Our favorite lunch lady

This summer the park near our home hosted breakfasts and lunches for children.  Just show up and take one.  My children enjoyed them and made good friends with the very friendly supervisor, Miss Maria.

Now I have to get back to thinking up new and exciting meals after a good rest this summer.

Little Pink Riding Hood

My creative Sophia told me she wanted me to make her a lunch today (my girls usually buy their lunch at school).  I said okay, then saw what was *really* wanted:  lunch in a real basket, covered with a real cloth.

As she headed out the door she delightedly told me she was Pink Riding Hood today because she had a pink hoodie on under her pink coat.

I'm guessing this will be the first lunch in a basket with a cloth covering it that her teacher will have seen.

It's that fourth meal that does it

This was one of those annoying yet funny things that happens when you have children and it has to do with school lunches. I almost always pack school lunches for my three daughters because 1)I want to know what they are eating and 2)to save money. I can pack a lunch, including packaged items for about half what the school charges. I have a deal with the girls that they bring home everything they don't eat so I can see what is actually being eaten and what isn't and can adjust what I put in their bags in the future. In return, I don't get mad at them for not eating something or whatever those lunch bags may reveal.

Lately I've been noticing S coming home with practically her whole lunch. She sits down at the counter in the kitchen, pulls everything out and eats it as her after-school snack. My thought was that after the morning snack in the classroom she probably ate one small thing from her lunch, then rushed out to the playground to get started on recess. Kind of sweet and no wonder she was hungry after school.

This is the note that came home with her yesterday. Click to enlarge it if you can't read it here. I had NO IDEA this was going on!!! No wonder she brought her lunch home! No wonder she has a more average weight than the other girls (the others are very slender). It's that fourth meal that has been keeping her in the pink of health! I have now made it extremely clear to her that if I send a bag lunch with her, that is the lunch she is to eat. If she wants a heavy snack when she gets home, she is welcome to have one.

Oh, I purposely made her a bag lunch today and made a big deal out of telling C and E they can have a school lunch today and what the various options are for them. I hope they all enjoy their lunches!

Brown Baggin' It

I make my daughters' lunches for several reasons: they are picky eaters, they eat a small quantity of food, and I can pack a lunch for at most half what the school cafeteria charges. Do I enjoy packing lunches? Not really, but as someone pointed out, I have to make lunch for them regardless of where they eat it, so does it really matter whether I make it the night before and put it in a bag vs. make it at 11:30 am to be eaten immediately?

This lunch met with mixed success. I made turkey wraps.First was a layer of ranch dressing (should have used a bit more because I could hardly taste it), then the meat, and last a lettuce leaf. I rolled it up and stuck it with a couple of toothpicks because 1) they're easy and 2) the girls like them. Each girl had half a wrap. I added the rest of the lunch and sent the girls off with them.

The mixed success part was that two of the three girls brought most of the wrap home, along with 1:3 bags of mandarin oranges, 1:3 bags of fruit snacks, and even 1:3 Girl Scout cookies! Oh well. The positive part was that my mom and I thought the 1 1/2 wraps we ate for lunch were really delicious!

Annoyed and a gold star

I'm annoyed because this is what happened when I tried to make a nice lunch for my daughters: they didn't eat it. I know eating bag lunches five days a week can be a bit boring, so when I was at the store on Monday I bought some tissue-thin roast beef at the deli counter, along with some pre-sliced cheddar cheese in the deli case. C doesn't like American cheese and has convinced the other girls it is not edible, and I didn't want to cut up regular cheese and have little pieces falling out of the sandwiches, so I sprang for the expensive stuff.

So I made roast beef and cheddar sandwiches on whole wheat sunflower seed bread. I made sure to tell them it was cheddar cheese, just like our normal cheese, NOT American cheese. And they put their sandwiches right back in their bags and brought them home. ~sigh~ At least they brought them home so I could see what they didn't eat before I threw them away.

So much for trying to make something nice.

I did get a gold star yesterday though. I was over at the store again (see the post below) and the local police were having a car seat check in the parking lot. I think I'm pretty good at installing the girls' carseats, but I've never had a chance to have them officially checked so I pulled in. I filled out various bits of paperwork and they checked my carseats for recalls. Then they checked my installation. Let's just say that when they tried to wiggle the seats the whole car rocked. :-) The seats were installed absolutely correctly and tight. I got a gold star.

Fast and easy school lunch, nutrition not included

On Fridays I'm tired of making school lunches for the girls. I try to put at least a little creativity into their lunches and as a non-creative person, that's hard. Friday is my day off, so they usually have prepackaged food in their lunches on Friday. I think this was about the most prepackaged they've had though.

"Cheez" and "breadsticks"

"fruit" rollups

chocolate pudding (the most nutritious thing in the lunch)

flavored water

plastic spoon

throwaway paper bag

The good part is the girls really like this kind of lunch, probably because they don't get it more than once a week.