that are built into the box lids make it easy to lift the inner boxes out of the lunchbox, but they stick down more than half an inch into the containers so I found myself removing food a few times in order to get the lids on tight.

That being said, having so many separate boxes — all with lids — makes it pretty easy to pack a lunch for kids who don’t like their cheese and crackers to touch their blueberries. If I weren’t a crazy bento-addict I think this would be a non-issue.

Another thing that I loved about this lunchbox is that it holds our wide-mouthed Thermos perfectly. You can see by this photo that the Thermos is exactly the same height and diameter as two of the little inner containers stacked on top of each other. I suspect this is a happy coincidence, but they couldn’t have made this a better fit if they tried. This makes the OOTS! Lunchbox even more flexible and useful than it already is.

Some of the things I particularly liked about this product:

• It’s good-looking — This lunchbox looks cool! It’s sleek and stylish enough for an adult to use, but the bright colors of this lunchbox are cheerful and kid-friendly too. Wyatt thought it was awesome and his five-year-old friends did too. True story: one of Wyatt’s buddies saw him using it at lunch time and asked his mom to ask me to show it to her so she could buy one for him.
• It holds a lot of food — You can really pack a lot into this box. I could easily fit lunch for myself and both of my kids into this box so it would be useful for outings to the park or zoo or what have you. An adult could load it up with lunch and snacks for a full day
• It’s flexible — You can pack as many or as few of the inner boxes into it as you like and configure them in a few different ways. And don’t forget that you can slip a thermos into it and still have room for the big container and two little ones.
• It’s easy to clean — I popped the inner containers in the dishwasher and gave the big container a rinse at night and I was all done with clean-up. No hand-washing required!

Some of the things I didn’t particularly like:

• The lids aren’t water-tight — While the lids fit snugly, they are not water-tight. I would not be willing to pack applesauce or yogurt in them — especially for a backpack-swinging kid.
• It’s big — The OOTS! Lunchbox takes up most of the space in my five-year-old’s backpack and because it’s hard-sided you can’t squish it if you need to squeeze a few more things in the bag.
• An ice-pack isn’t included — I’ve noticed that ice-packs are often an after-thought with these big lunchbox sets and this one is no exception. When the box is fully loaded, you can make an ice-pack fit but it needs to be a small one and there isn’t a lot of wiggle room. I would also worry that the cold from a pack — even if you stick it between the inner boxes — wouldn’t keep food items that were farther away from it cool enough to stay safe in a backpack until lunch time. An adult taking this lunchbox to work would probably have access to a refrigerator, but kids rarely have that luxury at school. It would be fantastic if OOTS! would add a custom ice pack to this set to help insure food safety.
• It’s not cheap — The price of the OOTS! Lunchbox Deluxe is $46. It’s beautiful, well-designed, and sturdy and I don’t think that’s a crazy price to pay for a product of this quality. If you add up how much money you save bringing your lunch to work or school instead of buying it, you could quickly justify the cost of this lunchbox…for an adult. But for a kid…I don’t know. I would find it really hard to drop that kind of cash on a lunchbox for a boy who has lost three jackets in as many months. That being said, Wyatt has never lost even a decorative pick from one of his lunches, so maybe I would buy him something like this. I guess it would depend on the kid.

In Conclusion:

I’ve packed several days worth of lunches in the OOTS! Lunchbox Deluxe and both Wyatt and I have enjoyed the experience of using this cool system. It was easy for me as the lunch-packer and fun for my five-year-old as the lunch-eater. I predict that this lunchbox will be used regularly for quite a long while.

And now for the good part!

The good people of OOTS! have generously offered to give one of you an OOTS! Lunchbox Deluxe of your very own! You even get to pick the color!

To enter: Leave a comment below telling me what sorts of posts you’d like to see more of on this blog, Wendolonia. More bento stuff? More crafty stuff? More fattening cake recipes? And if you have any specific questions you’d like me to answer, I’d love to hear them. I’ll choose one random entry from those that are submitted before Sunday, May 9 at 11:59 pm PDT and announce the winner on Monday morning. (U.S. addresses only — sorry.) Good luck!

