Showing posts with label easy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label easy. Show all posts

Monday, April 15, 2013

Grilled Cheese Sandwich hearts in a muffin tin (#2)

grilled cheese sandwich hearts, apple with heart cut out
carrot hearts, yogurt with pink sugar sprinkles, red grapes

I also made this on National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day. It's the same ingredients as the other lunch that I posted today but packed in a slightly different way using a regular muffin tin.

Here are some items used to make this lunch:

      

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Grilled Cheese Sandwich Hearts - in a Muffin Tin Meal

heart shaped grilled cheese sandwiches, apple heart cutouts, 
carrot heart cutouts, yogurt with pink sprinkles, red grapes

This is another lunch that I made on National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day.  I haven't made a muffin tin meal in ages! Since we are at home for break I decided to revisit that fun way of serving lunch, plus it's the theme for Bento Blog Network this week - vote for me  ;) ;). I discovered that cutting a grilled cheese sandwich is pretty tricky. For this I used my flower shaped metal cutter to cut out the sandwich before grilling. Then I made 3 knife cuts to turn the flower into hearts. If you let the sandwich cool a bit it's much neater and cheese doesn't ooze out everywhere.

Here are some things that I used for this lunch:

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Friday, April 12, 2013

National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day - try grilled cheese on a stick!

Today is National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day! In fact, that's just one part of National Grilled Cheese sandwich Month. Who knew there was a whole month devoted to the love of Grilled Cheese Sandwiches? They are yummy. So today the girls and I all had grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch.

This is Amy's Lunch
grilled cheese on a stick. peanutbutter to go with her carrot hearts and apples
vanilla yogurt with pink sugar sprinkles

Amy is not really a cheese lover, except on pizza. I told her that a grilled cheese sandwich is sort of like the cheese melted on pizza without the sauce. She took a few bites but was not convinced. The rest of her lunch was made up of some of her favourites so she wasn't disappointed.  Don't you just love the heart long pick? I have seen lots of bloggers using them lately and I fell in love. I was so happy to receive a set that I had ordered from Bento USA yesterday that I just HAD to use one today. There are others in the set too. star, butterfly, and cute sayings like yum, so sweet, with <3.  

We are still at home for Spring Break so even though I used our Easy Lunch Boxes, this lunch was not packed and taken anywhere. If I was going to send it to school I would have used a lidded container for the yogurt so that it didn't make a mess. The peanut butter would have been fine and I would have still used the silicone cup.

You can find some of the things that I used in this lunch here:
Food Decorating Pick Long Pix Stix Assorted Japanese Bento Accessories Ham Cheese Cookie Cutter Set of 3 Easylunchboxes bento lunch box pack of 4 Mini Dippers for Bento Lunch Box

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Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Happy Easter!!

The last Easter lunches of the season. These were from the last day of school before the term break - Thursday. I am so grateful for the break. We need a little time to slow down as a family. I'm sure we aren't the only ones.

Amy's lunch.
Easter bunny & egg sandwiches, mini chocolate in the plastic egg, boiled egg & honeydew melon

Rose's Lunch - same as Amy except fruit snacks in her plastic egg


Hope that you all had a great Easter!


 

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Happy Birthday Amy!

Last week my darling Amy turned seven. I can't BELIEVE it. It seems like my girls are just growing up way too fast!.

This is the lunch that I made her on her birthday.
boiled egg, carrots and cucumbers, Fruit Rainbow, fruit leather 7, sandwich kabobs with leftover roasted chicken

I thought that the sandwich kabobs might convince her to eat the lettuce. No such luck. However, we have made it several days without a ham sandwich so that's progress!

She had a great birthday and we had a little family party at home that night.
Here's a little then and now of my sweet Amy.





Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Colourful Lunch!

Here's a colourful lunch that I made for Rose last week. I just noticed that I hadn't posted it when I went to review my pictures from this morning.

