Simple Lunch and Snack

Simple sandwich lunch for the Dude:

Pastrami and havarti on a croissant, with mushrooms, lettuce, and spicy mustard. Mix of blackberries, strawberries, and blueberries. Mini strudel bites and Bugles.

I love pictures of fresh berries (which is probably pretty obvious by now). They always look so luscious and pretty and tempting.

For G-man, a simple Spiderman snack:

He has blackberries, strawberries, raspberry thumbprint cookies, and Honey Maid Spiderman graham cracker bites, all packed into a $1 Spiderman sandwich box.

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Peace and Butterflies

This week was totally a Spring weather week. A day or two of constant pouring rain, and several days of bright lovely sunshine. Today was a gorgeous sunny day, perfect for playing outside and getting stuff done!

Bean is a little bit obsessed with peace signs. So when some of my bento-blogger friends mentioned peace sign shaped pretzels at Whole Foods, I HAD to find them. SO cool. Bean was very much impressed. I made her a peace sign sandwich to go with her cool new pretzels.

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She has a berry mix of strawberries, blackberries, and blueberries, honey mustard flavored Laurel Hill peace sign shaped pretzel chips with Laughing Cow cheese, a turkey and mustard sandwich on multigrain bread, carrots, and a couple of shortbread raspberry cookies.

To make the peace sign sandwich, I cut the bread, turkey, and cheese into a basic circle shape. Then I used an etching knife (like an Exacto) to cut out the shape into the top slice of bread. I filled the 'windows' with a bit of mustard to make it pop.

Super cute, right? And tasty, too! Especially with a little bit of the Laughing Cow cheese spread on top.

For Princess I packed sweet butterflies.

She has a raspberry mini strudel bar with a berry butterfly, a multigrain turkey butterfly sandwich, and baby carrots and hummus with butterfly shaped Pepperidge Farm crackers.

Berry butterfly made with blackberries for the main body and strawberry halves for the wings.

She loved these crackers. She said they were delicious AND super cute.

I packed an actual lunch for myself, too! Usually I tend to neglect my own feeding, grabbing whatever is handy as I run from one thing to the next, but for once I put together a little lunch for me.

Yogurt berry parfait, with berry granola, vanilla yogurt, strawberries, and blueberries.

The yogurt and granola did escape their silicone cups a little, but that was fine since I had planned to mix it all together anyway. It was delicious, a perfect light lunch for a bright sunny day!

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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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Follow the Yellow Brick Road...

In anticipation of the new movie opening today, Oz the Great and Powerful, my friends at BBF have put together a big blog hop! Be sure to check out the first hop from yesterday as well as all of the great posts from today!

My homage to Oz begins with the Emerald City.

The great castle of Oz is a quesadilla made with a spinach tortilla and colby-jack cheese. The yellow sweet bell pepper road leads up to the gates of the Emerald City, through a poppy field of red bell peppers and cream cheese. Princess also has a rainbow of fruit to dip in yogurt.

Pretty fruit rainbow: red strawberry, yellow banana, orange mandarin, green grape, blueberries, and purple blackberries.

When Princess came home from school she asked, "Mom, what was my lunch supposed to be?" I said, "It was the land of Oz. You know, from the Wizard of Oz?" She replied, "Are you sure? My teacher said it was the Emerald City." Total moment of YES! Someone GOT IT! I love those moments. Makes it worth the effort! <3

Not all of my lunches are so easy to figure out though. Like the above. Not exactly easy to see Glinda the Good and the Mayor of Munchkinland in there!

Bean did like her fruit rainbow, with strawberries, banana, green grapes, and blueberries.

Bugles have always looked like tornadoes to me. Tell me I'm not the only one who sees that!

Yeah... didn't turn out quite right. But if you squint your eyes and tilt your head... turkey and colby-jack Glinda the Good sandwich and an EL Fudge Munchkinland Mayor. I used the CuteZCute cutter to make the sandwich.

So, we love Halloween. And my very favorite Halloween so far was Beaker's first - I convinced the whole family to dress in theme. And what better group theme than Wizard of Oz?!

From left to right: Brick, who was not interested in dressing in theme. He made his own costume at the last minute, sort of a tilted version of the Tin Man; Bean as Glinda the Good; the Dude (his tee shirt reads "The Wizard of Oz" and he printed a quote from the book on the back, though I can't remember now what it was); Beaker as the Cowardly Lion; little Princess as Dorothy; and G-man decked out as the Scarecrow. All of the costumes were handmade, the four youngest kids' costumes sewn by me. Took a couple of weeks to get them all made (and I was still stitching Halloween morning!) but they were worth the effort. The kids still use the costumes for dress up more than three years later.

Forget cowardly. This lion is CUTE! Beaker was only four months old.

I have been trying to convince the kids to do another group costume theme ever since. No luck so far, but I'm still trying!

Now, follow the yellow brick road to the next blog in the hop!

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Parents Eat Lunch, Too!

Sometimes I get busy. Super crazy busy. And when that happens I will often just grab the easiest thing for lunch ~ usually fast food. Yick. So very not good for you. The Dude does the same, and we are working on breaking that bad habit. A big help is making sure that we pack a lunch for ourselves when we know we'll be out all day. 

Here are a few of the lunches I packed up for the Dude to take to work this week...

This one is fried rice with grilled prawns, a mix of blackberries and blueberries, and a couple of Girl Scout cookies.

Leftover grilled lemon prawns go very nicely on a bed of fried rice with egg and veggies.

Fresh berries... YUM!

This one is a wrap with blueberries, blackberries, a mandarin orange, and a couple of mini fruit struedel bites.

The wrap is made with pastrami and havarti cheese, with lettuce, mushrooms, bell peppers, and a little bit of Caeser dressing rolled up in a jalapeno cheddar tortilla. Dude said it was delicious!

Another leftovers lunch. This one is baked salmon and broccoli over rice, with a pair of Girl Scout cookies, some clementine segments, and a sliced kiwi.

The little fish bottle was perfect for holding soy sauce to sprinkle over the rice. And Easy Lunchboxes are perfect for packing a full meal, even one that needs to be warmed!

What are your favorite meals to pack for a grown-up lunch?

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