Tuesday the 17th

It's Tuesday the 17th Psych-os!  So I baked some  (wait for it) ...
Boom... boom... boom... muffins!

Pineapple pear oatmeal muffins! Are you a fan of delicious flavour?
I'll share my secret ingredient... Don't tell the sproutlets, but I substitute fruit & veggie baby food puree for the oil in muffin recipes to add not only delicious flavour but a wee nutrition boost too  :)

Birdie's not a Psych fan (yet), being only 4 years old - but she can't read either, so the letters stuck in the muffin in her nibble tray might as well say anything - in fact, when I asked her what they spelled, she said "Lunch" :)

She also had some yogurt, cheddar, crackers, carrots, & pineapple chunks.
In her pineapple-shaped Zak! Dr. Sears Nibble Tray, of course!

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Some of my favorite bento bloggers are Psych-os too!
Check out what they have to share this Tuesday the 17th!

• What's In Our Lunch Bags?
• Organized Bites (with a Giveaway!)

89 days until Psych: The Musical!

Crunch A Color Healthy Lunch Challenge : Monster Muffins & Nutty Greek Yogurt Dip

When I offer a new food to my preschooler, I find that when I "hide" it among familiar foods she's less likely to flat out refuse it, so I try to make the new food just one of many small portions. Muffin tin meals are perfect for that!

Believe it or not,  Birdie's never eaten a pear! I don't like pears, so they're not a fruit I buy unless a recipe calls for it (I do like how they taste, just not their texture) and I recently realized I've never offered them to my 4 year old. Perfect - I wanted a new food to score bonus points in my Crunch A Color Healthy Lunch Challenge meal - pears it is :)

I decided to offer the pears with similar fruits I know she likes, apples, and something yummy to dip them in.  The Crunch a Color formula for a healthy lunch is 3 colors + a protein + a healthy grain. No processed foods. Birdie's not much of a meat eater so a greek yogurt & nut butter dip was just the thing for her protein. Celery sticks would go well with that too.

Nut Butter Greek Yogurt Dip 1 cup greek yogurt  1 cup nut butter (I used almond butter)  1 Tbsp honey  1 tsp cinnamon Stir all ingredients together & serve with fruit, veggies, graham crackers... whatever sounds good to you!

Birdie loves muffins so for her healthy grain portion I baked a batch of carrot bran ones and gave some of them monster faces :) I haven't made monster muffins in ages! I featured some in one of my first blog posts! That batch had cheese teeth & craisin eyes. Today I made the teeth with almond slivers and the eyes with cheese & candy coated sunflower seeds.

The monster muffins inspired a monster theme for the muffin tin meal!  I put a funny creature cupcake topper ring on a celery stick, and some octopi bento picks in the almond butter dip became baby monsters taking a mud bath :)

So how did Birdie's muffin tin meal score? Using the cards from our Crunch A Color Healthy Eating Game, I calculated the points:

Red - apples - 5 points

Liquid - water (not shown) - 5 points

Green - apples - 5 points

Yellow/Orange - pears - 5 points

Try a New Food - pears - 5 points x 2 = 10 points

Healthy Grains - carrot bran muffin - 5 points

Yellow/Orange - if carrots in the muffins count - 10 points

Green - celery - 10 points

Protein - almond butter & yogurt- 10 points

Bonus - calcium rich protein - yogurt in dip - 1 point

66 points, not too shabby for a simple lunch! It could have scored more points with a little more colour... but there's always dinner  :) 

Most importantly, lunch was a winner with my little sproutlet :

Are you wondering if she liked the pears? No, she didn't - but she tried them!

Thanks Crunch a Color for including me in this Challenge!

Love our Earth, Love our Oceans

Happy Earth Day!  Last year I put a little planet earth in each lunchbox, but this year I chose a different theme, ocean life, because of course, one of the most important parts of taking care of our earth is taking care of our oceans!

The sproutlets have always enjoyed nature programs about the ocean and marine life, and some new favourite family films are the whale tales Big Miracle & Free Willy. They also love Winter the dolphin, so whales & dolphins were an easy choice for their Earth day lunches.

Beanstalk's Laptop Lunches bento box contains:

• a Lunch Punch whale peanut butter sandwich
• blue gummy fish swimming in Veggie Stick waves 
• green & purple grapes with an orca whale cupcake pick
• half a Granny Smith apple decorated with a fruit leather spouting whale & waves
• a GreenPaxx reusable straw (for the yogurt drink not shown) folded and tucked into itself
• and a Lunchbox Love note. Bella got this one last year - Yep, we recycle our Lunchbox Love :) 

I'm sure the trip to school buried the fish among the Veggie Sticks, but that's okay, they'll have been a surprise when he came across them :)

Bella's EasyLunchboxes bento contains: 

• blue gelatin
• green & purple grapes
• cheese tortilla heart roll-ups
• baby carrot hearts
• romaine, raddichio & cucumber salad
• a Lunchbox Love note - a new one :) 
• a Light My Fire spork
• and a whale print Red Poppy cloth napkin

I love how these heart roll-ups turned out ♥ I made them by folding a tortilla in half to make a crease before covering it with cheese,  rolling in each side towards the crease, slicing 2" pieces & securing with a skewer.

