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!

McHappy Spring!

Last night was McTeacher's Night, where the sproutlets' school teachers worked at the local McDonald's to raise funds for their school. Sprout was having so much fun seeing her classmates and teachers and just being at McDonald's, that she hardly ate or drank anything! So she has her Happy Meal apple juice box in her lunch today :)

Spring is here, and things are beginning to bloom!  I filled Sprout's yubo lunchbox with blossoms: a blossom-shaped peanut butter sandwich, yogurt with flower sugar sprinkles, and grapes & carrots arranged like flowers.

Cutting sandwiches with a cookie cutter and arranging fruit creatively is an easy way to make a lunch cute without using pointy little bento picks - perfect for a preschooler, or any kid who might not bring home accessories :)

Featured in today's lunch:

Season's Greetings!

I packed a festive wintery lunch for Pickle yesterday, inspired by the design on one of our new holiday yubo faceplates.

Yes, that's real fruit you see - Pickle asked for apples! I don't usually peel them for the other sproutlets, but like many kids with autism, Pickle has sensory issues, particularly with food texture, so I wasn't taking any chances - I peeled them completely & cut them into bite sized pieces.

Pickle's snow themed yubo lunchbox contains the appls with a snowflake pick, a snowflake frosted oatmeal muffin, peanut butter sandwich snowflakes, yogurt (coloured blue) with snow sprinkles, & a couple of his favourite chocolates, Hershey's Kisses.

Sadly, when I unpacked his lunchbox after school, the apples were still there, untouched. Ah well, the fact that my picky Pickle even asked for something new is still progress!

And I did have a good time making his lunch :) 

   

Some stuff used in this lunch:

Gingerbread Men!

Sometimes a lunch gets something stuck in my head. All morning I've had this singsong line from the nursery tale running through my head: Run, run, as fast as you can, you can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man! *sigh*  The best remedy for an annoying earworm is sometimes another earworm... maybe I should go play some Duran Duran - Rio usually does the trick ;)

A friend sent us some adorable gingerbread man/peppermint sweet cupcake picks, which inspired gingerbread man lunches that came out decidedly holiday-ish... and it's not even December, this is early for me! 

Pickle's yubo lunchbox (with handy dandy drink holder attached) contains peanut butter sandwich gingerbread man, a pocket sandwich, & a spiral sandwich speared with one of the cupcake picks. He also has a pandan wafer straw broken in half, a peanut butter cookie & a gingerbread man. His yogurt even has tiny gingerbread men sprinkles!

I went easy on the cute for 6th grader Beanstalk's LunchBots Trio bento, and skipped the cupcake pick :) He has pistachios in a LunchBots Dip, grapes, a peanut butter sandwich "cookie" topped with a pandan wafer straw & a mini gingerbread man, a granola bar, and some yogurt raisins. 

There was meant to be apple slices in place of his granola bar... but we didn't have the apple I thought we did (or someone snacked on it after I last looked).

Bella's EasyLunchbox is full of cuteness, with heart-speared red & green grapes, cantaloupe balls + cupcake pick, mini gingerbread men cookies, baby carrots, & gingerbread man sandwiches.

These gingerbread men are savoury and sweet - they're turkey & cheddar on wheat, with bento pick buttons & candy sprinkle features :) 

Stuff used for these lunches:

Sweet & Sporty School Lunches

We were in Canada for the weekend, visiting the family and meeting my new baby niece who was born Friday. I've mentioned before that whenever we go to Canada, or the Canadian family comes to visit us, we get Timbits - donut holes from Tim Horton's. So today's lunches include those for a treat :)

Bella has a cupcake peanut butter sandwich topped with a gummy flower, Fig Newtons, Timbits, grapes spelling "sweet", & half a tangelo. (Beanstalk got the other half. No pic of his lunch though, I hadn't had my coffee yet and my brain was still half-asleep, so I forgot.) The orange things in with the tangelo are reusable ice cubes shaped like orange slices. Bella doesn't like her sandwich to be cold so if I don't need to chill the whole lunch, I don't.

Pickle has a sporty lunch in his Yubo lunchbox, inspired by the ball-shaped Timbits. A soccer ball & mini "sport" peanut butter sandwiches, Chobani Champions yogurt,  the donut holes, & a couple of soccer ball chocolates, with a green spork & a green cloth napkin (under his sandwich box).

Happy Monday everyone! 

