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Here at the Food on Fridays carnival, any post remotely related to food is welcome—though we love to try new dishes, your post doesn’t have to be a recipe.

If you want, you can simply list all the red food sitting in your fridge right now. You could even stage a still life photo to upload and share, complete with red peppers, ketchup, sun-dried tomatoes and spaghetti sauce. Anyway, my point is that posts like that are as welcome as menus and recipes.

When your Food on Fridays contribution is ready, just grab the broccoli button (the big one above or smaller option at the bottom) to paste at the top of your post. It ties us together visually.

Then plug your name and link into Linky Tools.

Food on Fridays with Ann

We just finished cross country season.

It’s been a good run.

Our kids have gotten stronger and faster and more confident from the first painful practice to the last organized meet. Honestly, they’ve been transformed.

They’ve learned that cross country runners get a little dirty.

And they’ve learned that they need to fuel up before a hard practice and refuel after a race.

To prepare for a road race that started early on a Saturday morning, our coach recommended Pop-Tarts as a pre-race breakfast.

Yes, Pop-Tarts.

I couldn’t believe my ears. We work so hard to teach our children healthy choices, and then Coach tells the kids to go buy some Pop-Tarts.

After hearing me audibly gasp, Coach added that his vegan fiance has discovered that Whole Foods offers some healthier versions. But it was too late. My kids loved the advice and tossed Pop-Tarts into the grocery cart shortly after.

“We need it for the race!” they said. “Coach said so!”

Pop-Tarts as pre-run fuel isn’t the only surprising bit of nutrition news we’ve learned: we’ve also heard that one of the best recovery drinks is chocolate milk.

The kids loved hearing this, too.

Permission to consume Pop-Tarts and chocolate milk? No wonder they loved cross country!