Food, Family, Fun.

Amy's Planetbox lunchbox, has carrot sticks and mozzarella cheese sticks, mandarin oranges and purple grapes, cantaloupe and strawberries and a flower shaped ham sandwich.

Rose has pretty much the same! I like when that happens. In the morning while the girls are getting ready and I am packing lunch they are often underfoot. I always like to give them some choice about what goes in their lunch. Usually they just speak up and say that they don't want this and they want something else instead. Rose chose a turkey sandwich, no cheese sticks, extra carrots and a tomato.

These lunches were super fast to make - so I'm sharing on:

red grapes, clementine, blueberries

carrot sticks, grape tomato & broccoli floret

ranch dip, mini pig cup holds sunflower seeds

ham sandwich & a Gingerman cookie

I had forgotten to make Heidi's lunch in the morning. It was just one of those days and I got sidetracked. I made lunches for Amy & Rose who were taking theirs to school, and didn't get back to make a third. As soon as Heidi came home from school her usual - "What's for lunch?" routine started and I had to move quickly. The whole thing took under 6 minutes. The longest time was peeling the clementine and peeling the carrot. All of the rest was pretty speedy to put together. If I had made this in the morning I would have put the lid on the ranch dip cup, since I was making it to eat right then, I left it as is. I often just put dip right in there with the carrots at lunch time if she asks, but I was hoping that she would try the broccoli and I wanted her to choose about dip or no dip. Well she didn't touch the broccoli or the tomato and also left a few blueberries. Otherwise it was a successful lunch, packed really quickly with a hungry 3 year old biting at the ankles. And yes - she ate the cookie first. Can't blame her -I would have too!

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I packed this lunch for my husband to take to work. I almost never pack lunch the night before but I had just the right amount of leftovers from dinner tonight so why not pack it all ready for lunch tomorrow? Plus I was a little bit excited to use my new jumbo silicone cup that came in my order today from Bento USA. It actually would fit in there a bit neater if I wasn't trying to cram two chicken drumsticks next to it :)

My husband's EasyLunchBox has - 2 baked BBQ chicken drumsticks, kiwi, fettuccine with frozen mixed veg, and a salad with - mixed greens including spinach, radishes, grape tomato, carrot matchsticks, apple pieces, cucumber and celery. The little panda container holds Italian dressing. I purposely put the kiwi in that little silicone cup so that he can easily remove it and the salad and rest them on the lid of his easy lunch box while he warms the rest in the microwave. I didn't purposely choose pink though - just noticed that it was pink in fact. He won't mind; real men aren't afraid of pink.

Since this was made up of mostly all leftovers (not the kiwi) it took under 5 minutes to pack! I should try this more often.

Lunch for Amy: Ham sandwich, carrot sticks, assorted fruit - grapes, pineapple, strawberry (from our garden!) and honeydew melon

I had been trying to stay away from the continual ham sandwich lunch and have been mixing it up a bit in their lunchboxes lately. On Wednesday, I did not have a plan in mind, there were no decent leftovers in the fridge and as we were running late I caved in and went back to their favourite sandwich. Just yesterday, I got a new cookbook from Amazon. Cooking with Trader Joe's Cookbook - Easy Lunch Boxes. There are lots of interesting things to pack for lunch in there - and really you don't need to have a Trader Joe's nearby to use the ideas. I certainly don't have one near me! Hopefully Amy will see some things that she likes in the pictures and I can try some new lunch options.

The same lunch for Rose plus I added a few grape tomatoes

I realise that her sandwich looks little messier than Amy's but it's because I used the off cuts of ham after I cut out Amy's bunny and just tucked them into Rose's sandwich. No waste! This bunny is from my favourite cookie cutter stamp set. It's very fast to stamp the bread and it makes for an appealing end result. No peanut butter gluing of eyes, noses and whiskers. Saves 3 minutes at least!

Leftover taco meat, lettuce, taco shell, cheese & cantaloupe

I feel like I should have tucked some carrot sticks in there or something extra but I was having a hard time  getting everything to fit. I think I'll look up some other taco lunches and see how other people get them to fit nicely.  At the very last minute when I was packing up I added a granola bar to Rose's lunch. She doesn't take a morning snack as they have a classroom community snack. I was worried that it might not be enough food if she's hungrier at lunch time because she didn't like the morning snack. Amy already takes two snacks and rarely eats them both so I knew she would have extra in her lunch. Her snacks today were a boiled egg & some more cantaloupe, plus her favourite goldfish crackers. They both had little forks packed in their lunchboxes too.

I really needed to go shopping. We were out of almost all fruit. Including everyone in our family (4 kids, 2 adults) we ate an entire honeydew melon yesterday! Plus grapes, the last of the pineapple, the last of the mandarin oranges, and the only two ripe strawberries in the garden. The amount of fruit and veg that we go through as a family is staggering considering that the girls are still little. I can't imagine what it will be like when they are all older.

So that's 3 lunches, 2 drinks and 2 snacks in 20 minutes and 19.6 seconds. Heidi's lunch on the far left will stay in the fridge until she gets home at lunch time. The meat was a dinner leftover but the tacos were baked from the box this morning. Do you know what took me the most time this morning? Finding my Easylunchboxes mini dippers! They come in a package of 8 and somehow I can only find 3 cups and 2 lids! I sorted out almost all of my bento storage drawers on the weekend so here's hoping that the rest are in the bottom of the last two! Interruptions were a minimum today as I helped the girls get organised first and only stopped to give reminders about what they needed to do next - shoes & socks, brush your teeth, check that your pouches have everything you need for the day, choose your coats etc...

I think my usual, I woke up on time, lunch making duration is 25 -30 minutes to make all three. Also, since Heidi doesn't need hers to go out the door with her in the morning I sometimes spend a little extra time on hers when everyone has gone and the house is quiet. You know, if I'm in the mood to try something fancy :) At that point, I also tackle lunch for my husband if he's taking lunch and lunch for the baby if the afternoon will be busy.

Since I was wondering how I could do a better job of packing these lunches to fit more food I did a little inquiring with some other lunch blogger friends. Perhaps I should have assembled the tacos and then I would have had one spot extra for some extra veggies or using tortilla chips instead is also a nice idea like these lunches from Keeley McGuire


Here are some other taco and nacho lunches packed in EasyLunchboxes:
Keeley McGruire - Taco & Nachos lunches
More Than Your Average Mom - Mini Nachos
Lunches Fit For A Kid - Spaghetti tacos
Lunches Fit For A Kid - Nachos
Tiny Princess Lunch Box - Taco salads
Lunch with Eyeness 
Bentoriffic - Fiesta Bentos
Chaos and Confections - soft tacos in a Laptop Lunch

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