Today's lunch brought to you by the letter E

This week's preschool letter is E. Not many E foods out there except eggs and I just wasn't feeling an all egg lunch. So, I decided that E would stand for eclectic cause these lunches are kind of a mish mosh of several different things we had around the house this weekend. We had some leftover sticky rice, some blue cheese and pecan dip, some granola bars...none of it really goes together but we're gonna make it work. E is for Eclectic, remember?

Little chic's lunch

Rice balls with nori "E"s on a bed of carrots, Grape and blue cheese salad, Granola bar, snack mix with popcorn, puffed corn and chocolate Cheerios.

Big chic's lunch

Celery sticks, Granola bars, Grape and blue cheese salad, Ham and cheese sushi

I started out making "sushi" with ham, cheese, spinach, and carrots. Big chic loved it but Little chic wanted me to make hers into rice balls, so the ham and cheese and veggies are on the inside.


After a party this weekend, we had some leftover blue cheese and pecan dip. I mixed it with some halved grapes to make one of the hubs favorite salads. I was making it for his lunch, but the chics wanted to taste it and then insisted it go into their lunches as well.




The granola bars are the beloved Smitten Kitchen Thick and Chewy Granola Bars. So yummy!

"O" yeah!!

Sometimes I find myself struggling to come up with a new idea for the chic's lunches, and we all know that the little chic has seriously high expectations for her lunches this year. My lack of creativity and her demand for pizazz is a recipe for disaster. In the past, on a day where I'm just not feelin' it, I can tell big chic to buy her lunch in the dining hall. But, preschool has no dining hall to turn to in moments of weakness. Needless to say, I've been a little worried about disappointing her with the uninspired lunch. So imagine my delight when she comes home last week with a calendar listing all of the themes for the month. It's like the lunches can just plan themselves! WOOHOO! This week the theme is "O is for Ocean". She had already asked for this salad in her lunch so I decided to focus on the "O" rather than the "Ocean".

Spinach salad with apple O's and pistachiOs with pistachiO dressing, O sandwich with turkey and cheese, Carrot chips, Cherry fruit leather.

Big chic is buying her lunch tomorrow so little chic got to pick whichever containers she wanted to take and she chose the blue with the big container.

The salad is another Aarti Party recipe called The Ugly Duckling Salad. Little chic devoured it and asked if she could take it in her lunch this week. Aarti is my new favorite for finding new recipes. We've made almost all of her recipes so far, and we have loved every one of them. Nothing has even been mediocre, like "meh it was okay". It has all been so good, we are fighting over the little bits left in the bowl or pan. Seriously yummy! Tonight we are making her tumeric rubbed shrimp stuffed with cilantro and garlic with her apple lime peanut slaw and the whole family is excited about another Aarti menu!

Beet and Orange Salad

This is the lunch that big chic was supposed to take earlier in the week (before the awesome Sloppy Bombay Joes). We've had our back and forth with beets. Big chic loves them, then hates them, then loves them again. One thing she always loves, though, is goat cheese. So, when I made beet and orange salad (with goat cheese) with our dinner last weekend, she loved beets again. She asked me to pack this salad for her lunch this week.

Beet and orange salad with orange vinaigrette, Plum, Carrots with red pepper heart

Baked Lemon Pasta

Yesterday, I came across a recipe that I had never seen before. I thought that I knew all of Pioneer Woman's recipes, but I was mistaken. I was trying to find a recipe that I could add a random 1/2 pound of sea scallops left in the freezer. Some sort of pasta seemed like a good option and I thought that Pioneer Woman had a scampi recipe. Well, it turns out that she didn't have a scampi recipe, but she did have a recipe for Baked Lemon Pasta. Lemon...scallops...pasta...sounded like a winner to me! I've gotten pretty fast at making homemade pasta so I made a batch of fettuccine to go with the sauce. Her recipe doesn't use scallops (or any other meat) but I thought it would be a good pairing. I seared the scallops and then quartered them but I didn't add them until I baked the pasta (I had a sneaking suspicion that the big chic would want to take it in her lunch and didn't want her to worry about having a stinky seafood lunch!) Although the recipe sounds a little weird (sour cream?), it was really good...kinda like a lemony fettuccine alfredo. It was so popular with the chics and the hubs that we only had about 1/2 cup leftover! Just enough for big chic's lunch...