Stuff used to make & pack lunch:

A Herd of Elephant Goodbyn Lunches

The girls got Goodbyns full of elephants today! Byntos for the 3 & 5 year olds Birdie & Sprout, and an original Goodbyn for 9 year old Bella. The Byntos hold just the right amount for the little girls and the lids are easy for them to put back on. The larger Goodbyn is a bit trickier with all it's compartments, it needs to be snapped down in multiple places - Bella can do it though.

   

Birdie is our little pachyderm lover and the reason we have so many elephant food picks :) She asked for a baby elephant peanut butter and Nutella sandwich with candy eyes. Yes, candy eyes.  Many thanks to Ludicrous Mama of Biting the Hand That Feeds You for giving us all her artificially coloured edible decos when her family went dye-free :P And thank you Shannon of Molly's Lunchbox for the baby elephant cookie cutter ♥

Birdie also has cheese bites, red grapes, and a blueberry Minigo yogurt that came home with us from our camping trip in Canada - my cousin must have stowed some in our cooler, for her 1 year old - thanks Steph :) It's a perfect fit in the Bynto! I put a couple of reusable ice shapes next to it to keep it cool.

Sprout also has elephant sandwiches & cheese, but she wanted apples instead of a Minigo, and green grapes too. Both girls have cranberry juice to drink. Sprout's bottle has stickers on it too, on the other side :)

Bella has an elephant Queen peanut butter sandwich - I added a crown cut from the scraps of her little sisters' baby ones. She also has cheese & grapes, plus tomatoes, granola bar, and half a pluot.

Pickle's Lunch Punch Critter Cutter elephant mama has a sleeping baby :)

The new Goodbyn Mix & Match sets are out now, soon Pickle will have one of those, yay!  I do love that colourful little sandwich box we got from Sarah of Zoe's Lunchbox though - she sent Pickle several in different colours ♥ 

Find some of the stuff I used at BentoUSA by AllThingsForSale:

   

Celebration Bentos

My Beanstalk "graduated" from elementary school this year. One of his classmates' parents made celebratory cupcakes for the soon-to-be middle schoolers, topped with "Congrats Grad" cupcake picks. Beanstalk brought his pick home - he thought I might like to reuse it - my boy knows his mama :)

I made him a "Congrats Grad" lunch in his LunchBots Trio - a simple bento containing his favourite flavours of cheese crackers, 2 star-shaped peanut butter sandwiches, half a granny smith apple with the graduation cap pick in it, and some fat green grapes - a couple of them skewered on a sunglasses cupcake pick. I told him the sunglasses were because his future's so bright, he's gotta wear shades - ha, he so did not get my 80's song reference - silly old mum :)

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The 2nd celebration lunch is a 4th of July EasyLunchboxes bento for Pickle:

He has an American flag (sort of) peanut butter sandwich, red, white & blue marshmallows on heart picks, and yogurt topped with frozen yogurt stars. He was very happy with his lunch, especially the marshmallow stars:

Tomorrow is Independence Day - a happy holiday to all my American readers!

It's a Patriotic Bento Blog Hop!

Today's post is part of a patriotic blog hop! 
Beanstalk, Bella, Birdie & Sprout all have red, white & blue lunches in celebration of Independence Day, but since I've already done an American flag sandwich for my Pickle this year, and I'm Canadian, I decided to make him a Canada flag sandwich in honour of Canada's Birthday (July 1st)

His flag is a peanut butter sandwich, and on the side he has red & white marshmallow stars, and the bits of the sandwich cut out for the flag, skewered on maple leaf picks, and yogurt topped with red frozen yogurt stars. 

Happy (early) Canada Day Pickle!

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My Bella selected everything that went into her stars & stripes bento.

She has an EasyLunchbox packed with a star-shaped peanut butter sandwich, tomatoes, NatureBox Zingy Currants, Fig Newtons, and Gala apple slices. I added the marshmallow stars as a treat.

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Beanstalk has his 4th of July food in a stainless steel LunchBots Quad.

He has a flag made of blueberries topped with cheese stars & a striped Gala apple, red, white & blue Goldfish, ham & the rest of the mozzarella string cheese used for the stars.

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Birdie and Sprout got Lock & Lock bentos.

Birdie has blueberries and mozzarella on heart picks, strawberries topped with a frozen yogurt star, a star-shaped hard-cooked egg, and red, white & blue Goldfish, topped with USA cookies.

Sprout has her yogurt stars atop some blueberries, cheese stars atop strawberries, and the bottom half the same as Birdie :)

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For afternoon snack yesterday, Beanstalk enjoyed red, white & blue organic naturally colored corn chips, served in a miniature Weber Grill! Hahahaha!

Now hop on over and to What's for Lunch at Our House and see what Shannon has made!

Some containers used for these lunches: