Fish and Minion and a molded rice lunch

I put a little more effort than and time into lunch today. I think it took me a whole 10 minutes for all 3 lunches. The Elder has leftovers. Easy lunch right there!



I put just a hair more effort into it this morning. I cut a banana down and tried to make it into a minion. Like it? I was to lazy to put him in overalls.

This is picture number 666 on my phone. 

For lunch we have a pack of fruit snacks that I am trying to get out of the house, a pack of raisins with a minion sticker on it, 3 fish sandwiches (yes, I know it does not belong), and some yogurt in the disposable container.

This picture is sideways, but can you tell what I molded the rice and turkey casserole into? It is a train. I used a cookie cutter and packed the rice in. Then I let it chill over night and removed the cookie cutter from the lunch. It was set. The Elder said it held up pretty well.

Tyke's field trip lunch.

I know I said I would explain some things last Friday and I didn't. I am sorry. There have been several things going on in our household and it has taken some time to adjust and readjust. Once things have resettled again I will post something in Silly Minions.

Tyke's class is going on a field trip today and they needed a disposable lunch. Sadly, I have no pictures. Tyke's preschool class does not allow siblings on 98% of the field trips (unlike Clark's class). So we are never able to accompany Tyke on any of them.



I opted to use a strawberry container. We have no paper bags and I had no desire to use 3 or 4 plastic bags anyway. I did line the bottom with some plastic wrap. I know melon sometimes sweats a bit.

I then added my semi frozen yogurt tube. These are considered a huge treat in our house. Sometimes I freeze them and give them to the kids as popsicles in the summer. I have to be careful with dairy and warm days though. Tyke has acid reflux and that makes his belly a little picky.

Next I added the barn, chick, and cow sandwiches. Hmm.... This is not as full as I like it. I know he may not eat all of this, but I really do not like things moving about in his container.

So I added some cheese and a desert item (left over from his school birthday treat),

Sandwiches back one.... and that still is not quite doing it for me. I know I waste food... Then again, he could be having a day where he is super hungry. Those happen. I have seen him eat 3 whole sandwiches plus other lunch items in one sitting.

Instead of a water bottle I decide to give him one of The Elder's drinks. :-) It fits perfect in there. Shh... The Elder never has to know....

Repack the cheese and sandwiches and.... PERFECT!

The top of the container.

I am not mean enough to send an ugly looking top. So I printed up a picture that goes with his lunch. The farm has nothing to do with his field trip. The only reason the farm was picked was because that was the first set of cookie cutters my hands landed on.

I used 2 paper strips to cover up his name... because I could.

Picture from the side... notice nothing moves..

The other side. Good! Everything is secure!!!!

Here is Tyke holding his lunch. Aww, he's so handsome!

Sausage worm

I have a little worm made out of organic nitrate free hot dog slices sitting on a bed of cheese. Under it I have nitrate free turkey. On the top I have strawberries, an organic cereal, and carrot slices. The face was made with nori.

This is the Colonel's lunch. She too has a hot dog worm, turkey, cheese sliced into little pieces, strawberries, and some organic and GMO free cereal.

Banana bread muffin sandwich

Colonel Sanders' lunch. She has a muffin top cut in half and made into a biscoff and jelly sandwich, some pickled bologna, cheese scraps, blue berries, and strawberries. The little cheese figure is suppose to be a frog. The Colonel is now 15 months old.

Look! Clark is home today (No school on Friday). The Colonel is checking out Clark's lunch. Pork Chop is happily playing with his cheese cut out (rocket).

Here is the boys' lunch. Another half of a homemade banana muffin cut in half and made into a biscoff and jelly sandwich. Pickled bologna, cheese, blueberries, strawberries, and some pineapple. Their cut out is a little rocket.

Clark and Tyke smiling over lunch. I hope they have enough energy to help me with laundry after lunch!

Spaghetti Leftovers!

I love leftover lunches. They make my life so much easier. Today's lunch is a leftover from Monday nights dinner. I have Barilla spaghetti (I like it better than most) the meatballs have hidden blended carrots, a little spinach, and cheese. I also use a little oatmeal in it too. I know you can't tell and no one (even The Elder) has noticed it yet. :-D Score!

This is Colonel Sanders' lunch. We have cheese, multi colored raisins with sunflower seeds, spaghetti, and a meatball in our Easy Lunchboxes.

