How to make sandwich-less lunches

So a few months ago Lilo told me that she no longer liked sandwiches, or that she only liked peanut butter sandwiches. Since she can't bring nuts to school that wasn't going to work. I tried to convince her that sandwiches were ok but after a week untouched sandwiches left in her lunchbox I went a different route. 

So here are some examples of lunches I have made for her.

1. Pasta salad (left over pasta with some carrots, peppers and her fav. caeser dressing), blueberries and cheddar cheese.

2. Left over peorgies, blueberries and oranges, carrots

3. Half of apple, triscuits crackers, keilbasa sausage, cheddar cheese, mini marshmallows

4. Left over lettuce wraps - rice, beef and carrots in romain leaves, cheddar cheese, red peppers

5. Chick peas, orange, cheddar cheese and oatmeal muffin

6. Rice crackers, keilbasa sausage, cheddar cheese and cucumber slices

The lunch box also has a top with a spot for a drink and 2 snacks.

She usually gets an apple juice and snacks are sometimes easy granola bars and fruit snacks, but also cransins and raisins, grapes, carrots, cheese or graham crackers.

I got the silcone muffin cups from an exchange a did a few years back and they fit perfectly, I also like to include a mini cocktail fork - it's cute and fits nicely.

So I hope I've inspired some people to mix it up for the last month of school. 

What are your kid's favourite school lunches?

Muffin Tin Monday - pink

The theme on Muffin Tin Mom's blog was actually "Orange" but we made "Pinkalicious" cupcakes this weekend so I thought we'd go with pink instead this week.

Strawberry milk, the Pinkalicious cupcake, crackers with cream cheese and raspberry jam
turkey, cherry yogurt, apple sauce with food colouring.

Of course both girls went for the cupcake first so I took Isla's away for later and told Lilo that she needed to eat everything else first before she ate the cupcake. And she did. Isla didn't eat everything but she's forgotten about the cupcake. She would only pick the icing off anyways so I might as well eat it :)

You can check out other people's Orange muffin tin meals here.

Muffin Tin Monday - ABC

This weeks Muffin Tin Monday theme is ABC/ 1 2 3. Since I've done some number muffin tins before I thought I'd work with the ABCs but do all the letters and see how many letter of the alphabet we could find food for.

I started with two 12 cup muffin tins and one 6 cup one and cut out all the letters of the alphabet and taped them to the muffin tins. Then I just started going through the kitchen seeing what would work. Lilo and I worked together. I had another small tin for Isla to snack on while we were making it. Here's what we got.

A: Apples, B: Broccoli, C: Cheese, D: couldn't think of anything, E: Elephant animal crackers, F: again drew a blank and didn't want to make any fish or french fries for lunch, G: Grapes, H: Hotdogs, I: Crushed Ice, J: Juice, K: Ketchup, L: Lion animal crackers.

M: Milk, N: Noodles, O: Orange, P: Pickles, Q: don't have anything here either (Isla dropped something but really what starts with Q), R: Red Pepper (that I will be eating when they are done), S: Syrup, T: could have been toast or tomato but I didn't do anything, U: again nothing just Isla's extras, V: Vegetables (carrots and cucumbers), W: Waffle, X: again nothing.

Finally Y: Yogurt and nothing for Z.

If I had actually planned it I might have gotten more letters but for an on the spot lunch I thought I did pretty good. Since it was a huge muffin tin lunch I had them share it and I ate the left overs :)

Check out what other people did over at Muffin Tin Mom.

Muffin Tin Monday

Happy New Year everyone
There was no theme today for the Muffin Tins so I went with some leftovers and had fun with the grapes.
Pizza cut into bite sizes, grapes on sticks, banana chips and cheese which I had tried to skewer but it didn't work.
Lilo is learning about repeats and patterns at school so I thought she'd like the grapes.
Check out other muffin tins over here.

Muffin Tin Monday (late) Christmas

I wasn't feeling super creative so this is what I came up with.

Santa hat (toast with jam and cream cheese), broccoli Christmas tree with cheese star, shortbread cookie, Christmas orange, pear reindeer again, and reindeer food (Kraft dinner since we had left overs)

Merry Christmas everyone.

Check over here for more great muffin tins.

Muffin Tin Monday - Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer

This weeks theme over at Her Cup Overflowth is Christmas stories. I originally thought it would be fun to do the 12 days of Christmas and use a large muffin tin but then I drew a blank after 4 or 5.
Last night Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer was on tv and I remembered last week someone posted this reindeer made from a pear that was super cute. So I went with that.
Snowman is made from leftover mash potatoes, pear reindeer, and the abominable snowman made from cream cheese on bread. Oh and the mini marshmallows are the snow, I couldn't think of anything for the other 2 spots.

Muffin Tin Monday - Christmas morning theme

Today's theme was Christmas morning. I made fresh waffles and then cut in 4 and put on a plate to represent a tree. Then the muffin tin was filled with treats to decorate the tree with.
Chocolate chips, almonds, apple sauce with sprinkles, bananas, craisins, mini marshmallows.

This is Lilo's decorated tree.

She was proud of her creation and ate it all.

Isla - on the other hand - ate the chocolate, marshmallows and a few bites of waffle.

Check out other Muffin Tins over here.

Muffin Tin Monday - counting

So this week was a theme-less week over at Muffin Tin Mom but since my last few weeks I've been doing theme-less ones (I know, I didn't even post them!) I thought I'd do a counting theme.

Super easy: 1 PB&J, 2 pieces of pickles, 3 carrots, 4 crackers (but I think they ended up eating about a dozen or so), 5 grapes, and 6 chocolate chips.
Lilo ate it all, and Isla ate the pickles, crackers and chocolate chips and then came over to me and tried to eat half my soup and a bunch more crackers.
Check out what other people did today.

