9.30.13 Muffin Tin Monday - Puppies

Today there were no super fun wacky holidays so I made little S a puppy themed lunch because I had some super cute cookie cutters and picks.

Top Row:

• Puppy Bones - provolone cheese bones cut with a cookie cutter
• Puppy Treats - corn and peanut puffs we found at Aldi last week
• Puppy Fruit skewers - Puppy picks with diced apple and pineapple cubes

Bottom Row:

• Paw Prints- Black forest ham and american cheese puppy paw prints cut with a cookie cutter
• Veggie - cauliflower no real reason other than he likes it and needs some veggies
• Puppy Food- apple crisp I baked this morning using several of the apples we picked Saturday. 

This apple crisp is a no oatmeal crisp that is super easy to make I have included the recipe below but I didn't get a picture of this before it was sampled. 

Sarrina's No oatmeal apple crisp:

5 cups of apple. This should be 5-6 apples depending on the size of the apple. I used a combination of Macintosh, Johnathan and Empire apples but you can use any time you have on hand that are not mealy, this is also super yummy with Granny Smith. 

Juice of 1/2 a lemon. 

1 stick of butter- melted

1 cup of white sugar

1 cup of brown sugar

1 cup of flour

1 tsp cinnamon or apple pie spices

1/4 tsp salt. 

Core and peel your apples. You want to section the apples into eight sections that you then cut into three chunks. Cutting this way ensures that your apple won't disintegrate while it cooks but will soften. You need 5 cups of cut apples. Grease the bottoms and sides of a 8 x 11 inch glass casserole pan. Place cut apples in the greased pan and sprinkle with the lemon juice, tossing to coat. 

In a large bowl add your melted stick of butter. I melt my butter in the mixing bowl, to save a dish, and use the microwave for me it takes about 32 seconds. Next dump into the mixing bowl the flour, the white and brown sugar, the spice and the salt. Stir and mix this until it comes together and is crumbly. 

Top the apples with your crumble mix pushing down at the sides to give the juices some room. If you don't move the apples and topping away from the sides the apple crumble could spill over the sides during the baking. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 40-55 minutes until brown and bubbly. 

I personally top this with either vanilla ice cream or whipped cream both are great when the apple crisp is warm. 

Smithsonian Magazine Free Museum Saturday

In the spirit of the Smithsonian Museums, who offer free admission everyday to all of their wonderful exhibits, Museum Day Live! is an annual even hosted by Smithsonian magazine in which participating museums across the country open their doors to anyone presenting a Museum Day ticket for free. A ticket is good for two people and will give you free entry into one of the participating museums, but does exclude parking or special exhibit fees. If a museum reaches capacity, the museum has the right to limit the number of guests until space becomes available.

This was our third year participating in this event and little S's second. We chose to go to the Madison Children's Museum. This museum offers five stories and a roof of child friendly exhibits to explore learn and grow with and is perfect for even a little guy like little S. This children's museum is located across the street from the capitol building and the Dane County Farmer's market which is the largest in the nation and as such we expected there to be a huge line for the Children's Museum. Our first Smithsonian Day, three years ago, we also chose a children's museum to take the big kids too in Portsmouth Virginia when we were still all living in the area and had to wait over an hour in a huge line to get in just before they started regulating how many people were going in. We got there about thirty minutes before they opened bracing for the line.

This was the line we experienced this event:

We were the line! It was hard to believe but apparently Madison children prefer not to get up and go to a museum at 930am on a Saturday? In our house we've as a collective been up nearly four hours by then with mom usually having been up almost seven hours so we're already running full speed and as you can see from the picture looking to have a snack while we try to patiently wait for the rest of the world to wake up. The farmer's market was packed with people but we were the first group to get into the Museum out of maybe a crowd of five families twenty people total. What a difference!

We checked our stroller into the stroller corral under the Lewis Carroll quote - I took this picture as a reminder for one of the sayings I want to include on our walls; however, this can be applied to your car. If you are parking in a parking garage or at a shopping mall in the up coming holiday season,  remember to take a picture of your section and space number or the entrance you came into so you can find your car again in the ever shifting sea of cars.

