Four Leaf Clover Inspired Lunch

St. Patrick's Day is right around the corner. Although admittedly a holiday I have protested in my adult years due to my personal beliefs; I now have a child who I do not want to be pinched and whom I want to grow up to make his own decisions about what holidays to celebrate and which to pass on. We have decorated around the house, and today have our first St Patrick's Day inspired lunch.

Main: Taco cheese quesadilla cut into a four leaf clover. I used two mini flour tortillas which I cooked with Colby jack cheese (M's favorite) and a sprinkle of taco seasoning until melted and glued together. I then used a heart cookie cutter to cut four crinkle edge hearts and trimmed a scrap edge to form the steam of our four heart leaf clover. Sides: diced summer sausage, baby carrots, and diced green apple. I refrained from coloring anything artificially in this lunch because of all the food coloring he has already had this week with the Dr. Suess and Marti Gras lunches.

Finger food inspired lunch

This week for some reason I am just short on ideas and creativity for his lunches. Normally I have 19 ideas and I am ready to go, or I've done the research and sometimes I have drawn what I want the lunch to look like so I can lay a my drawing down to help me free hand cut something. This week I don't know if it is because of M's schedule change and now we're a hour earlier than we have been for more than a month or just wishing it would finally stop snowing that's got my creativity in a funk.

Finger Food Inspired Lunch:

Main: two dino nuggets served at lunch time with Ranch dressing on the side Little S has learned he loves ranch dressing and dipping. (Usually its best with his fingers but he enjoyed it with nuggets) he also has a kale and green apple rice bar - made with organic brown rice, kale and apple pieces. Sides: a box of yogurt covered raisins, organic plantain chips, organic carrot apple bites, and BBQ potato chips (to balance out all the organic good for you food)

Fat Tuesday Marti Gras Inspired Lunch

Today is Fat Tuesday or Marti Gras in French. This refers to the practice of eating richer, fatty foods and partying before Ash Wednesday and Lent when many religions required fasting and a period of religious obligations associated with the penitential season of Lent. Popular practices on this day include wearing masks and costumes, overturning social conventions, dancing, sports competitions, parades and generally a party atmosphere. Today little S has a Marti Gras inspired lunch.

Main: Star shaped noodles colored during the cooking process into the three main Marti Gras colors, Purple, Gold and Green. The package of noodles was separated into three pots of boiling water each of which had 10 drops of food coloring added and cooked following the package directions. I then rinsed each batch of pasta and kept it separated in three bowls. I added a tbs of butter to each bowl of hot pasta and then spooned each color of butter noodles into the main compartment. I then added Parmesan cheese to the top of the noodles. Using a single slice of Colby Jack cheese I free hand cut a mask shape. I then used the left over pieces from the mask cut and made strips to form the mask fringe. The pasta had cooled enough not to instantly melt the cheese mask by the time I was ready to add the mask to the pasta. Sides: I made confetti from dried cranberries, sun flower seeds and a mini package of M&M's. I then made "beads" by dicing a red apple into chunky beads.

Dr Suess's Birthday inspired lunch

March 2 is Dr. Suess's birthday which this year fell on Sunday. I do not make inspired meals on the weekends for little S because we are usually out and about and trying not to be home. I decided to celebrate the birthday the next day. Although admittedly I was a bit unprepared and not as inspired as I could have been. I'll do better next time.


Dr Suess inspired lunch

Main: Taco cheese quesadillas cut using an egg shaped cookie cutter with green yolk colored on using food safe markers (to make green eggs that are not fried eggs which Little S doesn't like) and a slice of ham. I did not color the ham green as I have found Little S only allows so much food coloring before he doesn't eat items. It's better for him not to not like to eat green meat anyway. Sides: Whole wheat cheese crackers, with a cat in the hat inspired skewer of dehydrated strawberries and pressed flat mini marshmallows. I pressed the mini marshmallows flat to ensure that the stripes looked correct for the hat and the one i used for the brim of the hat is just flattened a bit more than the others. He also had a cat in the hat fruit salad, of dehydrated strawberries (the parts I sliced off when making the red hat stripes) freeze dried banana and mini marshmallows.


After stepping back and looking at this lunch I vowed to do much better next time.