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Disclosure: OOTS! sent me an OOTS! Lunchbox Deluxe to test out for this review and I liked it enough to tell you about it.

I’ve been meaning to write a review of Method’s Smarty Dish dishwasher soap for quite a while but I haven’t managed to get around to it until today.

And what better day is there than Earth Day to review an environmentally responsible cleaning product?

OK, there are probably lots of days that would work fine, but since today is Earth Day, I felt it was appropriate. But first, I feel like you should hear the back story.

My husband hates dishwasher soap.

Yes. You read that right — he hates dishwasher detergent. He thinks it all stinks and most brands make him sneeze and give him itchy eyes. Honestly, I can’t blame him for hating it. As the primary grocery shopper in our family, I’ve probably purchased  just about every brand of dishwasher soap available in a regular grocery store and it all affected him the same way. And then, after a while, I started sneezing and getting watery eyes when the dishwasher was running too. Now, part of this is probably caused by our ancient dishwasher — it occasionally leaks and I’m not sure how great the seal is on it — but that doesn’t change the fact that we were really bothered every time the dishwasher was on. And if the soap was having that effect on us, I didn’t even want to know what it was doing to the tiny little lungs of my toddler and his asthmatic older brother!

I started looking around for a more environmentally and people friendly dishwasher detergent. The first three I tried were total failures: one bothered us as much as the conventional detergents, one left a gritty white residue and didn’t get the food off the dishes and one made our eyes sting, failed to clean the dishes and left soap on the dishes. Marvelous.

I complained bitterly to a friend about it one day (in a very stereo-typical house-wifey moment) and she told someone she knew at Method who then kindly sent me a package of Smarty Dish tablets to test.

I tried them immediately and guess what — THEY WORKED! My dishes were clean, my husband didn’t complain about the smell, and no ones eyes watered when they got too close to the dishwasher.

Pros:

First and foremost — they don’t make us feel sick! And my husband has stopped complaining every time the dishwasher runs (which is every day). Yay! Yay for a non-complaining, non-sick husband!

I also like that they come in a little tablet because I’m lazy and it makes it easy and fast to get the dishwasher started when a toddler is trying to grab the soap out of my hands. Let’s see…no phosphates, no bleach, and no other nasty chemmies so they’re not horrible for the environment. I already said that they clean our dishes, right? That’s expected with a dishwashing soap but considering how poorly the other green detergents worked, I think it’s worth mentioning.

And finally, the French translation of the flavor I use (pink grapefruit) is “pamplemousse rose” which is extremely fun to say.

Cons:

It’s kind of pricey. The Method website shows a list price of $6.50 for 20 tablets. Ouch! I buy mine at Target for $4.99 for 20 which is better, but still feels a little expensive to me. It’s worth it to avoid breathing potentially toxic fumes though.

The other con is that it can be hard to find Smarty Dish. The only place I’ve ever seen it is Target and often they’re out of it. I’ve started buying two or three packages at a time because I never know when I’m going to be able to get my hands on some.

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Disclosure: I wasn’t paid to write this blog post, but I’m so enthusiastic about this dishwasher detergent (of all things!) that it probably sounds like I was. I did receive two bags of the soap from Method so I could try it out. Since then I’ve probably bought at least eight bags, so I think that proves I’m not a pawn of Method. I also received some baby products, but the only one I’ve used is the shampoo which I like because it makes my kids smell like giant rice crispy treats. I bought some more of that too. Don’t fine me a million dollars — OK FTC?

