First Day of School

Oh, wow! How is it that time of year again already?! It seems to sneak up faster and faster every year. One minute it's June and you're saying good-bye to your school friends, and the next minute it's September and time again for the rush to find school supplies and get everything organized for the new year.

This year I have all five of my kids in school! Five kids in four different schools is taking a lot more organization than I expected, but I suspect we'll get the hang of things over the next few months.

Brick (who hates having his picture taken and ran as soon as he saw the camera come out) is in tenth grade now. G-man is in eighth, his last year of middle school. Bean is in sixth grade, and Lulu is in third grade. Beaker just started kindergarten, but since he is in a completely different school program than his siblings, his first day was half a week later than theirs.

Of course they needed special lunches for the first day of school! Except for G, who was even more excited about the school pizza than he was about seeing his friends again. 

Bean has switched to a gluten-free diet like Beaker, to help clear up some health issues from last year. So far it has been helping, we think. For her lunch I packed a cute sandwich on gluten-free bread, with rolls of turkey scraps on the side. She also has a pair of Lucy's GF cookies, cucumber slices with carrot flowers, Glutino pretzel crisps (with a cheese 6), and fruit.

Grapes and oranges are some of the only fruits she can eat without allergy symptoms flaring up, so it's a good thing that they are so easy to pack for lunches!

For Lulu, a sweet little tiger sandwich on multigrain bread. Tucked in the top is a few mini golden Oreo cookies, with carrot coins and cucumber flowers on the bottom. She also has pretzels - with a cheesey 3 - and fruit, too.

Her little tiger and Bean's mouse were made with the new CuteZCute Cuddle Palz set from BentoUSA, and Lulu has a pair of triangle sandwiches cut from the scraps.

Bean and Lulu both have their lunches packed in our favorite Easy Lunchboxes.

Brick has a very similar lunch, packed in a Sistema Cube. I tucked a granola bar in for an energy boosting snack - high school tends to have some long days.

Brick took his lunch to school packed in this fun lunchbag I found over the summer. He said he got quite a few head turns and strange looks. Can't imagine why...

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My (Other) Favorite Love Story

Remember last year, when I said that my favorite love story is The Princess Bride? Well, recently I was reminded of my other favorite love story.

It is a love as true and deep as the sea. A love that withstood the tests of time and trouble. A love unparalleled. A pair that you just know will be together forever, whatever life may throw at them.

JD and Turk, besties forever!

I love Scrubs. It is still one of the greatest shows ever made! My favorite episode is "My Way Home", but "My Musical" is second on my list for sure.  

It's February, and that means its time for love-themed lunches. I'm kicking it off with my first Valentine's lunch of the year by paying homage to the best couple on TV.

Caesar salad in a Sistema Cube, topped with parmesan cheese and cracked black pepper, with chicken and dressing on the side.

Also included are some carrots, a heart-shaped silicone cup full of croutons, and small red grapes.

Also, Zach Braff's fabulous hair. And a chocolate bear. Because Turk is JD's Chocolate Bear, of course!

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Carnitas Salad Lunch

Yum! Around here, carnitas is a favorite dinner. And it makes excellent lunch leftovers! To make the carnitas, I use a recipe similar to this one, except for mine I skip the garlic (since Beaker is allergic to garlic) and use my onion powder instead, and my own homemade broth. And I add a generous pinch of black pepper and ground red pepper for a little spice. The results are delicious, and SO easy. I just have to drop the meat in the crock pot with the spices and broth in the morning and by evening we have a delicious dinner, almost ready to go. It is also really good with a beef roast instead of pork.

Another super easy way is to just dump the meat in the crock pot and cover it with a good coating of ground black and red pepper, cumin, coriander, a dash of cayenne, and a sprinkle of onion powder. No liquid necessary, just let it stew in its own juices all day. Then pull the meat out and shred it at the end of the day. Done! This method is fantastic with beef or chicken.

For dinner, I like to serve the shredded meat with cilantro, diced onions, lime, shredded cabbage, sour cream and guacamole, and black beans, with lightly softened corn tortillas. SO yummy!

For lunches, the leftovers make a great salad!

This is just shredded cabbage with carnitas on top. A few halved cherry tomatoes decorate the corners.

On the side is a cup of salsa and some seven layer bean dip, with a tasty fruit salad. The container lid fits pretty flush, but to be extra certain that the bean dip stayed where it's supposed to I dropped a couple of silicone baran pieces on top. I also included a smaller container full of crispy tortilla chips for crunch.

Delicioso!

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The Impossible Astronaut

One week until new episodes of Doctor Who air! 

My Whovians are counting down the minutes.

My biggest kid's 8th grade class took a tour of the high school Friday. Great way for entering freshman to get a feel for the layout of the school, the class structure, the clubs and sports offered. He needed a lunch and requested... what else? Doctor Who, of course. G-man and Bean had just watched the episode The Impossible Astronaut earlier in the week, so it was on my mind.

Hard boiled duck egg with cheddar rockets, apple chunks, and fake Jammie Dodgers.

Flirty pasta salad.

Egg wears a stetson now. Stetsons are cool.

Fellow Whovians, remember to check back on April 23 for Impossible Astronaut Day. And plant yourselves in front of the tube in a week for the new episode! We are very curious here as to what will happen next.

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St. Patrick's Froggy

Saint Patrick's Day is one of Bean's favorite days. Most likely because green is her favorite color, and because it means her birthday is nearly here.