We took little S into the under 5 section and the kid was clearly unsure of what the expectations were of him. He wanted me to carry him rather than walk along the bridge that was hanging over the room made from dinosaur bones and he was not at all like himself when he went down the slide with M. I decided to lighten him up a little and break with a normal mom philosophy of do the wet things last.. we made a bee line for the glass water house. Little S loves washing his hands, taking a bath or a shower and had the best time at the water park so I knew he would love this area. I put a little smock on him and tried to get him to play with the water. You can see from the picture that he was a little hesitant in the beginning but he started to warm up to the concept when he realized mommy was just standing by if he needed something, he could play all he wanted.

Once little S lightened up we played with musical instruments, a sensory wall, and tried to play with other children. The trouble is that S is super tall for his age and wants to play with kids but can't speak yet so they don't really want to engage a baby which is unfortunate because he is a super soul. We did discover that although his type up until now has been brunettes he apparently just hadn't experienced a ginger yet. I see little red headed girls in my future. He took great pleasure in talking to a small red headed girl about his age, although talking was a stretch he kept touching her face and hair and she was trooper and let him although he's not as gentle as he should be. It was sweet but made my heart ache. I really need to find this kid some other children to play with. 

We explored most of the museum including the media center, cooking area, lego land, arts and crafts area and the roof top green garden. The roof top was spectacular with fall foliage, sunflowers, and breath taking views. Little S is enjoying running around and taking it all in. 

He lasted almost two hours of nonstop running and playing before it he made it clear that  lunch and a nap were in order. We gave him some snacks, took a trip around the farmers market (he napped 85% of the way around before we headed off to a BBQ lunch across town. 

The best way to spend any weekend is with family, in the sun and learning through play but if you can end your outing with an ice cream you've really scored big!

We took a quick detour on the way home and stopped at yet another apple orchard an picked another five pounds of apples.

Build memories and traditions for your kids.. it's what they go to when things are hard. Little S is getting a foundation of museums, apple orchards and love. 

9.27.13 Koala Lunch

Today is save the Koala Day which was created to raise awareness to the plight of the koala and to educate people about them. Koalas in the wild face problems as their habitat is cleared, housing grows closer and more dog attacks happen. 80% of the koala habitat is on private land and people need to take some simple measures to help protect them like planting new and maintaining existing trees that koalas like to feed on and keeping dogs secure at night.

Today little S has a Koala Lunch

Left compartment:

 Koala - 1 full slice of provolone, 2 half moon pieces of provolone for his ears cut with a small cookie cutter.

Koala face details - free hand cut from a piece of dried and roasted nori

Mini green flower silicone muffin cup of peanut puffs - These were a impulse buy at Aldi this week they are corn with fresh ground peanuts to me they seem super salty but little S seems to like them. I'm letting him have them in super small amounts.

Top Right:

Diced fresh pineapple

Bottom right:

Cauliflower - one of little S's favorite vegetables currently.

Four Cheesy Chicken Nuggets.

9.26.13 Johnny Appleseed Day

9.26 is Johnny Appleseed Day.

Johnny Appleseed is a famous historical American figure, who's most notable for his spread of apple trees throughout Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. He was a prominent conservationist, business man and religious figure who was well known and liked for his kindness and generosity.  Today marks what would be his 239th birthday.

To celebrate as well as use up some of the apples we picked at the five apple orchards last week I put together a "Appleseed" lunch for little S.

Top compartment:

• Four cheese apples- two swiss and two american cheese apples cut using a small clay cutter I found at Target recently. 
• Jelly sandwich - this inside out jelly sandwich has two pieces of bread the other is under the top coated in strawberry jelly to give it both dimension as well as a red apple color.
• the apple stem is a red veggie straw inserted between both pieces of bread to hold it in place.
• the leaf is a food coloring and water painted slice of swiss cheese. 

Bottom left compartment:

• Cauliflower - little S needed a veggie and he eats cauliflower 
• Sunflower seeds in a mini green silicone muffin cup - these were to represent the apple seeds.

Bottom right compartment:

• apple spice apple chips I made this morning from the apples we picked this weekend. 

Sarrina's Apple Chip Recipe:

For apple chips you will need:

Several of your favorite kind of apple - I used Macintosh, and Empire that we picked last weekend. Mine were small so I used 6 apples.

2 TBS sugar
2 TBS Apple Pie spice (can substitute cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice)
optional Nutmeg (I use an additional 1/4 tsp of nutmeg)
Baking sheets
Parchment paper to line the baking sheets

Set your oven to 200 degrees and line your baking sheet or sheets with Parchment paper.

Wash your apples and slice them thin. I sliced mine a little thicker than I usually do which makes the end result more like dried apples and less like chips. I also go around the core which gives me large slices and half moon pieces you can slice right through the whole apple just remove any seeds that do not automatically fall out when you place them on the baking sheets if you do. I cut mine in half moons because little S is still small and I don't want him to try to stuff the whole apple slice in his mouth at once.

Lay your slices out on your baking sheets mine looked like this:

Next mix the sugar and spices together and sprinkle it on the apple slices. I do just one side mainly because turning them over is another 3 minute step I would rather avoid but you could do both sides if you want more flavor.

Bake at 200 for one hour, turn all the apple slices over and bake for an additional hour. At the two hour mark  check to see how things are going and if the apples are still a little chewy  put them in for an additional 20-40 minutes.  When the two to two and half hours are up, turn the oven off but leave the slices in the oven. This cooling in the oven is when they become crispy and crunchy and is an important step to having apple chips and not dried apples.

You can see my finished apples in little S's lunch. They are slightly smaller than when they went into the oven and very crunchy.

9.25.13 National Family Day

Today's lunch is all about celebrating national family day. Family's can be lots of things to lots of different people; some are chosen and some are given but all are special.

In the large section we have a family of hearts.

• Two large black forest Ham hearts - cut with a large heart cookie cutter. 

• Two provolone cheese hearts cut with a slightly smaller heart cookie cutter and decorated with the word family. 
• Family was written with a toothpick dipped into food coloring and written in several languages
• English = Family
• German = Familie
• Indonesian = Keluarga
• Turkish = Aile
• Russian = CembR (i don't know how to get my R to show backwards)
• Estonian = Pere
• Slovak = Rodina
• Vietnamese = Gia dinh (again I have not idea how to make the correct symbol on my key board for the d)
• Hawaiian = Ohana We recently watched Lilo and Stitch  this is a great movie about the changes, differences, and meaning of family. 

Top Right Section:

• Ritz sandwich crackers with peanut butter

• carrot half moons

Bottom Right Section:

• A small pear - every family started with a pair of people, so to represent them today we have a little pear.

• Muffin cup of nuts - I'm not certain about your family tree but most include a bunch of nuts. Little S's lunch has chopped smoked almonds and roasted lightly salted peanuts. 

9.24.13 National Punctuation Day!!

Little S is still a way off from writing but to celebrate National Punctuation Day I made him a lunch with all of the best punctuation marks.

Top: In the largest bin we have !?!

•  two quesadilla exclamation points free handed with hard boiled egg slice points

•  one crispy bacon question mark with a hard boiled egg slice point. You can shape a still warm piece of bacon right out of the microwave into just about any shape when it cools it will usually hold it's shape very well.

Bottom Left:

•  Hyphens - mini breadsticks taken from a package of Chex Mix in a mini pink silicone muffin cup

• Apostrophes ' -  Julienned and diced carrot pieces in a mini green flower silicone cup

• mini crab apple from our weekend apple orchard trips

Bottom Right:

• periods and colons - peas

My son is a great eater but also a typical sixteen month old which means the majority of the peas will likely conveniently fall from the side of his high chair tray to the floor.

9.23.13 Innergizing day - Energize yourself from the inside out day

Spa Lunch today:

Today is all about spending time on yourself through meditation, relaxation and eating healthy. Today little S has a Spa Day lunch including a Spa Lady.

Our Spa Lady:

Nutty Creamy Carrot bread from our favorite Apple Orchard - "The Elegant Farmer" it's full of carrot, walnuts and whole wheat. It's a normal sandwich like bread not like a banana or zucchini bread.

A slice of black forest ham - to give her a pink complexion

Cream Cheese mixed with green food coloring to make her mask. Note - it was nearly impossible to spread the cream cheese on the super thin ham slice until I heated the cream cheese in the microwave for 10 seconds which made it go on really smoothly.

