Marathon Lunch

If you follow this blog, you may know that Molly's Daddy and I will be running the Pittsburgh Half Marathon this Sunday.  This is Daddy's second half marathon and Mommy's 1st.  I'm excited and terrified at the same time.  I trust in my training and the shape that my body is in so I'm confident that it will be an absolute blast.

In honor of this massively amazing event, we decided to theme Molly's lunch with fun little bits from our training as "Runners of Steel" in our awesome city.

Our main entree is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  We used whole grain white bread, spread on some natural peanut butter and low sugar strawberry jam.  Then, we used our food safe markers to create a running shoe.

Our vegetable side is frozen peas.  These will thaw down and be a great cool addition.  The peas remind us of the little sport jelly beans that we use to fuel during long runs.  They are also a great source natural carbohydrate, something that runners are always looking for.

Our fruit side is a banana with some Nutella inside of it.  Runners love bananas for potassium and a quick sugar boost with carbohydrate.  We also added the word RUN using a strawberry fruit leather and our alphabet micro cookie cutters.

Our dairy side is a cheddar and mozzarella cheese stick.  This is a great source of protein.  A runner needs a certain amount of protein to fuel their muscles and keep their appetite satisfied long after the carbohydrates have burned off.

Finally, our dessert is Mommy's favorite post race snack.  Pretzels with a few dark chocolate chips.  The salt helps to keep electrolytes in check and the chocolate, well, it's dark chocolate...enough said.

Best of luck to our fellow Runners of Steel as we all tackle the City of Bridges!

Back from some time off

We took last week off from Molly's Lunch Box and Molly bought her lunch all week.  What?  Well, on Monday, Mommy was too tired to make lunch because she was up at 4am on Sunday getting ready to run her leg of the Pittsburgh Marathon with the Moms on the Move relay team.  An absolute blast but very tiring.  On Tuesday, there was no school because of election day since they use the school as a voting place.  Then, the rest of the week, Daddy was in Las Vegas for business so Mommy was pretty busy keeping the house in order by herself.  Now, Daddy is back and Mommy is well rested so we're back at it.

Our main entrée is a real quesadilla.  We used two flour tortillas and filled them with shredded cheddar cheese.  We toasted this on the stove then cut it into triangles.  This is being served with a side of jalapeño salsa.  Yes, Molly likes spicy food.

Our vegetable side is cucumber sticks.  We haven't had these for a little while and Molly is asking for them so we are happy to oblige.

Our fruit side is strawberries and blackberries.  Molly picked out these blackberries at the store and hasn't had a chance to eat any yet so we're tossing the last few into her lunch so that she gets a taste.

Finally, our dessert is Smarties.  This is in homage to Molly's Uncle Greg who ran the full 26.2 miles of the Pittsburgh Marathon because he loves Smarties.  Way to go, Greg!