Lemon pasta, Watermelon, Cookie, Caesar salad

We are currently overhauling the chics' playroom and went to Ikea this weekend to get some storage ideas. We always leave Ikea not with boxes of furniture, but with bags of food. These cookies are from our last visit. They're called Kakor Chokladflarn. They're like the Swedish version of a Peppridge Farm Brussels cookie. But better...much, MUCH better!

Big chic gets to buy her lunch for the rest of the week. Because I don't want to leave a balance in her lunch account over the summer, I figured out that she needs to buy lunch two times a week for the next three weeks to use up the balance on her lunch account. After looking at the lunch calendar, she chose Thursday and Friday of this week. So I'm off of lunch duty for the week! Everyone enjoy your weekend!

Salad and Ricotta Stuffed Peppers

It seems like sometime around Winter Break the big chic's lunch turned away from the "cute" and towards the leftovers. Even when I try to send a decorated lunch, she ends up asking if she can take "some of this" while we're sitting at the dinner table. We are very lucky that she is able to heat things in the microwave in the dining hall. Otherwise, we'd probably be a lot more limited with the leftovers. Tonight's dinner was Italian salad with ricotta stuffed mini peppers.

Italian salad, red grapes, ricotta stuffed mini peppers

The mini peppers recipe came from my new Giada cookbook (it's also on Food Network) and the salad is the Olive Garden copycat salad dressing with banana peppers, Parmesan, and black olives. (Big chic LOVES banana peppers!)

The Proud Mom Lunch

I let the big chic make this lunch. I didn't give her any guidance or suggestions like I normally would. I just let her go and gave her free reign of the kitchen to see what she came up with. She even picked which lunchbox she'd use. I gotta say, I'm pretty proud of her!

Spinach salad with chicken, Salad dressing and Babybel cheese, Strawberries on sugar free Hershey's syrup with Cool Whip.

Taco Salad Tuesday

Somehow I forgot to post yesterday's lunch?? The chic took a taco salad and some dark chocolate cookies that the hubs added to the Costco cart this weekend.


This salad was made up of all the leftover chicken taco ingredients from dinner the night before - chicken, lettuce, cheese, red peppers, tomatoes, etc...The dressing was sour cream that I thinned with milk. She loves sour cream!

A "Frosty" Lunch

Okay okay, so he doesn't have a corncob pipe or a button nose, but I think he's pretty cute.

Dry roasted peas, Carrot sticks, Balsamic vinegar and olive oil, Caprese salad (tomatoes and basil are under the mozzarella) snowman, Yogurt covered pretzels, Strawberries with marshmallow skewer

Not Quite Goat Cheese Salad

Tomorrow's lunch is a bit of leftovers...

Cranberry pecan salad with honey "goat cheese" dressing, Panko crusted chicken drumstick, Cherry yogurt pretzels, Powerball

I started off with all intentions of making a salad tonight with a honey goat cheese dressing. I even went today and bought more spring mix. But when I came home and started scooping ingredients in the Magic Bullet (which is a blender, btw), I found that my goat cheese smelled a bit off. I'm a little freaky about the whole spoiled food thing. If there's a date on it, by golly it's goin in the trash that day. So, although the goat cheese said it didn't expire until December, I chunked it. I had to come up with a solution quick since almost all the other dressing ingredients were in the Magic Bullet and I wasn't wasting 2 tablespoons of very expensive wild honey that I had already measured out. So, I decided to substitute sour cream since it is similarly tangy. I measured it out, turned the blender on, and crossed my fingers. Although it wasn't as thick and creamy as goat cheese would have made it, the sour cream was a great "in a pinch" substitute.

We came across a sale on organic free range chicken drumsticks last weekend. I usually don't buy drumsticks, but I couldn't tell you why. The chics really loved them. I rolled them in a bit of a mustard concoction and breaded them with panko bread crumbs. Then I baked them on a rack so the whole coating would get crispy. They turned out really well. The little chic even ate two of them.

And to continue yesterday's camera tirade...my cracker submission got rejected on Foodgawker (as usual) due to shadowing. I thought it was a great picture, but what do I know? But it DID get published on Tastespotting! My dad is letting me keep the camera till the weekend so there will be plenty more gratuitous photos I'm sure! Just look at the pecans...oooooh...close up...

