Day 201

Day 201 - Today for lunch I gave D macaroni and cheese ravioli tossed with olive oil and chopped fresh tomatoes.  I put it in her thermos so it would stay hot for her so there is no picture of that.  Her snack is clementines and lady fingers with cookie dough dip.

Day 200 Seriously?

I can't believe I am posting my 200th lunch!  I feel like I just started yesterday!

Day 200 - I should have planned ahead and done something special.  Very poor planning on my part...I desperately need to go to the grocery store!  Today D has some grilled chicken with mango, pineapple and peaches, honey mustard, grape tomatoes, homemade vanilla yogurt with fruit salad on top.

Day 199

Day 199 - Yesterday when D came home from school I cleaned out her lunch box and was surprised to see that she had not eaten her sandwich.  She only ate one meatball out of it.  I said "D, did you not like your lunch today?"  Her reply, "Oh Mommy can you please, please make me something quick to eat this week?  I am a table washer and need to eat quickly.  I love meatballs but just didn't have the time!"  LOL  Her school is K-3rd grade.  Each grade has their own lunch period so when the first group finishes lunch they wash the tables for the second group and so on until the last lunch when the cafeteria employees do the clean up.  She is very excited that her turn has finally come around to be a table washer!  So I couldn't really think of any "quick food" last night.  I finally settled on breakfast for lunch...if nothing else it was quick for me to make!  LOL  She has mini pancakes with cream cheese and raspberry jam, fruit salad, the pancake cut outs with a strawberry, chicken/apple sausage hearts on picks with extra raspberry  jam in the monkey cup.  The blue bottle has a little maple syrup.

I tried something new...

I have been thinking about what I am going to do for D's lunch as far as an Easter theme goes.  I was looking around at what I have and I came across 2 unused rubber stamps.  I'm sure I got them at Michael's or Jo-ann's.  I wondered if colored them with my food safe markers would they work well for stamping on food.  I tried american cheese and a flour tortilla.  The answer is yes and no.  I found that I had to dip the marker tips in water, put the cover back on and let them "rest" tip down in a cup for a few minutes in order for them to be wet enough to remain wet on the stamp while I colored the whole thing.  I also learned that they work much better on cheese than they did on the tortilla.  However on the tortilla when I used a darker color as the outline I was able to trace over it and color it in on the tortilla.  I do not have the best food markers.  The ones I have are Wilton brand and they do not work well on soft surfaces.

I think it worked great on the cheese!

I also found that the more detailed it was the more difficult it was to get a good print.

The tortilla proved to be more difficult.



Day 198

Day 198 - I had gotten some new fondant cutters the other day.  They say "Funny Flower" but to me they look more like funny stars!  D has a meatball sub with cheese/nori stars and some flat leaf parsley.  See I really was trying to go with flower, but I just couldn't seem to make it work so stars they are!  LOL She also has granola balls, fruit salad, cucumber slices and cherry tomatoes on Hello Kitty picks.

Day 197

Day 197 - For lunch today D has "Scoop your own taco".  D hates taco shells.  It makes her crazy when they crack/break and the stuff falls out.  So I took some shredded chicken, mixed it with some mild salsa and topped it with some pea shoots, cheese and a turkey star.  She has corn chip scoops for dipping, yogurt with 2 blueberry fruit leather butterflies, grapes and strawberry hearts.

Day 196

Day 196 - D has another lunchable.  I used a medium flower cutter to cut out some bread instead of using crackers today.  Then she has "Cotton Tails" white cheddar cheese puffs, clementine and an apple with Biscoff for dipping.

I like to make my own lunchables because then I can control the quality of the ingredients.  I can choose to use nitrate/nitrite free lunch meat or low sodium lunch meat.  I can make sure the crackers I use don't contain HFCS.  I can use homemade breads.