Grilled avocado circle sandwiches, refried rice, and grapes
I have recently become a new convert to pinterest. I LOVE it. I have gotten so many good ideas for recipes, birthday parties, cool lunches for Judah, and lots of other things. If you are unfamiliar with Pinterest, it is basically a social bookmarking site, a virtual bulletin board, if you will. You see things you like and you pin its picture to your “site” then you can look at what other people are “pinning” and if you like something they like you can repin it to your own board. You know, for safe keeping, to look at/refer to later. I’ve pinned all sorts of good recipes, lunch ideas, craft projects, etc and you can see them all by visiting my Pinterest page here.
Cheese Toast cut with leaf cookie cutter, apple slices, pretzels, and "acorn" dessert {mini nutter butter and a hershey kiss}
My most recent obsession is bento lunches. Judah is a pretty good eater – as far as variety goes. However, lately he has been eating less and less, especially at lunch time. He has better things to do…like build train tracks in my living room. I’ve been board with lunch too. I feel like we’re constantly eating the same things and I’m scrambling to figure out what to feed us. And, with another little one taking up a lot of my time I don’t have a lot of time for scrambling!
You should know by now that I am a die hard dinner menu planner. I plan a week or two at a time on my menu planner and I hang it on my fridge for quick reference. That way I can lay out any items I need to in the morning or the evening before. I’ve never really planned lunch because we usually have leftovers and it has always been a no brainer. However, lately there seems to be less leftovers to go around and often Judah isn’t interested in eating the same thing again the following day. Then, I found this cute lunch planner {from anythingbutperfect.com} and decided that I would give it a whirl. Using some of the cool ideas for lunches I found on Pinterest I planned a whole month of lunches. Of course, I might mix up some of the days and we might miss a day or two, but at least I’ve got lots of ideas waiting on me and I won’t have to give lunch much thought for a while and Judah will be getting lots of variety and healthy choices.
Rolled ham and cheese sandwich, chocolate pudding with sprinkles, sweet potato puffs, strawberries & grapes
Some of the lunches are using leftovers {like the top picture where I used leftover white rice to make refried rice}. Some of the lunches are themed {like the second photo above and the one right under this one that both have a fall theme}. Some of the lunches are bento lunches {using our laptop lunch bento box like the one above and the planet lunchbox in the final picture of this post}. And, finally, some of the lunches are muffin tin meals {like the picture below}.
Fall/Outdoor Theme: Cream cheese and strawberry jam sandwiches cut into acorn shapes using the heal to make the tops, pretzel "sticks," pumpkin shaped organic peach, acorn dessert, chocolate "dirt" pudding {oreo cookie crumbs}, grapes "stones"
Besides finding lots of ways to make Judah’s lunches cute and more appealing, I’ve also found lot of new sandwich fillings and presentations. The top picture is of a grilled avocado and swiss cheese circle sandwich. I found the recipe in $5 Dinner Mom’s breakfast and lunch cookbook {one of my absolute favorite cookbooks – tons of great ideas and recipes that my whole family will eat and that don’t require any strange/hard to find ingredients!}. These were absolutely delicious! The picture just above is an acorn cream cheese and jam sandwich {which is Judah’s new favorite} where I used the heal of the bread to trim off some brown tops for the acorns. My son, who always pulls the crust off ate both acorn sandwiches – crust and all! I’ve also been serving the sandwiches open face {like the leaf cheese toast and the turkey and cheese flower in the bottom photo} and Judah really gobbled them up. Just by leaving the top piece of bread off he was instantly more interested in eating a sandwich! The rolled sandwiches are a piece of bread rolled flat with a rolling pin and then filled with cheese and ham and rolled and sliced.
Turkey and cheese open faced sandwich cut with a flower cookie cutter with a half of a grape center, pretzels, green grapes, yogurt, and cholate pudding and oreo "dirt" dessert {with organic vitamin gummy worms from Earth Fare}
These are the pictures of a week of Judah’s lunches. This was the first week I gave this new lunch thing a whirl. So far, Judah has been thrilled with his lunch and has been eating a lot better. He asks what he is having for lunch now and on Friday he asked to see while I was preparing it. Seriously. He took a break from train engineering to come into the kitchen and stand on his learning tower step stool to watch me and get in on the action too! I’ve had fun making them too, so I’d say these lunches are a success.
I’ll continue sharing Judah’s lunches and photos. I hope it will inspire some new ideas for you! And, I’d love to see your photos and hear your ideas too! Bon Appetite! (:
One of my favorite local restaurants is Bella Roma. It is a locally owned Italian/Greek restaurant and they used to have a dhish on the menu called Pasta Palomino. Occassionally, they will have it as a special now, although it isn’t on the regular menu any more. I was really sad when I found out I couldn’t get it all the time.
