Day 346

Day 346 - DIY Lunchable today.  Make your own pizza!  This is one of D's favorites.  She has a few pieces of naan, 2 mini dippers with cheese and sauce, a couple of cookies, tomato/mozzarella salad with a little pesto and watermelon and blueberries.

Day 345

Day 345 - It is such a dark rainy day here I couldn't find any light to take my picture!  For lunch today D has grilled cheese sticks, clementines, homemade yogurt and watermelon.  I found the recipe for the grilled cheese sticks on Pinterest.  D loves them!

Day 344

Day 344 - PB & Honey sandwiches today, cut with our Linzer cutter, triple berry Newtons and a clementine.  I filled the hearts with Wilton Cookie Icing.

Day 343

Day 343 - School vacation is over!! D spent the bulk of her vacation with her grandparents.  She had a great time!  We are back to the grind today though.  She has blueberry french toast sticks, Al Fresco chicken/blueberry sausage, watermelon and a mini dipper of syrup.

French Toast Sticks

I used the Archer Farms Blueberry bread that I had mentioned before. I cut the crust off and cut each piece into thirds.  I mixed some cream cheese (maybe 3oz) with 1 Tbs of sugar free vanilla syrup (for flavoring coffee).  I spread a thin layer of the cream cheese mixture onto the bread and made rectangle sandwiches.  I rolled those in a couple of beaten eggs, then I rolled them in crushed Kashi Blueberry Cluster Cereal.  I put them on a sprayed cookie sheet and baked them at 350 until they were golden brown.

Country Bob's All Purpose Sauce Review

 Thank you Lori for the use of your beautiful picture!!

I recently received some Country Bob's All Purpose Sauce for review.  I love it!  It's that simple!  I was introduced to it by my friend Lori.  She is a fellow Bento Blogger and she had done a review on her blog.  After reading her review I knew I HAD to try this stuff!  To me it kind of tastes like a cross between ketchup and steak sauce.  It has more flavor and "zip" than ketchup but isn't quite as strong as steak sauce.  Which really does make it "All purpose" in my opinion.   The first thing I did with it was put it in my meatballs!  I was trying to make a version of Mountain Meatballs.  Where the meatballs are in a chili sauce instead of tomato sauce.  Well, I decided to do this on the day of Hurricane Sandy.  Very, very, poor planning!  I got home from work a little bit early and went right to work on my meatballs.  The storm was just starting to pick up.  It had been raining most of the day but the winds had really just started.  I put all of my ingredients in the bowl (including a hefty dose of Country Bob's All Purpose Sauce) and rolled up my sleeves to start mixing when I heard a very loud crack and thud....and the lights went out!  So there I was with 3lbs of raw meat and no electricity in my fully electric house!  One of my neighbors' trees went down and took our electricity with it!  Thankfully no one was hurt and there was no property damage.  So since the storm had really just started...it wasn't too scary at this point I went out and started my gas grill.

I cooked the meatballs on the grill but there was to be no sauce!  LOL  So my family and I sat around the table in the dark eating meatballs dipped in Country Bob's All Purpose Sauce!  They were a hit!  My family really enjoyed them.  My kids raved about the sauce!  So  Country Bob's has earned it's place in our pantry!

 

Day 342

Day 342 - Happy Valentine's Day!!  While shopping the other day D picked out red and white striped butternut squash ravioli.  Isn't it beautiful?  After boiling it I pan fried it in a little butter to give it a bit of a brown butter flavor.  Once it had cooled a bit I cut one out with my heart cutter.  She also has grape tomato and fresh mozzarella kabobs, strawberry hearts and a some clementines.

Day 341

Day 341 - This one is probably an epic fail in the "healthy" department, but it gets high marks for fun!  D has 2 pb & honey "kiss" sandwiches.  I made one and D made the other...can you guess which is which?? LOL  She also has grape tomatoes and a raspberry cereal bar with red heart cut outs.  I actually just did the cut out with the small heart cutter and pushed the crust inside and filled the little dent in with Wilton Cookie Icing.