Cucumber slices - two of the smallest slices of cucumber to make her eyes covered in cucumber slices

Nostrils - 2 tiny slices of a slice of olive

Mouth- smiley cut orange bell pepper (from our garden)

Head Towel - created from two pieces of provolone cheese.




Top Right:

Tiny crab apple - super cute mini apples that are a bit spicy.

Tiny pear from one of our harvest tour stops this past weekend.




Bottom Right:

Carrot sticks - baby carrots cut lengthwise

Julienned orange bell pepper sticks

Ranch for dipping in a small flower silicone cup.


Neither of u, little S or I, have been to a spa so our lady is completely taken from what we have seen on tv. This healthy lunch has no fried or salty foods and four kinds of veggies and two kinds of fruit.

Our garden the lessons and the results

Yesterday was the first day of fall and for us a time to look back and review the results of our garden. This was the first time as an adult I have had a garden. I wanted to lay the ground work for little S to to not only have something that reinforces our continuing lessons around where does your food come from, farm to table eating and eating healthy choices and rainbows but also the basis for work equals reward, success, failures, nurturing, and result analysis and review.

I know what you are thinking.. you've read a post or many that refer to little S and  know the kid is sixteen months at this point and was just one when I started the garden.. and you are now convinced I over think a lot of things. I'll give you that one. I do but at the same time have you put as much thought into what your child may learn through something you do together?

Gardening is new to me and not something I am all that comfortable with but it teaches not only the cycle of life, it teaches responsibility, nurturing, hard work and a healthy respect for mother nature that can't be beat by just reading about it. Kids and often adults learn best when you add action to a lesson and repetition is a good thing. I know a year old won't understand all the concepts, get the idea or think much more than mommy is playing in the dirt; however, someplace inside his brain is absorbing as much detail as mine is and storing all that information for when he has the vocabulary and experience for it to click later.

I had us start small this year just a few containers sure I could tell you it was scaled to Little S's size but the reality is with a smaller size it was more manageable for me both as a time investment as well as a success or failure activity. I work a paid job with little pay but the luxury of doing it from home and it's 55+ hours a week at my desk. I also care for little S full time and we have two cats, a dog and sometimes two bigger kids when M's other children are visiting. I wanted something that wouldn't take up so much time I began to hate it but that would still contribute to our summer food budgeting.

Little S and I had a mommy and son trip to the store and chose a variety of things to plant. We chose things we like to eat and that would help me stretch the budget this summer. We got starter plants for most of the garden as a way to give us a head start and a leg up on the success. We planted our garden in containers as we were still experiencing freezing rain when we started in May and wanted to be able to bring the containers inside the garage if needed.

We planted:

Bin 1- 1 orange bell pepper plant and 6 onion bulbs
Bin 2- 1 cucumber plant and 1 summer squash plant
Bin 3- 1 watermelon plant and half a package of carrot seeds
Bin 4- 2 kinds of tomato plants and 4 onion bulbs

Our bins looked like this:

We had some successes and some failures and a bit of a learning curve; however, this is definitely something we will be doing again.

In review things we learned:

• We need a raised planter box for better drainage- we ended up needing more holes in our containers. 
• We need some sort of fencing to keep little ones and bunnies out - our garden was tall enough to avoid most of this danger this year. 
• When the seed package says to go back and thin out the plants - follow those instructions. Our carrots suffered from not following this step and so did the watermelon that was sharing the container.
• The cucumber and squash need their own space - the leaves from the squash prevent the cucumber from getting enough light to thrive. 
• Cucumbers are prickly and strange when not covered in wax from the store
• Even a few plants make a big difference in food costs. 
• Go Big! Next year we need a bigger garden. 

This is a sample of one of our harvests this summer: two cucumber, 1 summer squash and three tomatoes. 

Our final results.. (yes I kept track I am a spreadsheet nerd like that) 

1 bell pepper plant = 12 bell peppers 

10 onion bulbs = 10 onions

2 tomato plants = 30 tomatoes for us, 20+ for the caterpillars and 20+ that never got past green.