Muffin Tin Mondays - Green Eggs and Ham

Last night while I was reading Lilo Green Eggs and Ham before bed, she asked if I liked green eggs and ham. I said that I had never tried them, maybe we could make them for lunch tomorrow. Since there was no set theme for Muffin Tin Monday I thought this would be fun.

So here are my green eggs and ham - along with the boat (that he would not eat them on)
The green eggs are egg white that I cut into circles using a cup and a scoop of avocado for the green yolk.
The ham was just painted with food colouring.
And the boat is a good ole PB&J with a cheese slice sail (that broke before I could get a photo)

Lilo will now say that she does like green eggs and ham and Isla liked the ham best - even though in the picture she has a funny face - she did like it :)
While I was making lunch Lilo got on the computer and remembered this site and wanted to watch/listen to the Green Eggs and Ham book - and then I also read the book to them while they were eating.
Check out more Muffin Tins here.

Muffin Tin Monday - Outer Space

Muffin Tin Monday theme today was Outer Space. I had idea to make aliens and stuff but I thought I'd ask Lilo what she thought was in space. She said, planets, rocket ships, star and the world. So here's what I came up with.

Top row: banana moon, PB&J rocket ship (with a little help from some icing tubes), cheese star

Bottom row: apple planet and egg rings planets (hard boiled egg sliced with an old school slicer and the yolks poked out - Lilo sometimes likes the yokes but not today.)

And I was happy that Lilo almost ate it all. Isla on the other hand was more interested in my salad.

Check out Muffin Tin Mom for other Outer Space meals

Muffin Tin Monday

This weeks theme over at Her Cup Overfloweth is "All about Me".

I decided to write out the girls names in food and give Lilo her favorite lunch.

She's funny, everyday I ask her what she wants for lunch. She stops and thinks and says, "I know, how about a peanut butter sandwich?". Like it was a new idea.

L - peanut butter and jam sandwich, i - cucumber and banana, l - more pb&J and o - spaghetti

I - cucmber, s - spaghetti, L - pb&j, and A - banana

I know they aren't in Muffin Tins - but it's still a fun lunch :) Check out Her Cup Overfloweth to see what other people did.

Muffin Tin Monday - Circus of Colors

Go on over to Her Cup Overfloweth to find out more about Muffin Tin Mondays. It's simply feeding your kids a meal in a muffin tin - just to be different.

This week even though it's a theme less week but since I didn't really do a theme last week when it was children's literature week I thought I'd do one this week. I got the idea while I was reading this book to Isla for the 4th time on the weekend.

Circus of Color by Lisa Hopp, Illustrated by Chiara Bordoni.
It's a cute book where each page is a different colour and a different performer at the circus. Here's my interpretation.




Red - Meatball with ketchup - Kooky the clown's red nose
Yellow - Apple sauce with star sprinkles - The great yellow Starini
Green - Grapes - Big green balloon that's about to POP
Blue - Yogurt with blue food colouring and face - the silly blue clown
Grey - PB&J sandwich in elephant shape - the great grey elephant (I know it's not grey but what food is)
White - Rice - the snow that's turning the circus tent white.
Pink - Also served with strawberry milk - Pretty pink tightrope walker.
I invited one of Lilo's friends over - they thought it was cool but just wanted to play so didn't eat that much. Isla enjoyed it.

Muffin Tin Monday

This week's theme from Her Cup Overfloweth is Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Since we haven't read the book or seen the movie I sorta used the theme and just threw in stuff we had in the fridge.

It's left over spaghetti, carrots, cucumber, meatballs, cheese, jello.

So I have meatballs so that's themish :)

I was going to do the muffin tin meal tomorrow instead but since Lilo didn't want dinner I thought this was a way to get her to eat. They are both eating now but I think Lilo is just eating the Jello - which she thinks is really cool.

How to do a Muffin Tin Monday meal

Michelle over at Her Cup Overfloweth came up with serving her kids meals in muffin tins. You can check out her site for lots of great ideas. Some weeks she has themes; like this week is "Apples" and other weeks there isn't. I think it's a neat idea to do something different. Some days, like today, I think I'm doing it more for me than the kids - I think Lilo would rather of just had a peanut butter sandwich.
Today we had apple slices with carmel to dip, PB & J cut into an apple shape, peanut butter and apple rolls, cucumber and dip and apple sauce.

The sandwich was cut with a pumpkin cookie cutter. The rolls are a slice of bread rolled flat with a rolling pin and then spread with peanut butter and some apple slices and roll up and cut into kids sushi. The idea came from On a Whimm blog - see over here for her tutorial - she cuts the crusts off, I didn't this time and it still worked (if your crust are firmer it would be easier to roll without them). I've also made these with cream cheese and apples to bring to nut free places.

Here are some other muffin tins we've done. This one was the "People and Faces" theme.

The top meal was Lilo's and bottom Isla's. It's PB&J cut into a man, yogurt with face, cheese cut with mini cookie cutter and some extra carrots, grapes and strawberries.

This one here was no theme - Isla's upper; pretzels, grapes, potato salad and tuna. Lilo's has good ole PB&J, grapes and pretzels.
I like how you can see Isla's hand in her's - she can't wait for me to take the picture :)
As you can see I started with just these 2 disposable muffin tins but got these super cute heart muffin tins from the Muffin Tin (MTM) swap that Her Cup Overfloweth hosted. My partner was Denise and she sent me those great muffin tins and some fun sprinkles and stuff.

I wish I had taken a picture of the fun dessert muffin tin we did once - I gave the girls bowls of ice cream and filled the muffin tin with different sprinkles, marshmallows, chocolate chips, strawberries, etc to add to their ice cream. It was yummy and a special treat for a Friday night.