Sailing Away

Arr! More pirate lunches, ahoy!

In this lunch:

Watermelon pieces

Blueberries

Greek yogurt

Sandwich with Udi's GF bread

GF pie piece

Van's GF cheese crackers

Our little pirate friend is hanging out on a gluten free ham and cheese sandwich. X marks the spot in a square of gf pie, which Beaker declared the best EVER (not homemade though - I can't remember the brand name, but they are little individual pies sold at a local store). And a treasure chest of golden crunchy 'coins' is tucked in below the X.

I really love the silicone tray I used to make this frozen Greek yogurt skull. It gets a ton of use here! I keep a bag of frozen yogurt shapes in the freezer, and when the kids want a cold snack they can just pull a skull or some bones out of the bag and enjoy. I love how freezing yogurt makes it seem like a sweet treat dessert, but it has a nice pack of calcium and protein, too! And freezing it into shapes is just an extra fun bonus.

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A Day At The Pumpkin Patch

A few days before Halloween, Beaker went on his very first field trip with his kindergarten class. They went to a local pumpkin patch for a day of fun. There was a petting zoo with llamas, goats, chickens, and rabbits; a big hay bale maze and a giant hay bale pyramid to climb on; and they went on a tractor pulled hay ride out to the pumpkin fields where each kindergartener was able to choose a pumpkin to take home. Despite the wet weather, Beaker had a blast. Luckily the rain mostly stopped shortly after we arrived, leaving us with wet, muddy, soggy ground but not much falling from the sky. It worked out pretty nicely, and was mostly dry enough by the end of the morning for Beaker to be able to eat some of his lunch outside, instead of huddled in the car.

For lunch, Beaker has:

A sandwich on a Schar gluten free roll with cheese flowers

A "Jack O' Lantern" clementine

Carrot coins

Gluten free crisp crackers

Grapes

Candy pumpkins

His lunch is all packed up in an Easy Lunchbox container, which is perfect for picnics. The flat construction makes it easy to hold on your lap outside, and the simple construction means that when the rain picked up again we were able to quickly snap the lid on to keep his meal dry.

Another recent pumkin/Halloween themed lunch that I forgot to post earlier...

This lunch has:

Sandwich made with summer sausage and Udi's gluten free bread

A clementine "pumpkin"

Candy pumpkins

Cheese pieces

Crispy gluten free crackers

Baby carrots

Yogurt dyed green and frozen into skull-and-bones shapes

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Beware the Bones

Make no bones about it, this delicious lunch was a big hit with my Halloween loving Bean!

Lunch is packed into an Easy Lunchboxes bento box and includes:

Tiny mini seedless grapes

Clementine

Cucumber slices

Turkey hoagie half sandwich on a Schar gluten free roll

Mini carrot cupcake

Glutino pretzel sticks

Vanilla yogurt

The skull & bones are made with vanilla yogurt frozen into a fun shaped silicone ice cube tray. They're nestled into green sludge - also vanilla yogurt, mixed with a bit of green food dye. Fun, fast, and festive!

Speaking of fun and fast ways to make food festive, we love these little bloody bones candy decorations! They're a sweet way to add a little touch of creepy to any treat.

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Welcome to the Boneyard

Oh, how I love Halloween. SO much. This year October has been even busier than usual for me, as I just started a new job and have been working quite a lot in addition to going to school and taking care of home and the kids. I am keeping quite busy and barely know which direction I'm moving in lately. Not that I'm complaining - I love it! The blog has been much too quiet lately. But when the lovely BBF'ers were planning up a triple-play Halloween Hop, there was no way I could resist that super fun action!

For my part, I made a Boneyard lunch for Beaker. As are all of his meals, this lunch is gluten-free, soy-free, nut-free, peanut-free, egg-free, shellfish-free, and garlic-free. It's also a super simple meal, in a perfect size for a preschoolers little hands and tummy. There is plenty of scary this time of year, but no need for allergies or picky preschoolers to cause a fright!

To start, we have creepy-cool frozen yogurt skull and bones with frozen blueberries. Packing the yogurt and blueberries in while still frozen helps to keep the rest of the lunch at a nice cool temperature. By the time lunch rolls around, the blueberries have thawed a little and the yogurt has softened slightly, making a delicious and easy to eat dessert, which is also healthy. It tastes like a yummy blueberry ice cream, but has all of the nutrients, calcium, and protein of a fruity yogurt. Double WIN, nothing frightful about that!

The simple grave is made from a gluten, soy, and nut free vegan double chocolate zucchini muffin, topped with a rice cracker gravestone.

Beaker also has a broccoli floret 'grassy hill', with bites of leftover grilled pork chop and crunchy apple pieces. 

