#GuacItForward for National Guacamole Day!

Happy National Guacamole Day! The folks at Wholly Guacamole are always looking for fun ways to celebrate National Guacamole Day & love the concept of paying it forward, so this year they're giving back to their community & encouraging fans to do the same, with the #GuacitForward campaign! And in partnership with Laptop Lunches, who also like to pay it forward, they're giving away some of the ingredients for a tasty healthy lunch! I'm pleased to be able to offer one of these giveaways to my guacamole loving readers :)

One lucky Wholly Guacamole fan in the United States will win:

• 1 Set of Laptop Lunches Avocado Bento Buddies
• An awesome Wholly Guacamole cooler filled with:
  • 3 Guacamole Trays (various flavors)
  • 2 mini cups (various flavors)
  • 1 Chip Clip
  • 1 Avocado Squeezie

▼ Scroll to the bottom of the post to enter via the Rafflecopter widget

Use the hashtag #GuacItForward on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram to share how you are paying it forward!

I packed my hubby a National Guacamole Day bento! Sailor Boy's favourite Dr. Seuss book is Green Eggs & Ham so I thought I'd make him smile with a green eggs & ham salad sandwich in his lunch. Of course I had to tell him that's what it was to get the smile ;)

Guacamole Green Eggs & Ham Salad Sandwich
Ingredients:

• 1 Wholly Guacamole mini (or 2oz Wholly Guacamole) 
• 2 hard-cooked eggs
• 2 slices deli ham
• 2 slices bread

Directions:

1. Peel & chop eggs. 
2. Chop ham. 
3. Combine eggs & ham with guacamole in a bowl & stir/mash until desired consistency. 
4. Spread on a slice of bread, top with another slice, & cut if desired.
5. Pack or enjoy!

I also packed green grapes, a Babybel cheese, & NatureSweet Sunbursts tomatoes in the side containers of his Laptop Lunches bento. I used a bento cutting tool to carve OMG! in the Babybel wax coating, & spelled OMGuac! with alphabet bento picks in his sandwich :)

Last of all, I added a Lunchbox Love note atop his Laptop Lunches Bento Buddies lid to remind hubby to #GuacItForward too :)

Wholly Guacamole Minis come in Classic, Spicy, Ranch, Chunky & Organic varieties! I used Spicy in my egg salad sandwich - Sailor Boy likes it hot!

You can also enter to win a NatureSweet Prize Pack 

from the Wholly Guacamole OMG! Sweepstakes!

▼ Enter the Giveaway!▼

a Rafflecopter giveaway

► Visit Wholly Guacamole for more fabulous & fun ways to OMGuac Your Lunch! There are some delicious lunch ideas for both adults & kids!

Awesomely Easy Rainbow Cake!

Today one of my friends shared a post featuring some perfectly adorable teeny tiny rainbow cakes. Which reminded me of this post about making Sprout's birthday cake, that I had forgotten all about and left languishing in draft for over 2 years! My rainbow cake was neither perfect nor teeny tiny, but it was bright!

This rainbow cake was made by layering batter ...  6 different colours of batter.

I divided one plain white batter into 6 bowls and added a whole lot of food colouring!  The batter layering method I used doesn't produce evenly striped layers, rather, each colour, poured into the center of the pan, pushes some of the last colour out a little, making sort of arched layers. I alternated the order of the colours for the 2nd layer of the cake, just because :)

Note the tube of cherry cola lip smacker on the counter - totally needed for all the lip licking I was doing in anticipation of tasting my delicious creation!

Once the cakes had baked & cooled, I flipped one upside down on to a foil-covered cake plate, spread a layer of white frosting on it's flat bottom-become-top, and placed the other cake right side up atop it:

Oops, some of the top of the cake stayed stuck to the plate I'd flipped it out of the pan on to - no worries, frosting would cover that ... and it turned out to be a good thing that happened anyways! (Read on to find out why.) 

The plan was to cover the whole cake in fluffy white frosting, so when we cut into it, the colourful rainbow cake would be a surprise - a rainbow in a cloud! But oops again, I hadn't made enough frosting:

That turned out not to matter though, because before I made more, Sailor Boy & I tasted the bit of cake that had stuck to the plate, and YUCK! It did not taste good at all, it tasted BAD! Something had gone off :(

It was a rainbow cake wreck.

So sad. All that cherry cola flavoured lip licking for naught :(

I sniffed both the oil and the food colouring and neither smelled very good to me, so who knows... And since we couldn't serve it to the sproutlets and party guests, there was no sense in continuing with the frosting - but before we tossed it, I did cut into it to see how the rainbow layers came out...

