Are you looking for easy ideas to get you out of the kitchen and get you into enjoying your summer? The Meijer team of Healthy Living Advisors offer up ideas to cut your time in the kitchen without skimping on health and nutrition. In addition to these ideas and recipes, don’t forget to check out the weekly nutritious menus with recipes and the healthy living recipes in meijermealbox.com.

Keep Your Cool This Summer!
Summer salads are a great alternative when it gets too hot to cook. Top a bed of salad greens with Homegrown cucumbers, sweet tomatoes, and Valley Fresh Canned Chicken. Finish off with Planters Harvest Almonds and your favorite vinaigrette dressing for a light and satisfying meal.

Retro chilled main dish pasta salads are a satisfying alternative to hot dinner meals. Mix nutritious Meijer Extra Pasta (NuVal™ Score 87) with your favorite dressing, can tuna or Meijer Rotisserie chicken and finish off with cut vegetables such as carrots, bell pepper, broccoli or even thawed frozen peas. Finish out your meal with Homegrown fruit, such as cubed cantaloupe.

Wrap up a tasty sandwich meal using Meijer Whole Wheat tortillas topped with hummus and then layer shredded carrots, Hormel® Natural Choice Honey Turkey, baby spinach leaves, and red onion sliced thin. Serve with fresh berries topped with a dollop of Dannon All Natural Vanilla yogurt.

Cook the entire meal on your grill to avoid heating up your kitchen, plus it makes for easy clean up! Try pairing Tangy Grilled Chicken Breasts with Margarita grilled corn and grilled peaches and pineapple for dessert. Use Johnsonville® Chicken Sausage with large diced onions and bell peppers to make fast and easy kabobs for grilling. Get Grilling with these recipes found in the "Monthly Recipes" under the "Menu Planning" heading at our website, www.MeijerHealthyLiving.com.

Always include healthy beverages with your meals, especially on hot summer days. Stay well hydrated by drinking half your body weight in ounces of fluid (ie, 140 pound person needs 70 ounces fluid/day). Reach for plain water or flavor with Crystal Light, enjoy hydrating beverages like Fruit-2-O, V-8 Fusion, or brewed ice tea.

Anytime is the Right Time to Build a Better Parfait!
Yogurt parfaits make the perfect breakfast, between meal snack, or dessert treat. Besides tasting great, yogurt provides calcium, protein and probiotic cultures for digestive health.

1. Choose your yogurt – Dannon light for great taste with fewer calories, or Dannon Greek style yogurt for a thicker, creamier option with more protein.
2. Add crunch with whole grains. Sprinkle in a healthier granola, Post grape-nuts, or top with crushed shredded wheat cereal (NuVal score 91).
3. Add in nutrient rich foods such as blueberries or strawberries (NuVal score 100), sliced banana (NuVal score 91), raisins (NuVal score 87), diced Mango (NuVal score 96), or diced apples (NuVal score 96).
4. Make it fun and finish off your parfait with sprinkles, a handful of Planters® Nuts, a teaspoon of mini-chocolate chips, or a few mini candies such as M&Ms.

Get Healthy with Meijer Homegrown and MyPlate!
The USDA Center for Nutrition recently released its new eating guide “choosemyplate.gov” which replaces the food guide pyramid. MyPlate emphasizes simple dietary changes to improve health and nutrition, including:

Balancing Calories
● Enjoy your food, but eat less.
● Avoid oversized portions.
Foods to Increase
● Make half your plate fruits and vegetables.
● Make at least half your grains whole grains.
● Switch to fat-free or low-fat (1%) milk.
Foods to Reduce
● Compare sodium in foods like soup, bread, and frozen meals ― and choose the foods with lower numbers.
● Drink water instead of sugary drinks

Choose Meijer Homegrown produce, grown in the five states we serve, to help increase your intake of vegetables and fruit. Look for the “Homegrown” signs in our stores to find produce in season like melons, berries, lettuce and squash that are all delicious and at the peak of freshness. Produce is packed with nutrition, with an average NuVal™ Score of 96 for the produce department!