Last week, I Can Do That Games (the same folks who make the Cat in the Hat game Wyatt and I love) kindly sent me a package containing one of their new Curious George games for us to check out. We are big, big fans of Curious George around here — the books, movie, TV show, a quilt and several toys all live in our house — so we were very excited to find the Curious George Hide and Seek Zoo Game inside the FedEx package. The first thing Wyatt spotted was the big, yellow walkie-talkie. What four-year-old doesn’t like a walkie-talkie? None that I know. We were off to a good start. We sat right down and played a couple of games. It was just Wyatt and I for the first round. Dad joined us for the second pass.

The basic game play is really simple and my four year old picked it up in just a couple of turns. The walkie-talkie runs the show. When it’s your turn, you press the button on it and it tells you to do one of three different activities. The most common activity is to turn over a card in one of the four areas of the zoo and match it to the appropriate place on the board. Each card has a “helping” task associated with it — clean, repair, feed or water the animals. You then spin the spinner and pick up any card showing the helping task you get (it doesn’t have to match the card you just drew). The second activity involves moving a school bus across the board along with getting a spin and a chance to pick up another card. The final activity, and by far the most fun, is the hide-and-seek one. When it’s time for hide-and-seek the walkie-talkie makes a siren noise and everyone except the player with the walkie-talkie puts on a mask and hides. After about 30 seconds the music changes and the walkie-talkie instructs you to go to go look for the “animals”. The seeker gets one card for each person he finds and the each hider gets a card if they aren’t located. The game ends when the bus reaches the end of the trail and the person who has the most cards at that point is the winner.

This is a very fun game and there is lots to like about it. A few things in particular that I liked:

• It’s easy for young kids to play. As I said, my four year old picked it up very quickly. Since all the instructions are issued by the walkie-talkie, no reading is required and the concept is simple without being boring.
• The chances to pick up cards are random enough that even the least skilled player can win.
• The hide-and-seek portion of the game gives parents a chance to close the gap if the kids are too far behind. Because really, who wants to soundly beat a preschooler at a board game? I’m not someone who’s going to let her kid win every game he plays, but I also don’t want to devastate him by kicking his booty up and down the zoo. So if he’s too far behind, I can do a really bad job hiding or search and search to no avail. (Of course, it’s pretty hard to keep up the ruse that I can’t find him when he keeps shouting “Try the office Mama!”)
• The game encourages helping and doing chores without being too in-your-face about it.
• The walkie-talkie controls the length of the game and keeps it pretty short. I haven’t timed the games we’ve played, but I’d guess they’ve been about 10-15 minutes. Just about the right amount of time to hold Wyatt’s interest.
• The hide-and-seek part is fun! And the masks make it even sillier.

A few things didn’t go over so well with us:

• Wyatt loves the walkie-talkie. He really, really loves it. While that’s fine during the game, when we’re not playing it can start to grate on my nerves. Several times Wyatt has played with it by pushing the button over and over and over. I can just about handle it until the fourth or fifth time the hide and seek alarm starts to play, then it takes every ounce of self-control I have not to throw the dang thing out the window.
• Some of the pronunciations of words on the walkie-talkie aren’t perfectly clear. Every time it told us to turn over a card in the farm, Wyatt would ask, “Where’s the ‘far’, Mom? I can’t find the ‘far’. Do they mean sa-FAR-i?” Granted, part of the confusion could have been cleared up if Wyatt had clued in that it was saying “farm” sometime before the 20th time I told him, “They’re saying FARM! FARM, Buddy!” but I still had to say it 20 times. Also, when it says “The animals have escaped!” I swear it sounds like it’s saying “The cannibals have escaped!” Hmmm…that’s actually kind of funny.
• I would love to buy this game for birthday party gifts, but at $20, it’s just a bit too expensive. (I’ve set a birthday gift maximum of $15). The price puts it up into niece and nephew gift range.
• Wyatt (and his dad) didn’t really like wearing the masks for hide and seek.

I liked the masks though.

This was definitely a fun game and one that we’ll be playing for awhile, I think. These folks at I Can Do That Games are putting out some really fun games. For the most part, I dread having to play most board games with Wyatt because they’re so freaking boring for grown-ups, but the Curious George Hide and Seek Game and Cat in the Hat – I Can Do That! are fun for both of us.