Hard boiled eggs

I know you do not see them to often, but I made hard boiled eggs for everyone's lunches today! I have a Thomas, Percy, Fish, Hello Kitty, Bunny, and Car hard boiled eggs today. How did I make these? Egg molds.

Here is another sight you don't see every day! Today was a snow day. Clark was in the kitchen when I decided to make lunch, so I had him pick out what bento he wanted to eat out of, he wanted the police car. To keep the others from fighting to much, I picked out the other rescue vehicles for them to eat from. Poor Clark could not wait to sit down and have lunch today. Sadly he did not eat well. None the less, he was desperate to sit down and open op his police car. I may have to order another police car and fire truck at some point. I just hate spending $30 on a smallish lunchbox that I am afraid to lose. Yes, I know some moms have lunchboxes of that price for their kids to take to school every day and they never have an issue. I am just very cheap and well, I really like these. The minions do like to eat from bentos, but I also collect them (for their use).

Everyone had their own egg today. I sliced all eggs in half, made deviled eggs, and then put the 2 halves back together. This is Colonel Sanders lunch. The green outline is done with a food safe marker.  

Clark's lunch. He had the Thomas egg. I also have blood orange slices, ham, cheese, and some blueberries.... I'm not sure why his are not pictured. Oh yeah, HE ATE THEM!

Pork got the "flat" fire truck. As you can see, it still holds quite a bit of food. The eggs are super easy to make. Hard boil some eggs. While they are still warm you need to peel them. I always put the peeled eggs back in the hot water for a minute before I put them into the egg molds. Next put them in the egg mold and close it. If you want it done "fast", put the mold in a bowl of ice water (or very cold water) for 10-15 minutes. Open it up and there you go!

Tyke got the car egg mold. I do not think my egg was warm enough when I put it in (it was the last egg and I was getting bored). It did form pretty well, but the tires have been better other times I have used this mold. Tyke had turkey for his meat. Come to think of it, I think Clark was the only one who had ham.

I know this lunch lacks some sort of fiber, trust me, we had plenty of it for breakfast (homemade whole wheat chocolate waffles), snack (homemade granola), and for dinner we are having homemade mac and cheese using whole grain noodles. While they may not have any in this meal, they are easily meeting their daily amount between other meals and snacks.

I made Julie lunch too. She has cheese and a leftover slice of blood orange. I cooked down some fruit until it became thick (when cooled) and put some homemade granola on top. I added a few blueberries for color. The sandwich is on homemade bread and consists of egg salad and spinach. On top of it is half one of one of the molded eggs. She got a bunny.

The boys are checking out what Mama made them for lunch. Mmm.....

Aunt Julie and The Colonel. Notice the Colonel. I think she wants Julie's egg.

Train lunch

Tyke wanted me to use his craft (from 2 months ago!) for my background. I can never say no to a child that proud of his work.

Today we have a biscoff and jelly sandwich in the shape of a train. Above that I have nitrate free salami and provolone cheese roll.



The bottom consists of zucchini slices, apple slices, a few blackberries, and some kiwi.

Recently someone asked about toddler bentos. The Colonel normally does get a lunch in a bento. It is not always to pretty and sometimes it just consists of scraps. Yes, I said I feed her scraps. That nice tractor sandwich above leaves a decent size piece of sandwich left. I cannot cut out another train and I may not have a cookie cutter that goes with a train to add to the lunch. So I will take that piece and give it to Colonel Sanders. Same with cheese and meat pieces. At her age, it makes no difference to her.

The Colonel turns 14 months old today! Let me tell you, she has a full mouth of teeth. I do cut some things up, but others I leave whole. She does very well eating this way. I do watch her and make sure there is no issues. If there is, I am always right there to cut items up or help in any way she may need (but has not needed).  Today Colonel Sanders has blackberries, thinly sliced apple, thin slices zucchini, Sandwich pieces, string cheese broken up, and some nitrate free salami.

Pork and Tyke opening up their bento boxes. The boxes are the same, just different colors. So I switched the 2nd tier in the lunches to change up the color a bit.

Do you like the rocket cup? I found that at Target.

There is Colonel Sanders! Today she likes her meat.

I need to clear off her high chair or move it to the garage. Since it is not in use (She prefers to stand at the table) it has become the nesting ground for various items.

Time to take Tyke to school! I decided we would walk today. So I bundled up Colonel Sanders extra warm.