And ooooh, it looked awesome! 

Fortunately, since the party was not until the next day, I had time to get more ingredients and bake another cake. The 2nd attempt, made with a fresh bottle of oil and new gel food colouring, was delicious. I was in a hurry by then since it was late at night, so didn't bother with pics, but a small sample taken before it was frosted did taste good, and the birthday partiers loved it! It looked pretty much just like the inedible attempt anyways, so here's that pic again :)

Awesomely Easy Rainbow Cake:

1. Make up a batch of light coloured cake batter.
2. Evenly divide the batter into 6 (or 7) bowls.
3. Colour the batters red, orange, yellow, green, blue & purple (or indigo & violet if you do all 7). Liquid gels works best for vivid colours.
4. If you want your stripes to be in correct rainbow order, begin with the red batter. Pour all the batter into the center of a round cake pan.
5. Repeat with each colour in order, pouring directly on top of the the last colour, in the center of the pan. 
6. Bake as directed for your batter of choice, cool, invert, & frost! 

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Braiiiins! Cake for World Zombie Day

It's World Zombie Day! It's also a Saturday, and a soccer day, so no need to pack lunch, we'll probably go out to eat after Sprout's match.

So, instead of a brains bento, I'd like to share this brains cake my friend Peggy made for her boys. It's so disgustingly awesome looking! There's not actually a recipe for the cake, sorry - you could use any red velvet cake recipe or mix - because it's really not about the cake, it's all about the frosting!

Brains Cake 

• Bake a red velvet cake in a Pyrex bowl. Or maybe you have a dome or ball cake pan set.
• Level off the flat side with & turn the cake out onto a plate.
• Tint white frosting gray with a touch of black food colouring.
• Put frosting in a big ziplock bag & trim off the corner.
• Squeeze frosting from bag in a squiggle pattern, one half at a time to make, mirroring your pattern to make brain hemispheres.
• For an extra gory touch, drizzle strawberry syrup on the plate.

Happy Zombie Day! 

Balls. With grassy residue.

If you don't watch Doctor Who,  this post's title may have given you pause...

... but trust me, you can easily make these peanut butter balls non-Whovian by skipping the green coconut coating.  I've made them both ways, read on :)

If you do watch Doctor Who, consider making these fantastic treats for your 50th Anniversary or Farewell Eleven party!

I wanted to participate in my friend Karen's new sticky note recipe linky party, Stick To It Sundays, and had the ingredients for peanut butter balls, but I wanted to make them special for her inaugural Linky...  

She's the most Whovian gal I know,  and what comes to mind when you think of Doctor Who & balls? Rory's dad Brian's golf balls from Dinosaurs On A Spaceship, of course! She's even made a grassy residue balls bento  :)

The Doctor: You don't have any vegetable matter in your trousers, do you, Brian?

Brian: Only my balls.

The Doctor: I'm sorry?

Brian: Golf balls. Grassy residue.

I dyed some shredded coconut green for grass, rolled a few balls in that instead of the usual graham crumbs,  and Bob's your uncle :)

They are even better with coconut! I did stick to the original recipe for most of them, since that's how the sproutlets like them - but I love coconut so the grassy ones were mine :) 

So the premise of this linky is that you can link up any recipe, but it must fit on a standard sticky note. Sounds simple, right? It's harder than it looks! I've got terrible penmanship when I'm not trying to write smaller than usual! I suppose I could have typed it in a tiny font, but that seemed like cheating... judges? Karen? In any case, I stuck to the rules and gave it my best  a shot :)

Click the cute little adipose button below to see more Sticky Note recipes!

And in case you can't read my printing, I typed out the recipe too.  

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!

Crunch A Color Healthy Lunch Challenge : Homemade Chicken Nuggets & Carrot Hearts

When Jennifer of Crunch a Color asked if I'd like to join her Healthy Lunch Challenge, I was flattered and a little incredulous... me? I try to pack healthy for my sproutlets but it often is a challenge, so wow, it's such a compliment to have my efforts recognized by such a healthy eating role model! Thank you, Jennifer, it's an honour to be asked, and I'll do my best :)

What's the Healthy Lunch Challenge?
Jennifer Tyler Lee, the mom behind the Crunch a Color Healthy Eating Game, challenged 15 bloggers to pack healthy lunches their kids would love to eat, using fresh, colourful ingredients, and the points cards from the game. Fun! And, the top 5 lunch ideas will be featured in Crunch a Color's April article on Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution! Here's my Bella's healthy lunch:

What's For Lunch?