Leftover roasted chicken on fish picks, broccoli, tomato & carrots (from our garden)
goldfish and fruit salad 

She ate almost everything, leaving just a few bites. I was doing so well staying away from the favourite ham sandwich of the picky one. Woke up late today with no plan and packed ham sandwiches. I had just enough time to snap a quick picture so I'll post those shortly.

Friday, March 22, 2013

Fast lunches - 3 lunches in 20 minutes!

I finally timed myself making lunch. It took me 20 minutes to make 3 lunches. I was kind of rushing - but only because we woke up at 8 am today!!  I am trying to send lunches other than sandwiches and here are taco lunches by request. everyone had the same -except Amy who wanted cilantro mixed in with her lettuce.

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.

Here is the start - timing with the ipad mini stopwatch. I LOVE this ipad mini case. Each of the girls has their own colour so it is easy to identify them at a glance, plus the stand is pretty awesome too - it works in both portrait and landscape. It's probably not the toughest as far as protection goes but they have all survived the usual wear and drops of young children and for that price it's fabulous.

And here is everything that I finished for the girls' lunches and the timer.

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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Bentos on the Bayou

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Leftovers for lunch - Pizza Biscuits

I made some delicious pizza biscuits for lunch on Sunday and the girls had them in their lunches on Monday.

 This was Rose's lunch
goldfish, pizza biscuit, marinara sauce for dipping
grape tomatoes & carrots from our garden, pineapple

Heidi's lunch
all of the same items except I swapped the tomatoes for celery.

Amy was at home feeling sick so I didn't pack her a lunch. She ate a few nibbles here and there at lunchtime.




Here's the recipe for the pizza biscuits, it's hardly an original idea and there are several versions around. These are very easy to make and my 3 year old was able to do much of the work. We actually didn't put pepperoni in each one as my the girls don't like pepperoni. So I marked each biscuit that was filled with pepperoni with 1/4 pepperoni slice on the top so that we could identify them when they were all baked.


Pizza Biscuits
makes 16

2 cans grands biscuits 
1 cup marinara sauce
16 slices of pepperoni (or 32 slices if you like extra pepperoni)
16 mozzarella bocconcini, each one cut into 3 slices
3 tbsp melted butter (or melted garlic butter - yum!)
1 tbsp Italian seasoning
1/4 cup grated Parmesan and Romano cheese

Preheat oven to 350F. Spray inside of 13x9 dish with non stick spray. Roll out the grands biscuits until flat.  Put one small spoon of sauce in the middle. Don't spread it around too much or it will be difficult to wrap up. Add a slice or two of pepperoni and 3 slices of fresh mozzarella from the bocconcini. Pull up all of the sides and pinch into a ball shape. Put seam side down into the prepared dish. Repeat until all of the pizza biscuits are filled and in the pan. They will just about fit, you'll have to squish that last one in there a bit but they all will cook evenly. Brush the tops with melted butter and then sprinkle with the Italian seasoning and the grated Parmesan & Romano cheese.  Bake for 15-20 minutes until  the biscuits are puffed and browned on top. Leave to cool in the pan. Warm the extra marinara sauce and use for dipping. Yum!

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Croissant sandwich for lunch

An easy lunch for Rose on a busy morning -- Mom woke up late! Can we still blame daylight savings? Or should I just fess up and say that I was up late watching The Mentalist on my ipad the night before. Oops!.

mini blueberry muffins, 2 fruit skewers, 
carrots and grape tomatoes
croissant sandwich - ham, cheese & lettuce

If I could take this lunch back I would totally put a cute pick in her sandwich. Oh well. She still loved it. She told me that she wants her sandwiches "like Daddy now, with lettuce and stuff." Do you ever pack tomatoes in a packed sandwich? I don't like tomatoes very much and I assume that they would make the bread soggy. Any tips? Do you pack the tomato slices on their own and then put them in the sandwich at lunchtime? Or just forgo tomatoes for packed sandwiches all together?

PS - Have you noticed that we had bought a nice batch of croissants? They were fresh and delicious :)

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Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Lunch for me!

