Left over ham

I have "carrot coins", green cauliflower, crackers, homemade chocolate popcorn, and ham.  Clark helped me pick out what to put into their lunch today.

The Elder's lunch

This was one of The Elder's lunches earlier this week. He needed something that would be easy on his tummy since he has been ill. I am still working on getting all the overly processed foods out of my freezer. I came across one of our favorite Green Giant veggie packets with sauce. It consists of cauliflower, carrots, yellow carrots,  cranberries, and some sort of light sauce. I topped with with fiesta lime pork. To the left I have cottage cheese and pineapple and a single turtle.

Chicken, rice, and Black Bean and Corn Salsa

This is really much better looking in person.  For lunch I made brown rice with lime pepper chicken, sprinkled with yellow tomatoes, cilantro, and fine shredded carrots for a little color. To the left I have some left over black bean and corn salsa. This is meant to be mixed in with the chicken and rice after they have been warmed. For desert we have 2 cookies.

Chicken noodle soup and The Elder's lunch

Mmm... Nothing like a bowl of homemade chicken noodle soup, especially when everyone is ill.

Homemade? Yes! The noodles take a little time but the rest is easy. First you need some dark meat chicken on the bone. You can use boneless or breasts, but I do not feel they work as well. They do work though! Be cure to add a little salt. Cook chicken until it is falling off the bone. Separate the chicken and liquid. Set the chicken aside to cook and add your veggies to your broth. When the chicken has cooled, pick the meat off the bone and

 add it back to the stock. You can cook your noodles in the soup or in another pot and then add them to the soup. I chose to the the second. My homemade noodles tend to be covered in flour to keep them from sticking to each other while I cut them all up. So the water tends to get a little odd if I cook them in broth.

As you can see, I do not add broth to the the bowls for the minions. I have learned that it is just to much of a mess. I normally put it in a cup (cool it down) and let them drink it that way.

Why are the noodles green? Because I wanted them to be. I added a little bit of spinach puree to my pasta dough to turn it green. Not only did it not effect the flavor, but it added some yummy spinach goodness to the noodles without the minions knowing.

Colonel Sanders was not very happy and chose not to eat. All she did was glare at us. She even made my camera have a "memory card error". Yep, the little stinker jinxed my camera. Or maybe the camera is just old... Naw, I like the first story better.
 The Elder's lunch. Yum! I was not feeling to well (sick plus migraine) and my brain was shot. I had some ground beef thawed. We had a lot of the typical ground beef items last week, meatloaf, burgers, and spaghetti and meatballs. So I decided I would make wontons. I added spinach, onion, 5 spice powder, and some soy sauce to the ground beef for my filling. Then I friend them in a little bit of olive oil and butter. Yes, I said butter. Real butter.

Anyway, the wontons are sitting on a bed of brown rice. I also gave him carrots with dip and cheese for a side.

Countdown: 5

Cat and ghost bento

 I have been using the Dr. Seuss boxes from Target a lot recently. Mainly because my bento storage is a mess and I am to busy (lazy) to reorganize it. Today we have grapes, cucumber, cheese, celery, and carrots.

On top of that I put a cat and a ghost peanut butter and jelly sandwich, some more cheese, and a small container of dip.

How much food can fit into a tiny container?

I was recently told that there was no way my minions could eat a decent lunch out of "that little container. It's not even large enough for a full sandwich!" Oh really?

This is what we will pack today, minus the crust. I will feed that to the minions as part of a snack. I have 1/4 cup of cashews (I know it looks a little shy, but it is just the angle), a heaping 1/4 cup of currants, 5 carrot sticks, between 2 1/2 to 2 3/4oz of cheese (about 1/3 of a 8oz brick of cheese), and most of a sandwich. The bread is Italian bread baked by Aunt Millies. So the bread is a bit larger than most other  varieties. That is a decent sized lunch for a kid, right?

And now our container. This is one of the ones I picked up at Target for a dollar. They had them in blue and yellow. Both are the same size. I added in a soda can for proportion. No, I did not share my soda with the minions. That is MY soda. It's kinda like coffee, mama doesn't share.

I cut up the carrots to make it easier for my 2, 3 and 5 year old to eat. I used cupcake liners to keep things separated.

Next I stack the 2 elephants on top of each other. It almost looks like the elephant is trying to eat some currants! I also added the cheese. Hmm... There is still some unused space. That drives me nuts. What else can I add to this quickly? I am a hair on the lazy side and refuse to spend to long making lunches.

There we go! That's much better. I added another slice of cheese and a package of fruit snacks. Now my container is full. So tell me, you still think you can't pack much food into my little container?