1 summer squash plant = 8 summer squash 

1 Cucumber plant = 5 large cucumber 

Carrots = we yielded 25 baby carrots * see note above 

1 watermelon plant = 2 baby watermelon

Harvest Festivities part two

9.22.13 Harvest weekend continues

Today we spent time visiting two more apple orchards.  I want little S to appreciate where his food comes from and to eliminate the middle man when possible.

Our first stop today was at Apple Hut orchard where we picked 5lbs of apples right from the tree. I held little S up and he picked the apples. We selected the best of the three available kinds Empire, McIntosh and Cortland. You can see our apples on the table with little S in the picture below.

Our final stop was to the Curran's Apple orchard where we played in the hay stack, hay maze, corn tunnel and hay bales.

We had a great time playing on and around all these natural harvest treasures.  We also treated little S to a horse drawn carriage ride around the orchard. 

It was a great weekend and a beautiful way to celebrate all the treasures of the harvest. 

harvest festivities

Tomorrow is Mabon so we started our harvest festivities today.

We went to several apple orchards and country markets as part of little S's continuing education in farm to table... where does our food come from?

Our first stop today and little S was a bit shy about heading into the barn. Once he realized there were women in the barn my little flirt changed his tune.

I was able to get some seket pears and some super cute apples for his lunches this coming week.

Our second stop was at Apple Holler where we saw goats, pigs, and chickens. We wandered around the jack and the beanstalk grove and got lost in a corn maze.

We also made a stop at "The Elegant Farmer" for our favorite Creamy Carrot Nut bread and ham and onion spread. We of course also built our own caramel apple. Little S tried caramel for the first time and loved it.

The weather was a perfect 63 degrees with a slight breeze, the only thing that would have made our day a bit better would require some changing leaves.

9.20.13 National Tradesmen Day

Today is national tradesmen day. A day set aside to honor all those skilled people who without we we would have no buildings, homes, schools, or bathrooms our cars would all be broken on the side of the road and we would be lost without them. Thank you for keeping us moving, keeping the lights on, the water flowing and the computers from becoming boat anchors.

Breakfast is little S's favorite meal and today he's having breakfast for lunch.

Main course:

Hammer: I free hand cut this from a still frozen waffle. When I asked M if he knew what it was I think he humored me because he knew what I was trying for. It's a hammer maybe next time I'll color the handle.. that might help.

Nails: the orange silicone cup is full of sausage nails. I julienned a sausage to give little S some nails to hit with his hammer.

Little S doesn't travel anywhere for lunch so the blue silicone cup is strawberry jam for him to dip his hammer into. You could easily replace this with a leak proof container of syrup.

Wrench Set: three wrenches cut from two slices of Mango

Screws: these require some imagination - these are pear spears that I embellished with food marker to have threads.

Washers: Cheerios in a muffin cup


Thank you to all the people who share their knowledge and skills to keep us going.

9.19.13 Talk like a Pirate Day

Talk like a pirate lunch:

Today little S had a Pirrrrrrate lunch

Pirate: (who I named Pete)

Pirate tortilla is two piece of tortilla cut with a small round cookie cutter and spread with sunbutter.

Bandana- American cheese cut with the same cookie cutter as I used for his face. The holes to give his bandana poka dots were made with a pen body. (Use what you have)

Eyes and nose: String cheese is super easy to use and the boy loves it. I just cut a piece off the end and trimmed it to the shape. The eyeball is edible food marker.

Eyepatch- piece of pepperoni cut to fit

Moustache and word- were cut from the remaining American cheese I used for his hat..


Top right:

Sandy beach is made from Chex mix. I pulled out just the Chex and then crushed a few of the lighter ones to make it more sandy. This also serves as his treasure because it is a special treat for little S that came from his daddy's snack stash as I generally don't like snacks that are this salty for him.

Bottom right:

X - a carrot X marks the treasure spot on the map. A single baby carrot cut lengthwise so each side would balance and not roll off.

Map- dices pears and apples.

Next year when little S is talking it's going to be even more fun when he and mommy talk like pirates all day!

9.18.13 National Cheese Burger Day

National Cheese Burger Day.

We celebrated by making  our own bacon and cheese inside burgers on the grill. I had gotten a great deal on a package of 85/15 ground beef at Target on our last trip. They had meat on sale for $ 4.28 lb on the package was a $2.00 off coupon, which I combined with a 10% cartwheel and a $1.00 off fresh meat mobile coupon from texting Lunchbag to Target's number. I diced up a string cheese and three pieces of precooked bacon added seasoning and an egg then formed and grilled the patties.

Little S had his served on a lettuce leaf with seasoned fries, some left over hash browns and diced pears.

Not a fancy meal but cheaper than celebrating by eating out.

9.11.13 Patriot Day

Patriot Day: Remembering freedom isn't free lunch

A simple thank you is usually the best. I made little S a lunch to help enforce the message of gratitude and not taking freedom for granted. If not for the choices of brave men and women neither of us would be where we are today.

This is one of those lunches where  M turns to me after I put it together and says.. I didn't know we had ____. How did you do that so fast?

I am... let's go with frugal. As the sole support for the family right now my budget squeaks it's so tight. I am against going into debt so I make due. This is one of those lunches that comes from my frugality. I don't throw fruit or veggies away. If they are starting to get ripe and need to be eaten and I can't make them work into what I am serving. (I serve three meals a day plus snacks) I prepare them and then individually freeze them and store them in labeled packages in the freezer. It's really a money saving  and a time saving tip. If you only need 1/2 an onion for a recipe cut up the whole thing and then freeze the part you do not need. The onion is then ready and waiting for the next time you make this dish or some other one that needs 1/2 an onion. Sometimes maybe you run week poor, where you have too much week left and no more paycheck; in those times just open the freezer and you have items to put together to make a nutritious meal for the family.
When we are a little more flush in our budget I buy the seasonal fruit I know we love but will miss in a few months and put it away for later. July there were HUGE quantities of blueberries on sale for less than 99 cents a pint. I bought 5 extra pints and individually froze them and now we're enjoying blueberries out of the freezer when at the store they are harder to come by and much more expensive.


Patriotic Lunch:

Left: strawberry jelly sandwich stars - This happens to be two slices of homemade white bread I made the previous day. Little S isn't a big fan of mixing PB with the jelly, or Sun butter with Jelly he likes them all separate I thought in this case red and white stuck with the theme best. I jellied the bread with strawberry jelly and then flattened the sandwich. I take two of the thin plastic sheet cutting boards, place one under and one over the sandwich and flatten it. Using the cutting boards insures I do not get dirty; the counter doesn't get dirty and it's a greener and more frugal option than using plastic wrap. Flattening the sandwich makes it easier for little S to eat because the sandwich isn't a huge mouth full and  it helps me get a few more stars or shapes out of the sandwich.

Top right: shredded carrot. I had gotten the carrots nearly free at target so I shredded them for use in pasta sauces; little S has no idea that pasta sauce normally doesn't come with carrots. I put extra veggies in where I can to add nutrition and volume to our meals. The TY(thank you) are made with green bell peppers from our garden also frozen.

Bottom right: Frozen blueberries with tiny provolone stars

If you put frozen fruit and veggies into the lunch box they will thaw by lunch and help keep the cheese and sandwiches cool.

So proud that my BFF shared this on one of  her firefighter spouses boards.

9.12.13 National Video Games Day

National Video Game lunch

I am a gamer, there I have come out of the video game closet yet again on the internet. I am a nerdy gamer geek mom. This should be the easiest lunch of all.. Right?? You would be  terribly wrong in thinking that.  I just had too many choices and ideas. I also "tend" to have OCD <twitch> or <cough> perfectionist moments that rear up and bite me, and I recognized the signs of that coming on. I didn't want to do another Angry Bird lunch as I have recently done a few of those... what to do? Are you starting to get the idea I'm particularly hard on myself? Little S is 16 months old he honestly doesn't know Pacman from Angry Birds from WoW. I started souring the internet and other bento mom/dad blogs which was no help in narrowing down my ideas.

What to do? I decided on Pacman for the main box because it is iconic and sort of hard to mess up.  I had a lot of things around the house I could use already to fill in the rest I just couldn't bring myself to making Pacman out of a slice of cheese, so  I broke my usual rule and sent M to the store specifically for this lunch. I sent him for the breaded chicken patties. My personal rule is normally not to get special things for these lunches and instead make what I have at home work in the theme. This is normally where I walk my talk about thinking outside the box while playing inside the rules only today I cheated and broke my own rule. I think this lunch came out pretty cool... considering I improvised a lot of it.

Each section of the lunch box had it's own game since I couldn't narrow it down.

Top:
Pacman:  breaded chicken patty cut into a Pacman (I used a round cookie cutter because the full breaded patty wouldn't have left room for anything else in the box or in little S. Pacman has a chocolate chip eye

Dots: String cheese cut horizontally into little disks.

Ghost: I only had orange so the other ghosts were cut from the line up. I used an orange bell pepper from my garden to cut his shape, and royal icing eyes to complete him.

Bottom left; Angry bird graham crackers (left over from previous lunches and snacking) these are in a poka dot paper muffin cup. The remaining string cheese stick was cut into little S size pieces and placed in a mini silicone muffin cup.

Bottom right: diced mango topped with a cheese and pepperoni Mario logo. I cut the rough M shape with a paring knife and cut the circle from provolone cheese with a cookie cutter.

9.13.13 Roald Dahl Day

Roald Dahl Day:  James and the Giant Peach Lunch


Roald Dahl wrote many terrific children's books which made deciding which to honor a challenge. I narrowed it down originally to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory or James and the Giant Peach because I remember reading these as a kid. In the end since little S doesn't know either of these stories YET; I chose James and the Giant Peach since I could be a bit more healthy than I intended with Willy Wonka. I'll save Willy Wonka for when he could enjoy a everlasting gobstopper or candy ... everything.

For the main section of our lunch container I chose to recreate an image from the book. In this image the giant peach is being carried by a huge flock of seagulls (queue music in my head)

I wanted to include at least one of James friends and chose the ladybug mainly because she fit and I could include some of the chocolate I short changed him out of.

The last compartment was reserved for an actual giant peach and the book title. I am very proud of this lunch; I think it turned out really well.

Left: Bird Scene

Peach- a breaded chicken patty cut into a peach shape by hand
Leaf-  provolone cheese leaf painted with food coloring
Strings-  string cheese pulled apart
Birds-  half Cheerios, I cut the actual Cheerios in half to create a "U" or "V" shaped bird.

Top right Ladybird/Ladybug:

Ladybug- one large radish cut into two pieces. I scored and removed part of the red outer skin with a paring knife and created divots where I wanted the black spots.

The black spots- are chocolate chipes that I stuck to the Radish by heating up my knife on the burner and warming the tip end of the chocolate chip and pressing it to the radish until cooled.

She sits on a bed of Cheerios to make her easier to see and get out of the compartment without knocking chocolate chips off.


Bottom left: The Giant Peach and book title

1/2 a Giant peach,
 tortilla book jacket with the book title written with a chopstick dipped into food coloring.

9.17.13 Yankee Doodle Lunch

9.17.13 National citizenship day

Yankee Doodle lunch- He stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni...

This morning I had one of those head scratching moments of how do I take what I have in the refrigerator and make it work with the theme? I had mac and cheese left over from the previous night and some fruit and cucumbers from the farmers market trip this past weekend.

Suddenly Stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni jumps into my brain and we're off... Yankee Doodle fits citizenship close enough ;)

Left section:

Yankee Doodle - Macaroni and cheese face
Cap- is a free handed baseball cap from a flour tortilla painted with blue food coloring and water
Feather - a provolone feather also painted with food coloring and food safe color pens for the black feather details. Yankee Doodle has a smile of bell pepper and marshmallow eyes (1 small marshmallow cut in 1/2); the background is a lettuce leaf and three banana stars.

Top Right: Frozen blueberries with banana stars. The blueberries will thaw by lunch and help keep the bananas cool.

Bottom Right: Red apple and cucumber slices to make the stripes.


Little S is getting molars in and about four teeth at the same time right now, so I tried to keep it to things he will normally eat. Today was a hard day all around with a case of the grumpies that lasted from when he woke up until he fell alseep.