We Have Pizza!!!

Most of you know that we usually have pizza on Mondays because that is the day that the school has pizza for lunch.  Well, we changed it up a little bit today and gave Molly chicken nuggets instead of pizza.  She really enjoyed it but asked immediately if she could have pizza for lunch tomorrow.  ☺  Lesson learned, ask and you shall receive.

Our main entrée is homemade pizza.  We used our favorite Trader Joe's Middle Eastern Flat Bread at our crust. We added some sauce, mozzarella and turkey pepperoni, then baked it in the toaster oven until it was looking really yummy.  We cooled it, cut it and voilà...pizza for lunch!

Our vegetable side is mini dill pickles again.  Not sure how much we'd like this combination but Molly insisted.  They both have garlic???  Maybe that's the connection?

Our fruit side is kiwi.  These are very tart kiwi but we think that Molly will like them, hopefully.

Finally, we're mixing it up a little bit and giving Molly a real dessert on a Tuesday.  She has been working so hard and doing very well with her school work.  She has been helping around the house and trying to be the best big sister ever.  (note: her little sister can be a little hard to deal with at times so no matter how hard Molly tries, there is always going to be some sort of issue.)  Molly's Daddy made a special chocolate pound cake for Mother's Day.  The recipe calls for 1 1/2 sticks of butter but we noticed a healthier version that used yogurt instead.  It is SUPER delicious the healthy way.  Thanks Tastefully Simple!

A little SPOOKY!

Tonight I had a PTA meeting and I was in charge of refreshments.  When I went to the first PTA meeting this year, Kelly, the head of hospitality, did an entire back to school themed snack.  She made a school bus shaped cake, pencils made of string cheese and Bugles for the tip, plus some other really adorable things.  I felt like I had to keep up with this stellar display of refreshments so, I made my theme Halloween and went a little nuts.  First, I had a veggie tray with hummus, real scary right?  BUT, I peeled carrots and made them look like fingers by notching out knuckles and putting a sliced almond on the tip to make it look like a finger nail.  I put these fingers in the hummus and it looked like a hand was coming out of it.  Next I mixed some Tastefully Simple Spinach and Herb Dip Mix with one brick of cream cheese and the Fiesta Dip Mix with another brick of cream cheese.  After letting them sit in the fridge for a while, I scooped out small portions and rolled them into small balls.  I put slices of olives on them and they looked like eyeballs!  These were served with crackers.  I made vampire apples by quartering some Jonagold apples and cutting out a mouth, then I pushed slivered almonds into the mouth to make the teeth.  Finally I made some brownies, frosted them with cream cheese frosting, and piped spiderwebs and spiders on top with milk chocolate.  I think everything was a hit because there were only a few veggies and a couple of apples for me to bring home.  You'll see a few of the left overs in Molly's lunch.

Our main entrée is a Castlewood Honey Ham and Castlewood Pepper Jack Cheese sandwich on whole wheat bread with a little mustard for extra flavor.  We've cut this sandwich into a ghost and pumpkin to get us in the mood for Halloween.  Headless Horseman anyone?

The vegetable side is carrots and sugar snap peas.  The carrots were cut with a crinkle knife for texture and to make it easier to bite into.  The sugar snap peas are alway a favorite and go well with the carrots because they are both sweet.

For our fruit side, we are using some of the left over vampire apples.  We chose the Jonagold apples because of their bright red color, good for lips, and their firm yet sweet texture.  The slivered almonds do become a little soft and sometimes break but that's a great way to show your kids what happens when they eat too much candy.  ☺

Finally we have Annie's Homegrown Bunny Graham Friends for dessert.  This is a great blend of chocolate, vanilla and chocolate chip graham crackers.  It's just enough sweetness to get Molly through the second half of the day.

Wheeling Wednesday

Molly requested just a mustard sandwich for lunch tomorrow.  Just mustard, maybe some pepper jack cheese, but just plain yellow mustard.  The sophisticated palate of a 6 year old never ceases to amaze me.  ☺  I said that I would be happy to make a plain yellow mustard sandwich, maybe with some pepper jack cheese, but I also had another suggestion up my sleeve.  I let her know that I had purchased some whole grain tortillas at Trader Joe's today and that I'd be happy to make a pinwheel sandwich for her instead.  This suggestion was greeted by a giant smile and a small amount of jumping.  Hence, "pin"wheeling Wednesday.

Our main entrée is a delicious and colorful pinwheel sandwich.  We flavored some light cream cheese with the Dried Tomato and Garlic Pesto mix from Tastefully Simple.  We spread some of this cream cheese on a Trader Joe's whole grain flour tortilla with flax seeds, then added some baby spinach and thinly sliced turkey.  We rolled up the tortilla and then sliced it into small pinwheels.

The veggie side is sugar snap peas.  This is such a versatile vegetable.  It can be eaten raw or steamed.  There is a very different flavor depending on how it is prepared.  The raw preparation yields a very sweet, crunchy and juicy flavor.  The steamed version makes the sugar snap pea nice and soft with just a little bit of crunch.  It is still sweet but a much more mild flavor.

Molly requested just pineapple for her fruit.  We skewered some fresh pineapple on reusable plastic lollipop sticks so that Molly could have her other "just" request.  (Hey, its yellow like mustard and its "just" pineapple, so I think she'll be pretty happy.)

For dessert, we added a few Cinnamon Schoolbook Cookies from Trader Joe's.  These cookies are not only cute, but very tasty.  We made sure to put the "M" right on top so that Molly could see her favorite letter.

Marvelous Monday

After a very full weekend I barely have the strength to even think about making lunch.  But, I refuse to give Molly a lunch ticket to what a lot of my parent friends call "carb load Monday."  Every Monday, the school serves Papa John's pizza, tossed salad, "vegetable", chilled fruit and a soft pretzel that is the size of Molly's face.  934 calories!  No wonder there is such a high rate of childhood obesity.  I am going to muster up the strength to make something nutritionally sound so that my child will make it through the school day without a lump of dough in her stomach.

Our main entrée is a ham and American cheese sandwich on home made herbed bread.  We bought the Tastefully Simple Bountiful Beer Bread mix a few weeks ago and took one of their many suggestions on how to enhance it by adding their Spinach and Herb Dip Mix.  We highly recommend keeping a few packages of the Bountiful Beer Bread mix in your pantry.  http://www.tastefullysimple.com/  You can order straight from the web site and they'll send it right to your house.  My good friend Shelley Schutzman is a wonderful consultant for Tastefully Simple, so if you are in need of some great products from a great person, look her up.

Our fruit side consists of some yummy prune plums.  Molly and her sister would eat these every day.  They are nice and small with a very sweet flesh.  *Note, these prune plums were lovingly purchased by Molly's Grammy. ☺

Our vegetables are thinly sliced cucumbers and sugar snap peas.  These are both very and crunchy and still juicy.

For dessert, we have some Ginger Cat cookies from Trader Joe's.  Its the beginning of cold and flu season and ginger has almost a dozen antiviral compounds and has been proven to prevent, as well as, treat colds.  We might as well give Molly a leg up and try to prevent her from catching whatever little bug is flying around her school this week.