Love Your Veggies

Like me, there are moms all over the world who are trying their hardest to get their kids to eat vegetables. You've all heard my tales of how I have not one picky-eating kid, but two with my DH being just as picky as Darly. However, I'm pleased to tell you that with the help of some ranch dressing Darly and DH are eating more veggies. AND that the makers of Hidden Valley Ranch have heard us!...

Hidden Valley® Salad Dressings
Love Your Veggies™ Mom Retreat

In partnership with renowned Chef, Art Smith, the makers of Hidden Valley® Salad Dressings want to identify, help and reward moms who are true vegetable advocates through the Love Your Veggies™ Search for Veggie Champions Contest. For 10 lucky moms, Chef Smith will lead a two-day retreat aimed at learning and sharing tips and tools on planting, harvesting, cooking and eating vegetables with children. These moms will also receive $5,000 to start or maintain a community vegetable garden in their hometown.

How to Enter: Parents can enter the Love Your Veggies™ Search for Veggie Champions Contest by completing and submitting an official entry form at http://www.loveyourveggies.com/ between October 30 and January 15.

Judging: Ten (10) grand-prize winners will be chosen by careful selection from all entries received. Judges will select parents who best demonstrate a commitment to eating well for themselves, their family and their community and interest in learning to engage kids in ways that increase vegetable consumption.

Prize Details: Winners will get a respite from their busy schedules to enjoy an all-expense-paid trip to one of the country's premier cities -- Chicago.
The prize package includes:

• Two days of fun and educational classes, field trips, cooking demonstrations and tastings with some of America's most notable food and nutrition experts. Workshops to include: vegetable gardening with children, grocery shopping for the healthy child and vegetable selection and meal preparation with little helpers.
  
• Personal instruction from Chef Smith, who brings a personal commitment to helping children find an appreciation of healthy foods through his work with Common Threads, a non-profit he established in 2003, as well as the release of his third cookbook, Back to the Family.
  
• Round trip airfare and hotel accommodations for three nights and two days in Chicago, Ill.
  
• Dinner at Chef Smith’s Chicago restaurant, Table Fifty-Two.
  
• Dinner with the children of Chef Smith’s charitable foundation, Common Threads.
  
• A spa visit to experience another great way to enjoy organic plants.
• $5,000 prize money to be used by each winner to start or maintain a vegetable garden in her community. The winner must designate a non-profit organization to which the $5,000 prize money will be awarded and with whom the community garden will be planted or improved.

About Love Your Veggies™: The makers of Hidden Valley® Salad Dressings’ Love Your Veggies™ campaign offers parents tools to help children develop a life-long love of vegetables through activities at home, at school and in the community. In addition to the retreat, the campaign offers a Web site that encourages parents and children to work together to grow their curiosity and love for vegetables, a school grant program to provide students with better access to fresh produce, and more.

The makers of Hidden Valley® Salad Dressings created the Love Your Veggies™ program after a study found that children consumed 23 percent more vegetables when paired with a moderate amount of ranch dressing (2006 study of two Northern California elementary schools conducted by the University of California Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program and the Butte County Cooperative Extension comparing vegetable consumption with Italian and Ranch dressing flavor enhancers).

More Information: To learn more about the Love Your Veggies™ campaign, the Search for Veggie Champions Contest and official rules, or tips and recipes from Chef Smith, please visit
http://www.loveyourveggies.com/. Or, contact: Dianna Mangiantini / Current
415-449-0122 / dmangiantini@currentlm.com

A sponsored post from my friends at Mom Central.