This is actually from last week. I had to go out on and lend someone a hand so I brought my own lunch along :)

Cream cheese and sugar free strawberry jam croissant, No bake energy bites
carrots, grapes, pineapple & a strawberry

It was delicious :)

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Monday, March 18, 2013

Simple vegetarian lunch

We had some really great croissants last week. This lunch was from last Thursday. 
I made this easy vegetarian lunch for Amy.
a few pistachios, fruit skewer, peanut butter & carrots sticks 
mini blueberry muffin and a croissant strawberry jam sandwich

I am really trying to improve the variety of the "entree" part in the girls lunches. Amy specifically - she is such a creature of habit and so picky. I am trying to get her off her ham sandwich kick. It's all she ever wants! As soon as she saw this lunch she asked- are we out of ham and bread? Yup - I lied. 

I've signed up for the Momables lunch menu service and I'll see if I can convince her to try some new lunch choices. The service gives you 5 days of lunch menus with recipes, shopping list and photos during the school year. The menus that are sent during school holidays are different but I have not yet experienced those first hand. 

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BentoForKidlet   Following In My Shoes Bento Lunches

Sunday, March 10, 2013

The Luck O' the Irish

St Patrick's Day is coming up so I made a fun Irish themed lunch for Rose last week.
lucky clover sandwich, carrots, grape tomatoes, celery
grapes, blueberries, apples

She ate almost everything and came home wearing the leprechaun ring! Funny girl.

If you want to check out some other fun Irish/St Patrick's day themed lunches click here!

St Patricks Day Theme Food - Fun Bento Lunch

Thursday, February 28, 2013

Simple Seuss Lunch

This was a very simple lunch that I made for a very cranky Rose this morning! She had a complete meltdown because she wanted to wear the same (still unwashed) skirt from yesterday. Eventually she was convinced to put on another skirt and I whipped up this lunch in no time flat. She yelled the whole way out to the car but had miraculously recovered from her trauma of not wearing her first choice skirt by the time she arrived at school. It should be called the feisty fours! At least in our house.


Rose's The Cat In The Hat Lunch
Laminated Thing 1 and Thing 2 picture topping a bologna sandwich, goldfish, and apples


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CuteZCute cutter

What a fun new sandwich cutter! I have used this a couple of times now but I don't think that I have shared any photos before. The cutter set actually makes several different sandwiches - frog and bear pictured and cat & pig not pictured. There is the option of either stamping out or cutting out the face making for endless possibilities and not just sandwiches. 

Heidi's lunch - not travelling anywhere, just sitting in the fridge until she comes home at lunchtime.
Christmas Crack snack mix (recipe) , strawberries, veggies and a froggy sandwich
I know she'll want some ranch dip and I'll put it in the veggie cup when she asks.


Rose & Amy had very similar lunch items - neither one wanted the snack mix so just fruit and veggies for them
For Rose: Bear sandwich, hummus dip for her celery, tomatoes, cucumbers and carrot coins, strawberries

The carrots and tomatoes are from our garden. Hopefully, we'll have some strawberries soon. They are coming a few at a time right now and the little garden harvesting girls seem to keep eating them before any make it inside! Same for the green beans and snap peas.  Ah well - least they are eating their veggies.

For Amy: cucumbers, carrots, celery, strawberries and a froggy sandwich


Recently I received my order from All Things For Sale with lots of fun goodies inside. Hopefully it will give me a little inspiration as I feel that the creative juices have not really been flowing lately. Do you ever get in those kinds of ruts? Probably I need to go through and tidy up my bento accessories storage area. That usually helps me get back in the swing of things. You know, kind of like how little children clean their rooms - 10% cleaning and 90% playing with stuff they just found! haha.


These are some items that I used in these lunches today.

CuteZcute Bento Sandwich Cutter and Pastry Stamp Kit Japanese Bento Food Pick Cute Rabbit Frog Monkey Bear Pig Easylunchboxes bento lunch box pack of 4
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