Wyatt is a boy who needs to move a lot. I suppose all four-year-olds are like that, but sometimes I think my son is like a shark — if he stops moving, he’ll die. He is constantly climbing on the furniture, running in circles through the bedrooms, spinning in circles in the kitchen and jumping, jumping, jumping! With a new baby in the house and the change from daylight savings to standard time, we’ve been having a hard time getting outside on a regular basis to let him run off all that energy. Weeknights can be especially hard because it’s too dark to play outside after preschool and I need to keep Wyatt happy and occupied while I make dinner. What’s a Mom to do?

A few weeks ago the folks at I Can Do That! Games very kindly sent me a copy of their Cat in the Hat – I Can Do That! game for Wyatt and me to review. We’ve found that this game satisfies his need to move, while simultaneously containing and channeling it into a mom-approved activity.

Wyatt was so excited when I opened the box to show him what was inside. He immediately started to rummage through the box and showed me all the pieces of the game. “Look Mom — a ball! And a fish! And a dress! You should hold that because that’s for girls to wear and you’re a girl! And a boat! Can I take that in the tub tonight? I’m going to read this book. Ha ha ha!” While he was inspecting each piece, I started chopping a pepper for the paella I was making for our dinner.

After he was done looking at it all, I grabbed the instruction card to take a look at what we needed to do to play. The first step was to assemble the “trick-a-ma-stick” (the yellow thing in the picture here. I put it together and while Wyatt crawled around under it and around it, I peeled the shrimp for the paella.

When the novelty of the trick-a-ma-stick wore off a bit, I read the instructions for the game. The premise is simple — you choose a red card (action), a blue card (object) and a yellow card (silliness) and read off the sentence they form. For example, you might get “Take four big steps with the toy man on top of your head” or “Crawl under the trick-a-ma-stick with the book inside your clothes.” If you think you can do it, you say so and go ahead and do it. If you don’t think you can do it, you can put any of your three cards back and draw another until you find something that will work for you.

We’ve had very little success playing games with Wyatt so far because he gets bored when other people take their turns and irritated when we won’t let him take every turn. He also despises the random set-backs that seem to be a part of all games targeted at preschoolers. Drawing the gingerbread man in Candyland, dumping your bucket in Hi Ho Cherry-o! or — God forbid — landing on a chute in Chutes and Ladders can all set off a massive tantrum born of frustration. Yeah — that’s a super fun way to spend an afternoon. We’ve kept trying, but games always end with screaming involved somehow. What I like about the Cat in the Hat game is that it sets him up for success. It’s all about things that kids can do. And to take it a step further, it’s also fun that there are a lot of things that kids can do that grown-ups can’t. For example, I’ve got a bum knee and my booty is too big to go through the trick-a-ma-stick so crawling is right out for me, but Wyatt can do it with no problem. Fun!

We played a very casual game while I finished making dinner, giggling all the while. When Daddy came home from work, he joined in for a few rounds too. Wyatt happily took turns through the whole game. I think it’s pretty fun to see your mom skipping around the kitchen with a ball tucked under her chin so you don’t mind letting her play the game too. Super bonus points that our game didn’t end in tears or a tantrum!

One teeny little complaint though — the trick-a-ma-stick falls down a lot.  Frustrating when you’re trying to saute rice. All things considered though, that’s a pretty small issue. I give The Cat in the Hat – I Can Do That! a big thumbs up.

I Can Do That Games also sent us a copy of Horton Hears a Who! – You to the Rescue! We will be donating that to Toys for Tots. (Much to Wyatt’s dismay….)

When I started up this blog, I had the the idea that I would review the books I read on a regular basis. I’ve fallen off the wagon a bit there with that intention but in the last few weeks a book has come along that I just have to gush about a bit.

