12.04.13 National Cookie Day Inspired Lunch

Today is national cookie day it's a day to celebrate all the different types of cookies. There are bar cookies, drop cookies, molded cookies, no bake cookies, pressed cookies, refrigerator cookies, rolled cookies and sandwich cookies and with all these different types of cookies I couldn't help but use this as inspiration for little S's lunch today.


I didn't really want to give him cookies for lunch as they can be less than nutritious so I decided he needed a cookie look alike. I chose the gingerbread man shape as the cookie inspiration and made them out of ham and cheese.

Main Compartment:

Gingerbread men - I cut three ham gingerbread man shapes and topped them with three american cheese gingerbread man shapes. These were cut using a cookie cutter that had a press for the details so I knew where to put the face and buttons.

Faces - The eyes were gingerbread men shaped jimmies, and the mouth was a candy cane jimmy,

Buttons - these were tiny dices of carrot

Snowy background- unsweetened coconut



Top Right Compartment:

Mini orange silicone cup of diced carrot

pretzels to eat with his ham and cheese men



Bottom Right Compartment:

freeze dried apple that i broke into chunks with cranberry raisins

Lighting of the Rockefeller tree inspired lunch.

Today they officially light the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, not that I've ever seen it in person but it sounded like a good thing to use as inspiration for today's inspired lunch.

Main Compartment:

Christmas tree - this is a oven pancake tinted green with food coloring and has sprinkles added for the ornaments and lights. If you have never baked a pancake it's a great multitasking tool.

Baked pancakes: preheat oven to 375 degrees, mix 2 cups of your favorite pancake mix and pour into a greased jelly roll pan. Bake for 15-17 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. Note you can tell if the middle looks set. This gives you a sheet of pancake that you can either divide up into pancake squares or cut with a cookie cutter but does not require you standing in front of the stove or griddle and all the servings are done at the same time. In this case I used a 8x8 square pan and only 1 cup of the pancake mix because which really would be enough for 2 adult or 4 kid servings. I tinted the pancake batter with green food coloring for the tree but you could make some that were red swirrled if you wanted to do candy canes or orange for pumpkins really its a mommy can be making pancakes, emptying the dishwasher, and making lunches at the same time technique.

Tree skirt - this is a small slice of black forest ham cut into the shape of the tree skirt.


Top Right Compartment:

ornaments = green grapes dusted with a little sugar to look like frosted ornaments


Bottom Right Compartment:

Strawberry package - I emptied a tube of low fat strawberry Greek yogurt into the compartment then I free hand cut a organic strawberry fruit leather to look like the ribbon wrapping the strawberry present.

Chocolate pudding sensory play

I had some chocolate pudding cups and though little S might like to play in the "mud". I gathered the pudding cups, some plastic bugs and creepy crawlies, some toy cars and a ramp and got to work.

First I dumped the 3 pudding cups into our sensory play bin.

Then I added the bugs and creepy crawlies

I burried them in the pudding for a surprise factor and added the ramp and little cars on top.

I put it all down on a towel in the living room and put little S in front of it. He wasn't as interested as I thought he might be.. could have something to do with the tree being in jail and it being more fun to slam the jail door. So I gathered all the parts up and took him into the bathtub for a refocus

I showed him how to make tracks with the cars but soon scrapped the whole project. This is something we may do again it just wasn't something he was into today. I pulled out the toys and left them in the tub for him to wash in his bath and we turned it into a let's clean the toys and the boy party instead. Sometimes a mommy just has to know when to surrender and give it up. I rinsed the pudding out in the sink so we only had a little left which turned out to be just enough for the bath to smell a little chocolaty. Little S loves bath time so it wasn't a total loss. We'll try again some other time today just wasn't a pudding play day.

Leftover inspired lunch - no one is immune to leftovers

Sometimes you look in the refrigerator intending to make something for a lunch and you can't get past all the leftovers that are just waiting to be loved again. Little S is not immune to eating leftovers we are a leftover kind of family - our budget is tight so we make every effort not to waste anything. Normally leftovers do not make his inspired lunch but today I used that as our inspired theme and have created an entire lunch around leftovers.

Main Compartment: All of these are left overs:

Broccoli chicken
chow mien
carrots from the broccoli chicken
white rice


Top Right Compartment:

Bottle Caps - leftover Halloween candy (not bad to still have some a month after Halloween when the little guy only did 1 block)


Bottom Right Compartment:

Buttery crackers

Crab salad in a mini silicone cup - turns out the kid really loves crab (he fit's right in around here it's really my favorite seafood)

decorating for the holiday with little S

Last year little S was so tiny I'm not sure that he really got any of the decorations or events that happened around the holidays; this year however, he is old enough to notice we're changing the decorations and things are getting lively.

Today we switched our thanksgiving decorations to our yule season ones. The menorah is still out as it's still Hanukkah and we have started decorating for the winter holidays coming.

One of the things I loved about Christmas growing up was getting and decorating a real tree each year. Sure it was a pain to water them and there were needles in the carpet at the end of the year but nothing beats that pine sent and the feeling of having a real tree. I wanted to share those memories with little S so we lugged M who being Jewish has never had to shop for a Christmas tree before, although I did point out that there is such a thing as a Hanukkah bush. We went and picked out our tree and brought it home.

Little S has not needed a baby gate in the main part of the house for some time and I had kept his baby jail off to the side with this holiday in mind. I didn't know how into the tree he was going to be and I wanted to keep it and the gifts safe from little S's hands.

He was not at all happy that we put the tree in jail. Dad went to work and he and mommy decorated the tree. Well in all honesty mommy decorated the tree and he slammed the gate to the jail from the inside over and over occasionally locking himself in with the tree.

we made several trips to the store in the end needing to replace all of the lights we had but in the end it was the start of a very nice tradition.

After looking at the tree... it's decorated with white lights, silver and pewter ornaments, crystal and white accents it didn't look right to me anymore. I've had most of these ornaments and decorations for over 10 years, it's a classic look that I love but this year it didn't fit anymore. It wasn't lively or colorful enough. I had a package of colored ornaments that I've had for years that never came out of the box because well my tree isn't a colorful tree.. I broke open that box yesterday and little S and I added touches of pink, green, blue and purple to the tree. Little S has added so much color, and flavor to my life that the classical tree just didn't fit anymore and I couldn't be happier.

Dinovember Day 10 cross over with Dinovember Inspired Lunch

Today is the last day I'll be doing Dinovemeber with little S this year and I wanted to do a tie in with his lunch. Today the dinosaurs took over his lunch.

Main Compartment:

Salad base for background

Two Dinosaur quesadillas made with Nacho flavored shredded cheese and a single large tortilla, then cut with a cookie cutter. The dinosaurs that looked most like our quesadillas are posing with their likeness.


Top Right Compartment:

Papa dinosaur is awaiting the arrival of his new little baby dinosaur- this is a hard boiled egg that I boiled in blue water and had slightly cracked the shell. Unfortunately the blue did not come through as much as I wanted maybe next time I wont dilute the color.


Bottom Right Compartment:

diced kiwi with a single slice to represent the green dinosaurs eyes.

Dinovember Day 9 Dinosaurs enjoy a root beer

Today the dinosaurs got into more mischief than they have up until now. Today the dinosaurs got together and decided they wanted to try some root beer.

They tipped over the can and poured out the root beer so that they could all get a big drink.