Today I realized that it is only a week to St. P's and we haven't done any theme lunches for the day yet. Time to rectify that error!

For Beaker's lunch today, a sweet and tasty leprechaun froggy.

I found this two section plate at Target for a buck. Super cute, and the perfect size for Beaker's meals.

Adorable froggy sandwich made with roasted turkey, colby jack cheese, and the CuteZCute cutter.

Fresh sweet blackberries are the perfect side for a little froggy snacking.

Plus some baby carrots and cucumber pieces with ranch for dipping.

For Bean, a pretty simple lunch to take on a field trip.

She has a turkey sandwich, baby carrots and peace sign pretzel crisps with Laughing Cow cheese, frozen yogurt, and a fruit toss with green grapes, blueberries, and blackberries.

The frozen yogurt bites were made using a flower shaped silicone ice cube tray from Ikea. 

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The Pandorica Opens

To say that we are a house of Doctor Who fans would be a major understatement. My family of Whovians are waiting impatiently for the show to return March 30th with brand new episodes. The younger kids are still catching up to current (they just finished one of my favorite episodes, Vincent and the Doctor, a few days ago), but the biggest kid has seen them all and quite a few of the older episodes as well. He has been sick for the last few days and has spent most of the week curled up in a recliner in the living room with a comfy blanket and a Doctor Who marathon. He finally felt well enough to go back to school today and asked me to pack a lunch for him.

I thought a Whovian lunch, packed in his fantastic TARDIS lunch box (a Christmas gift to Brick from a wonderful friend of mine <3 ), would be a nice surprise...

The last episodes he watched while huddled up with hot tea were The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang. The Sistema Cube made a great Pandorica, doncha think?

I made him a turkey and havarti croissant sandwich, with green grapes, multigrain tortilla chips, hummus, carrots, and a mini apple strudel dessert.

Colby-jack cheese letters spell out PANDORICA on top of the sandwich. 

It's a strawberry fez. Strawberry fezes are cool.

I love how neatly the lunch fit in this lunch box. The TARDIS tin lunch box is not big, but it is deep, leaving plenty of space for even the large Sistema Cube container. It was Brick's favorite Christmas gift, for sure. I also packed in a vitamin-rich Naked Berry Blast juice for a nice health boost, and there was space under the bottle of juice for an ice pack to keep everything cold.

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Butterfly Salad

One for me! 

Since I spent the day at class and in the tutoring center trying to figure out the class, I packed a rare lunch for myself. Need to do that more often ~ it was delicious! And fast to make, too. I sliced the fruit earlier in the day when making lunches for the kids, so that was all ready to go. And the greens for the salad were pre-cut and waiting in the fridge, too. All I had to do was cut the butterfly shapes in the cheese and put everything together in the Sistema Cube. I think it took less than five minutes!

Butterfly salad with a pepper turkey roll, side of Caesar dressing, and Goldfish for crunch, a fruit mix of sliced mangoes, kiwi, and strawberries, and a couple of chocolate mints.

The fruit is such pretty colors, and utterly delicious. I love fresh sliced mangoes! And kiwi with strawberries, YUM!

The salad was both tasty and beautiful. Spring garden mixed greens with snap peas, a sprinkle of bacon bits, and colby-jack butterflies.

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Leftover Chicken, Three Ways

The other night we had grilled marinated boneless chicken breasts for dinner. The Dude cooked it up, and he made potatoes and brussel sprouts on the side. Delicious! There was a lot of chicken leftover, which is exactly how I like it. Perfect leftovers for lunches!

For lunches the next day, I sliced the leftover grilled chicken into thin slices and strips. Using that chicken, I made three different lunches for three different people, using the chicken in three different ways.

First, a lunch for the Dude. I used the thin sliced chicken for the sandwich. The chicken is snuggled up onto a croissant with some spring mix greens and spicy mustard, topped with a grape tomato. He also has a hard boiled duck egg, a few mini Oreos, and a few strawberries.

Yep, that's a little teddy bear pick for my big construction worker husband. It's the little things that make me smile. I have a slightly off-center sense of humor, to put it mildly.

For Bean I used the chicken to make a big salad. I filled the largest section of a Sistema Cube with the spring greens mix and laid the chicken out on the bed, spreading bacon crumbles on top, with ranch dressing on the side. Also tucked in is a hard boiled duck egg on a bed of spinach leaves, a few mini Oreos, and some halved strawberries.

Most of us here are big salad lovers. A big tub of spring greens from Costco generally disappears pretty quickly around here.

Pretty colors, too! I was glad to see strawberries in the store the other day. Hoping they still have some tomorrow; they're Beaker's favorite.

For G-man, I used the chicken strips to make a pirate boy lunch. Which he remembered to take to school... but forgot in the classroom when it was time to go to lunch. At least he ate some of it when he got home.

For his lunch, the chicken is sliced into pieces and placed in a jumbo silicone baking cup, with a little dish of barbecue sauce on the side for dipping. He also has a hard boiled egg shaped like a fish, snowflake Ritz, pirate gold chocolate coins, strawberries, and tangelo segments.

Strawberries run through with pirate swords:

Leftovers are a fantastic way to stretch the grocery budget, prevent waste, and get creative with lunches. With just a little imagination and a few other ingredients, dinner from last night can become a great lunch for tomorrow!