Product Review

Hot Dogs Ingredients: Pork, Water, Sea Salt, Vinegar, Cane Sugar, Cultured Celery Extract, Spice, Dehydrated Garlic, Smoke

Ham Ingredients: Ham, Water, Sea Salt, Vinegar, Lemon Juice Concentrate, Smoke Flavour, Cane Sugar, Cultured Celery extract, Spice, Smoke

Salami Ingredients: Pork, Sea Salt, Cane Sugar, Spice, Vinegar, Lemon Juice Concentrate, Dehydrated garlic, Lactic Acid Starter Culture, Cultured Celery extract, Smoke

The Schneiders Naturals line has really impressed me! I had stopped buying lunch meat all together when I realized how much junk was in it, and it made making lunches just a little bit harder (hubby takes 3 sandwiches a day, 5 days a week!). Then I found this stuff!! 

 

As you can see from the ingredient list there's not much in it. It actually tastes like real meat...yes even the hot dogs are pretty good! The first time we cooked the hot dogs we both looked at each other and said 'they smell like bacon!'. They have chicken hot dogs, smoked turkey breast and a couple type of uncured ham as well as bacon that we haven't tried yet, but I would imagine they would all be pretty good. The pictures above are all ones that we have tried ourselves. We haven't tried anything we didn't like :)

 

They are all sold in packages with the rest of the pre-packaged meat and definitely aren't as cheap as buying the sale of the week from the deli, but not horribly expensive either, and I feel good knowing what my family is eating. And I feel good having the option of eating hot dogs once in awhile without avoiding reading the label! In fact, we had hot dogs for supper tonight. My kids each ate a whole one and I feel like they actually had a decent supper :) 

I still make a lot of roasts and use those as lunch meat, but when I'm tired or sick or it's too hot to cook anything this is my go-to lunch making source now. I have never liked lunch meat myself but when this is in the fridge I find myself making a sandwich for lunch just a little more often! Try some, you will be pleasantly surprised!

Product Review

Trying to stay away from rubbing chemicals on my kids skin, I decided to go with a natural bug spray (no deet!) and sunscreen this year. I decided on Dr. Mercola's (click the link then scroll to the bottom of the page) line of products. I was a little skeptical, but it has a money back guarantee so I figured what could I lose? Plus there was a free shipping offer when I ordered.
I received it in the mail a week or so ago, but just recently really got to put it to the test. We have AWFUL mosquitos here this spring! Although we have all gotten a couple of bites, I've been impressed by how well the bug spray actually works! The kids are relatively bite free, and except when I was walking through a grassy field, I feel like it's been working pretty good for me as well. My 2 year old loves it. Every morning at breakfast I hear 'bug spay? bug spay outside?' I don't know if he likes the smell of it, or if he understands that it works! It has a very strong smell to it, but not that 'asthma-attack inducing' smell that deet sprays have.
The sunscreen really got put to the test yesterday. I got the spf 30 version. I put some one at about 10am was outside for about 30 mintues, then I went for a 1.5 hour walk at noon, and didn't put any new sunscreen on. I burn very easily, especially the beginning of summer, and I didn't even turn pink! It rubs in easily, and I don't have the overwhelming urge to bathe my children the moment we come in the door to get it off of them. It smells nice, and it works...bonus!

This is the package that I got.

And it wasn't that expensive either. I got 2 bottles of sunscreen and 2 bottles of bugspray for under $50. When I was buying sunscreen last year I seem to remember paying over $15 for one bottle of 'baby-safe' sunscreen! And it was still filled with all sorts of garbage!

So if you're on the fence about natural sunscreen and/or bugspray, I highly recommend checking out Dr. Mercola's products. I haven't tried anything besides these two items, but if everything else is as good as these ones, I wouldn't hesitate to try them!