It wasn't hard to meet the Healthy Lunch Challenge criteria of three colours plus a healthy grain, & protein. Lunch is packed in Bella's favourite, EasyLunchboxes, and contains:

• heart-shaped homemade chicken nuggets for protein & healthy grain (I even snuck some milled flax in the breading)
• golden sunburst cherry tomato & carrot skewers on a bed of salad
• the salad itself is made of fresh, crisp romaine & butter lettuce & purple raddichio, with shredded cheddar to top it with
• sweet juicy pink watermelon & orange cantaloupe
• an EasyLunchboxes Mini Dipper filled with trail mix, for snack

I'm fortunate my girl loves fresh veggies, but she's not as big a fan of fruit, so I try to make it more appealing to her by cutting it in fun shapes.  The watermelon & canteloupe were easy to cut with a small heart-shaped cookie cutter - and I got to nibble on the scraps, yum, a healthy snack for mum :) Since I had a heart theme going, I made her carrots into hearts too:

You can also make heart-shaped grapes, tomatoes, & cocktail sausages the same way :) If your little one is too young for toothpicks, I show how to make them without in this blog post.

What's my Healthy Eating Game score?

At first I scored Bella's lunch with 60 points, as shown below. But then I realized I could add an additional 5 points for her Klean Kanteen of water, and a 10 point red card for the cherry tomatoes :) Yay!

What Fun! Want to Play?

You can make your family's meals more fun with Crunch a Color's Healthy Eating Game! You might also like the companion game, Conversation Starters - I recently reviewed both games here. 

Healthy Homemade Kid-Friendly Chicken Nuggets 

Makes approximately 24 nuggets
Ingredients

• 1 lb ground chicken 
• ¼ cup old-fashioned oatmeal 
• ¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese, divided 
• 1 tsp Zatarain's Creole Seasoning
  (or seasoning salt & paprika to taste), divided  
• ½ tsp garlic powder 
• ¼ tsp black pepper 
• ¾ cup breadcrumbs

Directions
1. In a large bowl, combine the chicken, oatmeal, half the grated parmesan, half the seasoning, the garlic powder and the pepper.
2. Knead the dry ingredients into the ground chicken.
3. Moisten hands to prevent sticking and form 1 tbsp of chicken mixture into a ball. Press into a small cookie cutter (play dough cutters work too!) for shaped nuggets or simply flatten for a basic nugget shape.
4. In a small shallow bowl, combine the breadcrumbs with the remaining seasoning and grated parmesan.
5. Press the nuggets into the bread crumb mixture and turn over, patting crumbs into surface to coat evenly.
6. At this point you can freeze the nuggets on a cookie sheet, then store in an airtight container or bag in the freezer for up to 3 months. Add 3-5 minutes to your cooking time when cooking from frozen.
OR
7. Bake in preheated 375° F oven. Arrange the nuggets on a cookie sheet sprayed with cooking spray or lined with parchment paper. Lightly spray the nuggets themselves with cooking spray or olive oil for a crispier coating (optional). Bake 15-20 minutes, turning once, and checking - don't overcook!

• NOTE: These baked nuggets will not really brown - if browning is desired, place them under the broiler for a couple of minutes near the end of cooking.

Visit my post at MOMables.com for a print-friendly version of this recipe, and see how I used them to make a healthy kid-friendly lunch that beats the boxed storebought version :)

● ● ● ● ●
Giveaway Closed
Thanks for entering & congratulations to the winner :)
Enjoy your Crunch a Color Healthy Eating Games!

Like the look of our EasyLunchboxes? Get some!

And the Crunch a Color Healthy Eating Games too!

Heart-y Valentines Day Breakfast Mini Omelets

One of my favourite easy breakfasts can be made especially Valentine-y by using a heart-shaped baking pan. Or just top them with a cheese heart ♥

I love that they use all the little cheese scraps left over from making lunch!

Voilà! A heart-y omelet bagelwich breakfast!

I make these all the time :) See my original recipe post on MOMables
for more detailed directions, photos, and oven method.

I also sometimes make a single serving bento scrap omelet with silicone baking cups, see my guest post on my LEGO lunch box  :)

Cool Review & Giveaway! GreenPaxx Eco-Friendly Reusable Cool Straws & Cool Caps

A few months ago, I received some fabulous new eco-friendly products to try out: Cool Straws and Cool Caps from GreenPaxx. My family liked them so much I bought more and we use them every day! This week I'm finally getting around to posting my Review of them,  & a Giveaway!

