Day 33

Back to school today!!  M has mini deep dish meatball pizzas, sugar snap peas and carrots, "s'mores" it is graham crackers with pea-nutella and some mini marshmallows.  D has homemade yogurt with blueberries and honey.

D and A have fresh mozzarella pearls with pesto and a red pepper heart, chicken/portobella mushroom sausage, sugar snap peas with carrot and yellow pepper flowers.

Day 32

I may have mentioned here before that my kids are not big fans of cooked vegetables.  I decided to stop fighting it and just embrace it.  So now most nights I make a veggie platter/plate with some ranch dip made from greek yogurt.  I put this out while I make dinner and let my kids eat till their hearts are content.  That solves two issues for me.  One they are eating their veggies and two I'm not listening to the never ending whine of "is dinner ready?"  "when is it going to be dinner??"

D went to a birthday party yesterday that ended at 5:00pm.  So she was not real hungry for dinner.  Thus, the left over veggie plate for lunch today with ham, cheese and pineapple kabobs!  I use wooden coffee stirrers as the kabob sticks.  They are less dangerous than the typical skewer and are also school lunch friendly.

Day 31

I'm a little bit behind.  My husband was off of work on Friday, today and tomorrow, so we have been busy.  The kids are also on vacation from school this week.  So this was M's lunch and D's snack on Friday.  I may be able to get back to posting lunches on Wednesday.

M has 2 snowflake rolls, veggie straws and grapes to go with her BBQ pulled pork.  D made her own "trail mix" it is cinnamon gold fish, fruit snacks and a  couple of mini marshmallows.

Day 30

M has cucumbers, steak sandwich and beet cupcakes.  D has 3 mini pancakes with strawberry butter, fruit leather face that she decorated with frosting left over from decorating her Daddy's birthday cake.

For lunch we have chicken/cheese/spinach quesadillas and apples with raisins.

Day 29

M has bbq chicken quesadilla, asparagus, carrots and green beans.  In the black bag is a granola/protein bar and a black bean brownie.  D has yogurt with strawberries and some Kashi Go Lean Crunch.

D and A are having Asian Chicken salad pockets, yogurt and strawberries and string cheese.

Day 28

Today everyone is having breakfast for lunch.  I have been making my waffles with this recipe. They are nice and crisp on the outside and so light and fluffy on the inside.  My girls love them too!  And they are pink because we still have some beet puree to use up.  I added 1/4 c puree to the recipe.  M also has Al Fresco Sweet Apple chicken sausage, 2 heart shortbread cookies, carrots, cucumbers, broccoli and ranch dip.  The round container is her syrup.  D didn't eat her snack yesterday because they had a class party so she is bringing it back to school today.

D and A have pink waffles with strawberries and cream, same apple chicken sausages (breakfast link size) and a clementine.

Day 27

Happy Valentine's Day! 

In honor of Valentine's Day my grocery store was selling heart shaped burgers this weekend.

So all the girls are having heart shaped burgers for lunch today.  M has her burgers with snowflake rolls, cheddar cheese slices, tomato hearts, pickle slices, homemade granola bar, grapes and strawberry filled shortbread cookies. D's snack is the same granola bar and shortbread cookies.

D and A have burgers, tomato heart, carrot sticks and ranch dip.
The granola bars are kind of a mish mash of recipes.  My kids love Nutella.  Who wouldn't?  I can't send it to school with D because she is in a nut free class room.  I had seen a few recipes for homemade nuttella, peanut- nutella and almond- nutella.  Well I tried making soy nut- nutella.  It's pretty good, the kids liked it....it's no Nutella brand nutella, but it's still pretty good.  Then, many of the homemade granola bar recipes you see on the web contain peanutbutter again...useless to me at this point.  So after I made the soy nutella I decided to use some of it to make granola bars.   This version is more like a protein bar.  I used Kashi Go Lean Crisp instead of rolled oats then with the addition of soy butter it's pretty protein packed!

Soy Nutella
I used half of a 18 oz jar Soy Butter
1/2 C unsweetened cocoa powder (I used ghiradelli 60%)
1 C confectioners sugar
flavorless oil to thin (I used about 1 1/2 tsp grape seed oil)

I put it all in my food processor and whizzed it till it was all smooth.  I transferred to a mason jar and store it in my fridge.

Granola bars
3 C Kashi Go Lean Crisp (large chunks broken up)
1/2 c wheat germ
1/4 c sesame seeds
3 T agave syrup
3/4 C soy nutella

In a sauce pan heat agave syrup and soy nutella until combined and smooth.  Mix all dry ingredients in a large bowl.  Add in nutella mixture and stir until all combined.  Press mixture into a greased 8x8 inch pan and bake in a preheated 350 oven for 20 minutes.  Cut into bars while still warm, but leave in pan to cool completely.