Normally in the cooler months I take the lazy way out and drive to school to drop off Tyke and then at the end of the day pick up both the older minions. In the summer I walk and put minions in the wagon. We live 1/16 of a mile from the school. So that is what... 5 houses? It is around the corner from us. Clark will only ride the bus this year because he is in a special needs program.

Can you tell from my yard that I have kids? That orange thing is another part to my wagon. Tyke decided he wanted to pull his sister to school. Pork was holding my hand at this point, so you cannot see him.

Snowmen and Chili with Cornbread

Today I have 4 little ones home. Clark did not have school due to a field trip in the morning. Sadly, we were not able to go on it. :-( That's ok. He already saw Santa. That and we had a busy night last night. So he is still a little on the overstimulated side.

Lunch consists of two Biscoff and jelly snowmen sandwiches with mini chocolate chip eyes and noses, some cheese, two kiwi slices (they remind me of wreaths  and 3 slices of cucumber. The minions have not been eating to much recently.

 The Elder and Julie had leftovers for lunch today. The chili was from 2 weeks ago. There was just enough left for 2 lunch servings. So I put it in a bag and tossed it in the freezer until I decided to use it. Today was that day! I thawed the chili, spooned it into our Easy Lunchboxes, and added some grated cheese and tomato hearts.  The cornbread muffin was a leftover from the night before. I used prunes for the eyes, a dried cranberry for the nose, and nori strips for the whiskers. 

Want a picture of a minion???

Clark dancing at Aunt Becki's wedding. He loves to dance.














Isn't he cute? Clark was the only child to go. We left the other 3 with Aunt Julie.

Blogger did not like my video. So please go to my Facebook page to view it.

Making Our Own Lunch in a Egg Carton

Take the picture already! We want to decorate!

Today I decided we would do a little craft before lunch. This is one the the minions' favorite things to do. Luckily we have friends and family that save their egg cartons for us.

I needed this to be a quick craft, so I used my foam stickers. I purchased these at Walmart for about a dollar a bag. You can also purchase basic ones at the Dollar Tree. After each holiday I hit up the seasonal clearance area at Walmart and pick up the seasonal ones. My minions are younger, so they do not care if they are in season or not. Plus, then I also have extra for the next time the holiday season rolls around. I bought 2 small packs of pumpkins and acorns at Walmart yesterday for about $1.25. Sadly they did  not have any more. I have 2 shoe boxes full of these. I just kinda mix them all together.

 I took a few out of the box and made sure the extra bits were off them. If I put the whole shoe box out, we would be sitting there all day long. Not to mention they would some how migrate all over the house.

Colonel Sanders always has perfect timing. I had hopes she would remain napping during this. I have 55 minutes between getting Clark on the bus, feeding the other minions, and taking Tyke to school. Colonel Sanders fell asleep as I was getting Clark ready. She apparently decided a 15 minute power nap was all she needed. Here she is joining us at the table.

Normally I would add some paper to the top of the egg cartons so that you can see everything a little better. Also it allows the boys to use marker and crayons to help them decorate the top. I had planed on this craft last night, but decided I was to lazy to glue on paper.

See what I mean? They are having great fun, but it would be nice to not see all that ink.

In the mean time, I went to the kitchen and did some lunch prep work. I made the little sandwiches last night. Most of the veggies were already cut. One of the veggie trays was on sale at the store when I went shopping. It was near the sell by date so I got it for 40% off. I learned that for the most part, these are still good for a week. You can't beat buying one of these for $3.50ish.

I know the table is a mess. What can I say. Going from left to right, we have blackberries, ham, pomegranate, Biscoff sandwiches in the shape of a D & a duck also Hello Kitty & the letter C, cheddar cheese, figs, and a veggie tray.

I put one sandwich and the matching letter into their cartons. From there they took over. I told them to put a few bites into each spot. I know it does not seem like a lot of food, but if you filled this up and then emptied it out, you would have more than enough to feed an adult.

Tyke showing off his lunch. It looks like he grabbed a little bit of everything.

 Pork Chop and his lunch. I know he only picked some of the items because he wanted to be like Tyke. Either way, both of them had great fun picking out what they were going to eat for lunch.

Poor little Colonel Sanders was given leftovers. I don't think she minds though. She happily ate 2 pieces of ham, some cheese, one of the sandwiches, and then some pomegranate.

I know the boys really enjoy the chance to make their own lunches. Most days I make it before hand or hurry to do it while they play. I need to remember to set aside time and do more lunches where the minions help.