I'm drawn to the inspirational quotes and images that I see on Pinterest. And I recently came across this website, thanks to a dear old friend of mine but alas, the site does not let me pin the ones I love directly from the site. So, I've saved some of my favorites here and welcome any comments and additions!
so sad.
I sent the kiddos off to school yesterday morning. How is it that the summer flies by more quickly every year? There were first day jitters but the day went very smoothly for the most part. But.. here's a lunch confession for you:
My daughter called me in the middle of the day (this has never happened before - and I didn't recognize the phone number and almost didn't answer) because she didn't like the sandwich that I packed for her and requested a hot lunch. Ugh. She had planned her first day of school lunch over a week ago and requested a cream cheese and jam sandwich, apple slices, celery and seaweed. Apparently I used the wrong jam and it messed up everything.
My littlest can't eat berries so I've completely gotten rid of berry jam in our house to avoid any issues. I now only buy the Santa Cruz mango fruit spread or the apricot fruit spread. I like them because the first ingredient listed is fruit (mango and apricot, respectively). Recently though, some ginger spread caught my eye at the grocery store and after reading the ingredients (ginger and sugar), I bought it. Here's the truth though – I couldn't remember which of my kids liked it and so I figured they all did. Not so. It's not a huge deal; My daughter didn't like her sandwich and she was enormously hungry at the end of the day. I had to throw out the uneaten sandwich, which is a shame, but worse things have happened. Note to self: no ginger jam for the oldest.
Cherry yogurt, frozen peas, grapes, dried mango, Somersault Snacks Pacific Sea Salt cookies
In other news, my son devoured every last crumb of his lunch yesterday. He's crazy about frozen peas so I add them to his lunchbox right before he leaves for school so that they stay as cold as possible. Anyway, today is a new day with a new lunch for both kiddos.
Happy back-to-schooling to all of you!
white nectarine, red pear, egg and Applegate organic turkey bacon
My kiddos start school tomorrow, so today, I'm basking in the relaxation of a non-school day morning and at the same time, dreading the whole 'getting back into a routine' thing. I guess we all have back-to-school jitters. When you have kids in different schools with different start and end times and a third who doesn't go to school but takes a midday 2 hour nap, figuring out a new schedule with all of the moving parts is dizzying. I still don't know how it's all going to work. The kids have put in their breakfast and lunch requests for the first two days of school so that's not part of the problem. I guess it'll be one day at a time and eventually (aka, in April or May) I'll figure out a routine.
In the meantime, we had a Sunday breakfast on this sunny Wednesday morning and leisurely read some of our favorite books (many of them school-related) at the table.
As many parents of school aged kids know all too well, packing lunch can be an absolute nightmare. Many of us kick off September with Pinterest-worthy lunchboxes but let’s face it: come November (or even earlier), there’s a collective parental groan about lunch and we cobble together whatever we can muster. Of course we want our children’s lunches to be varied and healthful so that they have enough energy to make it through the day. But unless those lunches are also tasty, they will come back wasted and uneaten at the end of the day. (Seriously, how disgusting is that sandwich after it’s been sitting out at room temperature for 8+ hours?!) And don’t forget the groceries required in order to pack that lunch. It’s pretty tough to get all of those ducks in a row on a typical weekday morning, and that’s how lunch quickly takes on cringe-causing chore status. I'm a firm believer in getting the kiddos involved from the get go for smoother family sailing and here's why:
1. It takes the stress off of you. Woo hoo! No more arguments in the morning because you ran out of your son's favorite turkey and have exactly 8 minutes to figure out lunch before you all have to leave the house.
2. It saves you time. Scratch the meal planning chore off of your list!
3. It saves you money. Remember how awful it felt to throw out a perfectly good sandwich that was uneaten? When your child chooses, she is less likely to waste food like that.
4. It’s an inspiring way for them to try new foods. Picky eaters beware! When kids are at the wheel, even the pickiest among them is more likely to try something new. Radishes anyone?
5. It helps their organizational skills. Planning ahead is an incredibly useful skill! Get them started early.
Sounds great, right? So pass the meal planning baton to your kids.
I’ve built a career on the intersection of lunch for kids and technology (and more recently, breakfast for kids and technology). So “what’s for lunch” is a question that’s near and dear to me. Everything I have read and researched has shown that when children are involved in meal planning, they are more enthusiastic about what they eat, more inclined to try a variety of foods and more likely to make healthy choices. (Informative articles here and here). All those benefits just by giving kids a voice in their food choices? Yes!
So hey, parents: take a load off! You can choose to use an app like LaLa Lunchbox or LaLa Breakfast to make it fun and simple for you and your kids or you can go about it another way. Either way, the benefits are clear. Empower your kids to be part of the food planning process! And best of luck with back to school!
p.s. -- While we’re on the topic, there’s no shortage of advice available about what to pack for lunch and much of the advice is focused on healthy and quick items (which is awesome because really, do you want to be spending hours preparing for and packing lunches?). Here’s a quick list of some of our favorites:
homemade sunflower seed butter sandwich (fantastic for nut-free schools)
roasted black beans (easy and inexpensive and perfect for those anti-sandwich kids out there) and for a snack, homemade granola bars (nut free, and without processed sugar or unpronounceable ingredients).
* A version of this appeared on the Kidville blog.
As I mentioned, I eat a lot of sunflower seeds and sun butter. I really love the organic unsweetened version of this brand of Sunbutter because there's just one ingredient: roasted sunflower seeds. I always have sun butter in my house because it's a fabulous nut alternative and when I'm hungry and need a quick snack, a spoon of it is just perfect. My kids love sun butter too, and it's a frequent lunch choice on a sandwich with fresh fruit slices or jam. I decided to try my hand at making my own sun butter.
It's harder than I thought it would be! I tried several times using raw sunflower seeds and adding oil instead of starting with roasted seeds and the result was pretty gummy and not at all smooth and creamy like I had hoped. Blah. Then I tried using maple syrup instead of honey but that didn't turn out well either. I finally got it right using roasted seeds and didn't need to add any extra oil. Victory! My successful recipe had just two ingredients: 1 cup of roasted, salted sunflower seeds and 1 tablespoon of honey. That's it! Next time I plan to eliminate the honey and use vanilla extract and cinnamon instead and see how that goes... For any nut-allergic folks, be sure to read the label on roasted sunflower seeds to make sure they're not roasted with peanut oil.
1 cup of roasted sunflower seeds.
First the seeds became dry and crumbly. It took patience and time to get to the next stage. When you think it's time to give up, keep going! The oils take a while to be sufficiently released to produce the desired outcome.
Finally! After 7 minutes in the processor, the sunbutter began to resemble what I think of as sunbutter. Then I added 1 tablespoon of honey and pureed till smooth.
Voila! Creamy and delicious.
Lunchtime! A great sandwich for a hot day.