Balloon fun

Little S and I both received mylar balloons from M for Valentine's Day. (I'm allergic to Latex so these are the only kind of balloons we can have in the house). Finally after nearly two weeks of trying the cats managed to chew through the ribbon holding one of my balloons to my chair in the kitchen.

This happy accident lead to a lot of learning and fun for little S. We had been holding him up and letting him push his balloon since he got it; however he had never been able to hold a balloon. I handed him the now freed balloon ribbon and he laughed and tried to jump high enough to put it back where it goes.

I would bring him the balloon in another room and he would run back with it to the kitchen and jump to put it back. The pictures below are a little blurry because he is doing the jumping thing to get the balloon back to where it was supposed to be.

This was one of those.. I love how the world works in your eyes little man, (and I adore you in overalls)  mommy moments.

Alphabet Inspired Lunch Week F

This week we are celebrating the letter F and all the fun things mommy can think of that start with F. Some of these weeks are more challenging than I imagined when I started this.


Monday little S had left overs. It doesn't start with F but maybe we could consider left over's Fun? no.. um environmentally friendly? well that sort of works so we'll go with that.



Left overs:

Main: Mongolian left overs topping white rice - this is chicken, cabbage, egg, broccoli, green beans, and onion in a pineapple soy sort of sauce. sides: A Godiva chocolate covered strawberry (also a left over from when mommy spoiled the men) and diced cucumber and apples.



F= Flamingo and Flowers

Main: Pink Flamingo is a open faced ham sandwich cut with a flamingo cookie cutter and decorated with a candy eye. Sides: apple flowers cut from thick slices of apple using a flower cookie cutter I found in the Easter section. Sliced cucumber and yogurt covered raisins finish out the lunch.



F= Feet

Main: Two taco cheese quesadillas cut with a foot cookie cutter (just flip the cut piece to make the other foot) I used a  food color marker for the toe nail polish. Sides: A mango and peach fruit and veggie squeezie and buttered popcorn topped with a letter F cookie cutter.



F= Fish

Main: Mr. Fish the fish is a three slices of ham cut all at the same time with a fish cookie cutter. To make the fishes stripes I used the same cookie cutter on a slice of american cheese and then cut that cheese fish into strips using the different curved sides of the cookie cutter so the lines on the stripes would not be the same or too straight. I placed the stripes on like puzzle pieces where they went onto the ham fish and added a size appropriate candy eye. The seaweed and moss grassy bottom of his environment are all cut slices from a mini cucumber. I intentionally took the picture with the lid of the container under to give Mr. Fish blue water. Sides:  Fruit salad of diced kiwi and apple to look like fish food, and pretzel and stick mix because these are the hooks and worms the fishermen might use to try to catch Mr. Fish.




F= Frog

Main: I was going to use a new frog cookie cutter I have but noticed the pear and thought.. I wonder if I could make that into a frog instead. I sliced the sides off of the pear to make the back legs, a large piece for his body and the fourth side I took off and turned into his head. The pear happened to have a triangle mark on it so I used that to make his mouth and added two carrot disks and sliced dehydrated strawberries for his eyes. The two pieces for each eye are held in place by two toothpicks that I skewered through the head into the body so that the frog would remain in place until lunch. Little S is too small to remove these himself so I took them out prior to serving his lunch. The back feet are flow shapes cut using a veggie punch from a slice f the inside of the pear, and the front feet were cut from another slice of pear using a mini foot cutter. The feet would have been better in carrot to complete the tree frog look I just didn't have a carrot large enough on hand and thought cheese feet would get too soggy from all the cut fruit.  Sides: Buttered popcorn with the letter F magnet he earned at the end of his F week and chopped pizza from his dad's impromptu stop on his way home from work the night before.

Little S's first ride

He's been in a car, and taken an airplane ride but before today he had never been on a amusement ride or any mechanical ride.


While leaving a store we just happened into we found a Dumbo Ride and M surprised me by putting little S onto it and having him ride it twice. I don't know why it surprised me so much; whether it was the frivolous use of money, whether it was the spur of the moment act or whether it was the selfless act of letting his son do something fun while he watched. I was whole heartedly taken aback by this sweet gesture.

So here is little S riding Dumbo (Twice!!!)