Day 340

Day 340 - Lots o' Love Lunch!  Today D has a ham sandwich that I cut out with the heart cutter.  I put the cheese on top and colored it with food coloring.  I cut her apple with the heart cutter and also her cookie.  She has string cheese on alphabet picks and cherry tomatoes with the "You're #1" pick.

Still No School

The little bit of red that you can see in the middle of this picture is the hood of a Ford Taurus...just to give you an idea of how much snow we got!

Many secondary roads in town still have not been cleared so the kids will still be home today.

No School Today

We are preparing for 'Blizzard Nemo' or whatever it is called.  We are expecting 24 to 30 inches of snow.  They cancelled school before the first flake even fell.  So we are all hunkered down for a nice long weekend!  I hope that all of you in the storm's path are safe.

Day 339

Day 339 - More leftovers!  D has a ranch chicken/bacon sub with a cheese heart, orange bell peppers, homemade strawberry yogurt and some Kashi Mountain Medley granola.

Day 338

Day 338 - DIY pizza Lunchable.  D has homemade strawberry yogurt, shredded chicken, naan cut outs, an Easylunchbox Mini Dipper full of sauce, Hello Kitty with shredded cheese and some s'more Goldfish.

Day 337

Day 337 - More leftovers today!  We had grilled chicken the other night which has now turned into chicken salad! She also has pita chips, strawberries and s/f vanilla pudding with Oreo crumbs.

Day 336

Day 336 - Super Bowl leftovers!!  I'll be honest.  My team wasn't in the Super Bowl so I didn't even watch a minute of the game. That doesn't mean that we couldn't have party food!!  We made our party foods and watched Grizzly Mountain!  I always loved watching Grizzly Adams when I was a kid.  It was fun to share that with D.  Anyway, her lunch is a slice of Pressed Italian Sub, some cheddar cubes, a little cookies n' cream parfait, bell pepper poppers (D doesn't like spicy foods so when I make jalapeno poppers I make a few with mini bell peppers for her) and BLT cups. 

BLT Cups
I slice the top off of a cherry tomato and clean out the inside.  I put in a small dollop of mayonnaise and stuff it with 1/4 slice of cooked bacon and a torn off piece of lettuce leaf.

Jalapeno/Bell Pepper Poppers
Slice the pepper in half the long way for the  bell pepper remove all the seeds and ribs, for the jalapeno peppers remove as many or as few of the seeds as you want...if you remove them all they won't be spicy.  Then fill the pepper 1/2 with cream cheese and wrap in 1/2 slice of raw bacon.  I bake mine on a rack at 350 until the bacon is crisp.

Pressed Italian Sub (made the night before)
I grabbed a loaf of roasted garlic Italian bread and sliced it in half the long way.  I dressed both halves with hoagie dressing.  Then I layered on meats and cheese.  I used turkey, ham, salami, bologna and provolone.  I put the top of the bread on and wrapped it tightly with plastic wrap.  I put it on a cutting board and put it in the fridge with a cast iron pan with 2 (14oz) cans of tomatoes inside, on top of it.

Parfait
I was making Cookies N' Cream cupcakes for my co-workers.  They are filled cupcakes so I had a bunch of  cupcakes "plugs" leftover.  I layered these leftover pieces of cake with some of the leftover cupcake filling.  The filling was 8oz white chocolate, 8oz heavy cream and 1/4 c Oreo cookie crumbs.  Pour boiling cream over the white chocolate and let it sit for 2 minutes.  Stir the cream and chocolate together until it is all melted and smooth.  Let it cool..when it's firmed up start whipping it with an electric mixer.  It will be the consistency of mousse.  Then fold in the cookie crumbs.

Day 335

Day 335 - Today is a simple little lunch.  Pb & honey sandwiches.  The bread I had was quite large so I was able to get Hello Kitty and two flowers out of one sandwich.  I cut out a piece of American cheese with the Hello Kitty cutter as well and colored it with food safe markers.  She also has some orange grape tomatoes, homemade chocolate yogurt topped with chocolate sunflower seeds and an apple that she "cut" with a melon baller.  This is all packed into her beautiful new Brights EasyLunchboxes!