Cool Straws & Cool Caps are flexible, portable, reusable straws & lids. The straws come apart for easy cleaning, and can be rolled or folded up and will spring back into shape. The caps fit a wide variety of cup sizes and have a crosshatch opening for the straw. They come in blue & green or pink & green. There is also a Sealed cap with no straw opening.

I received 2 blue Cool Straws & 1 each of the regular and sealed Cool Caps to review. After trying them out, we wanted more, so I purchased some pink ones from the GreenPaxx website.

Of course, the first thing I did was try them on all my cups to see what they fit - and was pleased to discover they fit our Take 'n Toss cups perfectly! I've never considered those cups disposable - don't even get me started on the name that seems to encourage using them as such - but somehow over the years we have lost most of the flimsy caps and straws that came with them, which made them pretty useless since their rolled lip makes them uncomfortable to drink from. Cool Caps & Cool Straws to the rescue!

They also fit my pint glasses, Coca Cola glasses, coffee mugs, travel mugs, & mason jar glasses.

The "Sealed" Cool Caps are great for unfinished smoothies. 

What's in the glass?

Vanilla Coconut Strawberry Smoothie!

1 cup coconut milk

1/2 cup greek yogurt

1 cup strawberries (about 8 large)

1 tsp vanilla extract.   

Combine in blender. Add ice if desired. Blend. Enjoy :)
If you don't finish it all,  cover it with a Cool Cap and save it for later! No "fridge flavour", & no mess if knocked over by rummaging children!

I love that the Cool Caps fit my travel mugs. Now I can order iced coffee drinks in my own cup,  even the thick shake-like ones;  the Cool Straws are made for drinking thick drinks, like smoothies! 

I keep a Cool Straw folded like this in my bag or pocket when we go out. My middle child has trouble drinking from bottles or cups without the use of a straw, but by bringing our own Cool Straw, it doesn't matter what his drink is served in. And by folding it in half and tucking the open ends together,  I can tote it back home in my pocket or bag without making a mess :)

I really like our Cool Caps and Cool Straws. Some things I like about them:

• They are reusable! Before we got our Cool Straws we were going through a box of disposable straws a week!
• They are easy to clean. The straws come apart. I usually wash them in the dishwasher and they do stay in the cutlery basket.
• They are portable. Both caps and straws can be squashed into a pocket or container and spring right back to shape.
• They help stop messes. While the caps aren't completely spill-proof (there is a hole for the straw) they do keep drinks from sloshing out, and when tipped over, help keep spillage to a minimum, maybe even prevent them completely if you right the cup fast enough :) The lids also make a "bumper" on the edge of the glass, preventing breakage.
• They are comfortable. The silicone straw is easy to drink from. We tried a stainless straw but didn't like the feel of the metal. And I don't trust my little biters with a glass straw. Which brings me to...
• They are durable. My middle son is a chewer. The Cool Straws have survived for 3 months now! 

Something else I like : GreenPaxx is passionately devoted to providing toxin-free options for protecting our environment from plastic pollution. Visit their website at http://greenpaxx.com/  to learn more about their ecologically responsible practices.  I really like that they offer the option to have your items shipped with minimal packaging. My Cool Straws & Cool Caps arrived wrapped in paper that I could easily reuse or recycle :)

Want some Cool Straws & Cool Caps of your own?

Enter my Giveaway for a chance to win 2 Cool Caps & 4 Cool Straws in your choice of pink or blue!
or

Buy them from GreenPaxx Use the code SUMMER to save 20% through September 14th!  http://GreenPaxx.com/

To enter the Giveaway:

• Mandatory Entry: Visit the GreenPaxx website, then come back here and leave a comment telling me something that you like about any of the products.
• Bonus Entry: Like GreenPaxx on Facebook. Leave a comment if you like. Maybe tell them I sent you :)
• Bonus Entry: Follow GreenPaxx on Twitter. Leave a comment with your Twitter handle.
• Bonus Entry: Subscribe to GreenPaxx's YouTube channel. (4 Kids & A Raw Onion is adorable!)
• Leave a separate comment for each entry, and make sure your entry includes a way to contact you!

Giveway Ends Sunday July 29th at 9pm PST Closed

This giveaway is offered to US residents only.  Please do not enter this giveaway if you have received free products from GreenPaxx within the past 3 months. Retail value of prize is $19.90

Disclaimer: I received 2 Cool Caps and 2 Cool Straws to review. I received no other compensation, and all opinions are 100%  my own.