I made a batch of Earth Day muffins! They're apple streusel, coloured green, with blue sugar sprinkles added to the streusel topping.  They smelled so good we couldn't wait for Earth Day, and had some for dessert last night :)

Pickle wanted to take one with his lunch as well:

Pickle's yubo lunchbox contains:

• dolphin peanut butter sandwiches
• an Earth Day apple streusel muffin
• vanilla yogurt coloured blue & green, topped with dolphin sprinkles

It's Muffin Tin Monday!

The little girls' tins contain:

• earth day apple streusel muffins
• green & purple grapes
• broccoli trees
• dolphin cheese atop starfish crackers
• whale peanut butter sandwiches
• vanilla yogurt coloured blue with dolphin sprinkles
• baby carrot hearts

Some stuff used to make these lunches:

Birdie's Elephant Garden

I asked Birdie if she wanted to make her own muffin tin meal for lunch today, since Sprout did, for the Mom's Day Off blog hop - but she said "no thanks" ! Strange little girl.  She's probably too tired, she was up several times throughout the night. I bet I'm more tired though! Between Birdie and Sprout, I've been up ALL night! Cross your fingers for us all to get a nap in today, that would be really nice :)

I made her muffin tin with pretty much the same things Sprout chose for her bento lunch for the blog hop, since they'll be eating together - grapes, celery, carrots, and a homemade Butternut Squash Oatmeal Ginger Coconut muffin. And she loves elephants, so I added some of those too. 

Birdie also has a couple of things Sprout doesn't - banana, which Sprout dislikes, and freeze dried mixed fruit, which Sprout refused to try. No clue if Birdie will try it or not - I'm going to call it "fruit chips" and we'll just see :) 

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Beanstalk also has a muffin, in his LunchBots Quad, and grapes, some NatureBox Zingy Dried Currants, and a treat of Captain America fruit snacks - I'm hoping this reminds him to have a good week at school so he's allowed to see The Avengers this weekend!

Pickle requested a plain peanut butter sandwich, not creative, crusts on - no point in taking a picture of that! :)

Rainbow Week : Yellow

We're halfway through our Rainbow Week! Today's colour is

Yellow

Bella's yellow lunch was inspired by Beatles songs ! Beneath the celery sticks and cheese, she has a turkey & cheese sandwich, yellow peppers, and on the side, slices of golden delicious apples, and some plain pasta (with a Thermos Funtainer of hot cheese sauce to pour over it at lunch - not pictured). Do you know which 4 Beatles songs are represented?  ♪ ♫

♫ Yellow Submarine, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Golden Slumbers & Give Peace A Chance ♪

Beanstalk didn't eat the snack I packed him yesterday, so he got it again today, plus an organic Clif Z Bar. Pickle got a cute beehive and bee peanut butter sandwich. The cutter for this was a surprise gift from a friend, and this is the first time we've used it. Pickle loves it,  thank you Linli!

Sailor Boy has pineapple teriyaki chicken kebabs, yellow pepper slices, sharp white cheddar cheese, and grapes in his Easy Lunchbox. I also scratched a little love note on the peel of a banana and sneaked it into his lunch tote  ♥
By the time he opened his lunch the message would have been really dark :)

No pic of the banana, he leaves before the sun rises, too early for me! I also wrote a banana note for Birdie though, if you want to see an example :

She can't read yet so I just drew pictures :)

Rainbow

I saw these rainbow fruit kebabs on the MOMables facebook page way back in August, just before the popular lunch menu plan officially launched, and have wanted to make some ever since. It took me a while, but I finally got around to making some for my sproutlets!  I made these ahead of time for Sprout & Birdie's snack. Two each, and a yogurt cloud to dip in :) 

They still don't like pineapple. More for me :)

We were out all day, so no muffin tin meals, then brought one of Sprout's little friends home with us this afternoon, so Birdie and I made muffins together while they played. Banana muffins! She really liked mashing the bananas:

I almost forgot to get a picture of the banana muffins before the 3 little girls ate them all - and by the time I remembered, there were only 3 left!  They were really good muffins, and so cute in their flower muffin cups :)

There's nothing rainbow about them - but they are yellow :)

Now these muffins, made by the talented Kris

 of In the Kitchen with Audrey, are Rainbow!
   

And healthy too! Click the Rainbow Mom button to see more from Kris, Audrey, & little sister Maurene too!