Making delicious, healthy, and fun lunches doesn't have to take a scary amount of time, either. This lunch took about twelve minutes to pack up, including the amount of work-time it took to prep the yogurt ahead of time.. Freezing the bones was pretty simple - just scoop some of your favorite yogurt into a silicone ice cube tray in a fun shape (skull and bones, in this case) and slip into the freezer for a few hours. I usually keep a tray or three in the freezer covered with plastic wrap for easy grab-and-go when needed or a fast after school snack for the kids. The muffins I also make ahead and freeze in large batches every now and again when I have a little extra time. Super time saver right there!

Have a happy happy Halloween!

Now click the button to see what spook-tacular fun awaits at What the Girls Are Having, and see the rest of the fang-ulous lunches on the hop!

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Two Days in One!

Getting back into the swing of things! 

It always takes a few days to recover from a vacation. And it seems like the better the vacation, the longer it takes to re-adjust to normal life. This week has definitely been no exception to that rule. We've been getting back in to our normal daily schedules, slowly but surely. The first day back from vacation, the kids all got lunch at school. Yesterday and today I packed lunches for [some of] them, as usual.

Bean's lunch from yesterday got us back into the Halloween theme. Only a few more days left until the big day!

She has turkey and cream cheese rolls on whole wheat tortilla, with spider ring decorations and bone picks, a peeled clementine, WELCH'S Fruit Snacks, Mixed Fruit (Google Affiliate Ad), frozen Greek yogurt skull and bones, and Spiderman Cheez Its in a spider silicone cup, all tucked into an Easy Lunchbox.

Princess has a similar lunch of turkey and cream cheese rolls with bone picks, Spiderman CheezIts, a peeled clementine, fruit snacks, frozen Greek yogurt skull and bones, and sweet bell pepper strips in a frog bento box.

I bought this frog bento box last year on clearance for $2.50 at Old Navy. Somewhere in the photo gallery is a pic from a lunch last year of the box all put together. 

I love the trick of freezing yogurt in silicone ice trays. It is so easy to pop a couple of pieces out and tuck them in a lunch. They don't stay frozen all day, but if I put them in the lunches in the morning right before the kids leave for school and put an ice pack in to the insulated lunch bags to keep everything cold, the frozen yogurt shapes are still firm enough to be an almost ice-cream-like treat at lunch time. I like using the Greek yogurt better than regular, because it has less sugar and more protein. And I think it just tastes better.

For today, all five kids requested lunches. Usually Brick and G-man prefer to get their lunch at school. Brick wanted Italian pasta salad for lunch, but specified NO veggies. Blah, how can you eat pasta salad with no veggies?! I pulled some partial packages of pasta out of the pantry and put the salad together, leaving half with no veggies and half the regular way.

Brick has his meat-and-cheese Italian pasta salad with Ritz crackers, summer sausage, cheddar cheese, and a cupcake leftover from his birthday dinner. Plastic spider rings from the Dollar Tree (and all of the orange - seriously, this a very orangey lunch!) add a little touch of Halloween.

For G-man, I packed a Biscoff spread sandwich made with Halloween cookie stamps and decorating gel. Biscoff spread is a nut-free peanut butter alternative made with cookies. It's really just smushed cookies made into a spread. I'm pretty sure it is completely devoid of any health benefits. It's more of a dessert than a protein source. But it's nut-free and safe for sending to school, and G-man ate every bite. Usually he just kind of pokes at his lunches. So, I packed in some cheddar and summer sausage slices to add a little protein, and some Ritz crackers for him to make sandwiches out of.

On top of the cupcake I used red decorating gel and "bloody bones" candy to make a bloody mess. He thought that was way cool.

The Halloween cookie stamps make drawing on the sandwich easy. I just had to follow the outline stamped in to the bread.

Bean was very impressed with the mummy lunch I made for Princess last week and requested one of her own. She has a round turkey sandwich with provolone 'bandage' strips on top, grapes, frozen Greek yogurt, and a cupcake with a sugar pumpkin.

Princess has frozen Greek yogurt skull and bones, a cupcake with a skull-and-bones sugar decoration, cheddar and summer sausage strips, sweet bell pepper stripes and a couple of grape tomatoes, and a tombstone/grave Biscoff sandwich.

The sandwich is made with Biscoff spread, bloody bones candy, wheat bread, and decorating gel. Super easy, though not exactly healthy eating!

Beaker wanted a fishy lunch today. He has a fishy shaped peanut butter sandwich with Goldfish crackers and cupcake Goldfish grahams, and cheddar and summer sausage strips. He also had a bowl of grapes on the side.

Still working on putting together a big Vacation Bento blog post. Should have that done by tomorrow! 

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