The Truth About Grocery Store Orange Juice, Black Bean Hummus, and a Super Fun Tracing Drawing Project

The big brand orange juice you see at the grocery stores are not all they seem. When I found out that the juice typically sits around for more than a year, and then gets flavored with orange juice taste because it has lost all of its original flavor, I decided to make the switch to freshly squeezed. Read the truth below excerpted from an ABC news article and decide for yourself.

“After oranges are picked, they are shipped off to be processed. They are squeezed and pasteurized and, if they are not bound for frozen concentrate, are kept in aseptic storage, which involves stripping the juice of oxygen in a process called "deaeration," and kept in million-gallon tanks for up to a year.

Before packaging and shipping, the juice is then jazzed up with a flavor pack, gleaned from orange byproducts such as the peel and pulp, to compensate for the loss of taste and aroma during the heating process.”

Recipe:

Black Bean Hummus

You need some nosh and are bored with regular hummus. The answer is black bean hummus: a tasty and healthy alternative. It is delicious and wont last long served with corn chips or veggies.

Ingredients
1 garlic clove
1 3/4 cups or 1 15-oz. can black beans; drain and reserve liquid
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
1 1/2 Tbsp. tahini
3/4 tsp. ground cumin
1/4-1/2 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp. paprika or smoked paprika

1. Mince garlic food processor. Add black beans, 2 Tablespoons of reserved bean liquid, lemon juice, tahini, cumin, salt, and cayenne pepper. Process until smooth, scraping down the sides as needed. Add additional seasoning and liquid (water will work if you run out of bean liquid) to taste. Garnish with paprika.

Art Project:

Tracing Shapes and Coloring (to make funny people)

What You Will Need:
Paper
Pencil
Shapes of all kinds = (anything the kids can trace around: thick puzzle pieces, cookie cutters, lids, little containers, foam bath shapes, shaped erasers, Legos, blocks)
Crayons, markers, and/or colored pencils

1. With a flat hard surface under the paper, have or help your child trace shapes all over the paper using the pencil.

2. When the paper is full of shapes, use crayons, markers, or colored pencils to put in eyes, noses, mouths, hair, arms, and legs, and color the bodies.


"To make the argument that the media has a liberal or a conservative bias, is like asking if the problem with Al-Qaeda is do they use too much oil in their hummus." -Al Franken