Thanks for following our Rainbow Week! Don't forget to read my review of Today I Ate A Rainbow! and enter to win a Rainbow Kit of your own!

Butterflies & Autumn Leaves

Bella has an autumn themed lunch again. I just love fall, and leaves, and I love the colours of this lunch. ♥  It's pretty yummy too - I know, I nibbled quite a bit when I was making it up ;) She has grapes, carrots, & tomatoes,  a homemade pumpkin oatmeal muffin I baked last night, leaf shaped ham & cheese quesadilla, a treat of leaf shaped butter cookies, and fruit leather leaves.

Here is my picky picky Beanstalk's lunch. Mandarin orange, string cheese, Power Bar, grapes, and pumpkin oatmeal muffin.

Pickle had a leaf shaped peanut butter sandwich. This is a typical lunch for him. Sandwich, yogurt, apple juice. Sometimes I include an oatmeal cookie. Yesterday he had 2 sandwiches so I didn't add a cookie, but I will today.

Yesterday the lunches were full of butterflies :) Birdie & Sprout had butterfly pasta, carrots, grapes, butterfly shaped cheddar, & butterfly crackers with butterfly shaped mozzarella slices in between. Lots of butterflies! Sprout won't eat the veggie pasta so I picked out just the plain ones for her. Thankfully Birdie isn't as picky about her noodles!

Bella got a butterfly PB sandwich, a little pink box of almonds with a mozzarella butterfly on the lid, tomatoes with cheese butterflies, and the same crackers and cheese as the little girls.

Pickle got butterflies too! I had a little more fun with his :)

Beanstalk took a bowl of cereal, and orange, and little bottle of milk for lunch yesterday. I didn't get a picture. And I didn't make lunch for the little girls today, because their Sailor Boy dad took the morning off to stay home with them and they want him to make them macaroni & cheese from a box.  I'm going to be at the salon all morning, that's my birthday gift from my folks! ♥ Happy Friday to me, and to you too!

Some stuff used for these lunches:

Brunch Lunch

I was going to make brunch today but I was up most of the night with itchy little girls (allergies & eczema from our weekend away) so when I finally did get to sleep I did not want to get up - lucky for me Sailor Boy is on leave so I got to sleep in until past brunch time! As a result, brunch was actually served at lunch time :)


They had carrot mini muffins, scrambled "eggies", cheese, yogurt, oranges, and juice. This is Bean Sprout & Baby Bird's. Bella had the same thing but on a regular plate, and with a regular size muffin, and Beanstalk had lunch with a friend. Pickle wanted a muffin tin lunch too, so here is his peanut butter sandwich version, that he helped make:


The little girls really like getting their lunch in the muffin tins - and they don't have preschool on Mondays so it works out well :)

Two Firsts

1) I decided to bake carrot muffins in the silicone mini muffin cups I've had for years. It's the first time I've used them for their actual purpose! I thought they might bake faster than regular muffins but they took the same amount of time. And oops, I forgot to spray the cups with cooking spray! Luckily the muffins popped right out nonetheless, and the cups washed up easily as well - which was a relief, as some of the reviews I've read about them have said just the opposite, and I was a bit apprehensive. I cut the muffin batter recipe in half which still made enough to fill the cups nearly to the rim - so I did, hoping they wouldn't overflow... and they didn't :) They are so little and cute!



2) My mom gave me these ice trays from IKEA. They are some kind of synthetic rubber, not silicone, and I don't think they are oven-safe, they are even labelled FOR WATER ONLY - but I think they'd be handy for lots of things other than ice :) If anyone else has these, or similar ice trays, I'd love to know if you've used them for anything other than freezing water! Anyways, Sprout likes rice, so I thought I'd see if they worked as rice molds... I only had some leftover brown rice with veggies in it, not white as I've seen used in all the real rice molds, but they came out just fine, the shaped rice popped out easily and held it's shape. So here is my first rice shape ♥

Monster Muffins

Last night I had a fabulous idea for a theme lunch for today, unfortunately I didn't have all the ingredients, so I filed it away for another day. I really need to go grocery shopping, but Sailor Boy's had the vehicle most days this past week, and now the fridge and pantry are pretty bare. I had almost resigned myself to making the sproutlets some sort of mishmash of cupboard scroungings... and then I remembered I promised them lunch out. Yay! But it's not going to be a healthy one. Boo.

So, lunch was taken care of, but I still felt like making something for them - so I mixed up some oatmeal muffins with green food colouring. Don't they look yummy? Hahaha.


This morning, with the help of some cheese and craisins, the muffins became monsters, muahaha! The colour isn't as bright as before they were baked, but they definitely have a green tinge to them. Bella pronounced them "awesome" and asked if I could make them for her school lunch. Sprout named hers, "Tuffin Muffin". They tossed around ideas for other ways I could decorate their muffins in the future. And, they ate them :)