"Fast Food"

Costco finally restocked their Coleman hot dogs and my chics are happy that there are once again hot dogs in the house. If you've read my blog for a while, you probably already know of my distaste for hot dogs, but the chics dig em - as all kids do, so every once in a while, I gotta give in to popular vote.

Hot dog coins with carrot spears and ketchup for dipping, Sweet potato fries,Frozen blueberries, Powerball, Caesar Salad.

Coleman hot dogs are all natural - no hormones, antibiotics, nitrates, fillers, msg, or any other freaky hot dog ingredients - just beef. So, as far as hot dogs go, you can't get much better. I did see some grass-fed beef hot dogs one day, but they were $7 for 6 hot dogs and I gotta draw the line somewhere! (Okay, so really, the hubs drew the line after I begged him to get them and described all sorts of horrible things that could happen to our children if we fed them "other" hot dogs. He was unmoved, holding firmly to his wallet. Fun Hater!)

Super Sized Chicken Salad

I think the chic must be going through a growth spurt. Her lunchbox has been coming home the past few days completely empty and she's famished by the time we get home. She told me this weekend that she wanted me to pack her more food in her lunchbox. It's kinda funny because I thought that maybe I was packing her too much food. Little did I know that I've been starving her! So, now I'm super-sizing her portions and we'll see how much of it comes home.

We've had a crazy weekend, and I have not been feeling great today (just a little cold) so the last thing I wanted to do was make the chic's lunch for tomorrow. BUT there's no rest for the weary, as they say, and especially for moms, so I used my afternoon burst of energy to whip out a lunch as fast as I could. Good thing I had been to the grocery store the day before so I had lots of options to facilitate speedy lunch packing. I was really glad that I had grabbed a rotisserie chicken. Personally, I love the availability of rotisserie chickens. They make it really easy to whip up things like chicken salad without spending so much time prepping the chicken. So, a whole lunch made and I didn't even bust out the food cutters. It may not be the prettiest lunch, but it'll do the job.

Veggies (sweet peppers, sugar snap peas, red and yellow cherry tomatoes, carrots, banana peppers), Cranberry Pecan Chicken Salad, Mutli-grain Wasa, Fruit Bites, Cottage Cheese and Strawberries.

New Stuff

I love new stuff. Who doesn't, right? So, the chic's lunch for tomorrow is all about me getting to use some of my new bento accessories.

Shelled Edamame in a NEW Silicone Muffin Cup, a Boiled Egg molded into a bear by my NEW Rice Mold, Hello Panda Cookies from my NEW family sized box, Homemade Honey Oat Flaxseed Bread made from a NEW recipe from my friend Aimee, and Waldorf Salad (okay, so nothing's new in that...but it's still good)

This morning, I finally found the silicone muffin cups I've been looking for! I really didn't need a dozen of them, but I guess there are actually people that use these for cupcakes and they actually need a dozen. Who knew? Technically I didn't have to use a muffin cup for the edamame, but I really wanted to!

I also used my rice mold to make a bear boiled egg. I think it turned out pretty good except for the small tear in it's cheek. You have to peel the things while they're hot, and although I've got pretty heat resistant hands from all the cooking I do, I'm not perfect. Hey, my chic has a dimple so we'll call it a dimpled bear!


The bread is my friend Aimee's recipe. I call her the Earth Mother cause if there is anything you need to know about holistic, organic, natural anything, she's the one to go to. She even inspired me to start making my own yogurt. So she gave me a recipe last week for Honey Oat Flaxseed bread and everyone in my house devoured it. The chic is getting the last of it in her lunch.

The waldorf salad is super easy. You don't even have to measure anything. Just eyeball it according to your tastes. It's apples, carrots, celery, dried cranberries, walnuts, oj, and a bit of mayo. It's really good, and I usually always have the stuff to make it.

The last item in her lunch is gonna win me some big BIG brownie points! Hello Panda cookies are these little cookies filled with chocolate frosting-ish filling. I LOVE LOVE LOVE Hello Panda cookies and can usually only find them in individual bags at boba tea places. When we were at the Asian market last week, I found a family sized box for the same price that I pay for a small bag. I hid them, I mean put them, on the top shelf of the pantry hoping, I mean thinking, no one would see them. Well, my oldest busted me and has been begging for them. She loves em too. So when she opens her lunch tomorrow, she is gonna be thrilled! Maybe I can convince her to clean the playroom now?