I’d seen a few reviews of The Six O’Clock Scramble by Aviva Goldfarb on blogs and most of them were very positive. I’m constantly looking for ways to make cooking dinner easier and faster. When we aren’t planning very well or even when we just get too tired after a long day, we end up making spaghetti for dinner (again!) or going out to eat. It’s not healthy, it’s expensive and it really doesn’t take much less effort or energy.

When Zach asked me if there was anything I wanted to add to his Amazon order a few weeks ago I asked him to add this book on a whim. It’s organized in a bit of an unusual way — the book has four main sections based on the seasons and within each season there are weekly menus. Each menu has a shopping list online and you can download and print the weekly menus from the book’s website. It’s a great idea in theory (and one that seems to have been borrowed from Leanne Ely’s Saving Dinner), but in practice it leads to a book that feels a bit disorganized to me. The menus are only pulled out at the beginning of each section and once you get into the recipes there is no indication of which menu you are in aside from a small piece of text down in the footer of the page. It’s a minor annoyance and one I can easily get around by dog-earing recipes that I want to try or by just going to the index, but I think I would find it easier to use if there were chapters on chicken, fish, pasta, etc.

But those are minor quibbles and I’m gushing, remember? So let’s get to the good stuff. As I’ve been reading the book, I’ve been marking the recipes I want to try. I usually mark one of every 10 or 20 recipes when I read a cookbook, but I’ve been marking one recipe for every 6 that I read. It’s only that few because I started out marking every other page and I realized I needed to stop before the whole dang book was marked up.

I also like that Goldfarb goes out of her way to make the recipes truly child friendly. I have one “family” cookbook that features recipes for fried oysters, gravlax and duck burgers. Seriously. I don’t care how evolved your child’s palette is — they would never eat that stuff. Most of the adults I know wouldn’t eat all three of those things. Goldfarb’s recipes on the other hand are tasty and interesting enough for adults, but use child-friendly ingredients. She also provides ideas for how to modify the recipes for the pickiest eaters.

Last week I made our whole dinner menu (four recipes) from this book. I didn’t use the online shopping list feature because I wanted to try recipes from all over the book but I found it pretty easy to throw a list together before I went to the store. The meals were quick to prepare — true to the 30 minutes or less of hands-on time promised in the book — and Zach and I liked every meal enough to want to have it again. Here are the recipes I made:

Recipe: Ravioli Lasagna (p. 142)

Pros: This was a shortcut lasagna where you use refrigerated ravioli instead of lasagna noodles and sauce. The first, and I think the best of all the recipes I made, it was chock full of veggies (carrots and red bell pepper) and it came together really quickly. We added the optional turkey Italian sausage which Zach really liked. We’ll absolutely be making this again and I think it will become a regular recipe in our repetoire.

Cons: Wyatt wouldn’t try it. I’m confident that if he would have he would have loved it though.

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Recipe: Baked Turkey Chimichangas (p. 70)

Pros: Another big winner in the flavor department and Wyatt ate an entire chimichanga by himself.

Cons: Dang this recipe made a lot! We ate this for dinner two nights in a row and had enough left-over for 3 lunches. I guess that’s a pro in some ways but you can have too much of a good thing.

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Recipe: Chicken Tikka (p. 154)

Pros: Good curried chicken recipe. It was fabulous with Trader Joe’s garlic naan.

Cons: The sauce that went with the chicken was a bit harsh for me with too much raw garlic. Zach liked it though. Wyatt wouldn’t eat this because he’s decided he doesn’t like chicken this week.

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Recipe: One-Pot Chicken and Vegetable Stew (p. 37)

Pros:This was yummy and had tons of vegetables in it. It came together very quickly even with all the veggie chopping.

Cons: This was a bit too spicy for me and for Wyatt too. I think it was my fault though because I substituted chipotle chili powder for regular chili powder but I didn’t cut it back at all. It was still good though and I’ll be making it again without the chipotle modification I made.