Tag Archives: veggies
5 Jan

1-5-16

Hi guys!

Long time no see huh?

Yeah, about that….

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Daily Bento

12 May

Hi there!

Remember me?

I used to blog here but got lazy and took a bit of a break.

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Daily Bento

16 May

The lunches are back!

I haven’t posted in a while so I have quite a bit of catching up to do.

These particular lunches that I’m about to share with you were my husband’s lunches/snacks over the past week.

Camryn has been bringing a lot of leftovers that have been warmed in her thermos for lunch, and those just don’t photograph well.

So, grown up lunches it is!

 

For the lunch pictured above, I used a rolling pin to flatten two slices of wheat bread and filled each one with a little egg salad. Then I cut them into bite-sized pieces. I tucked some puffed wheat crackers in next to the egg salad rolls-ups, and added cucumber slices, raspberries, and celery sticks. The sauce containers hold peanut butter and blue cheese dressing for dipping.

 

This Easy Lunchbox holds a veggie-heavy sandwich (turkey, mashed avocado in place of mayo, sprouts, lettuce, tomato, homemade pickles on multi-grain bread) with a few cucumbers on the side, sweet potato and brown rice crackers, and strawberries filled with spicy vegan chocolate pudding (recipe to come).

 

On Wednesday afternoon, I whipped up some delicious avocado hummus. Unfortunately, it goes bad fairly quickly thanks to the avocado, so I used quite a bit of it to make the Mr.’s work lunch. I smeared a good helping of the hummus on a multi-grain wrap and topped it with lettuce, shredded carrot, sliced red onion, thinly sliced cucumber, and sprouts. Then I rolled it up tightly, sliced it in half, and it was good to go. I threw in some pita chips, a few of my quick and easy peanut butter bars, and extra hummus for dipping in the fish container.

 

Avocado Hummus

1 15 oz. can of canellini beans – rinsed and drained

1 avocado

juice of a lime

1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

a couple pinches of cayenne pepper – optional, except in my house 😉

salt and pepper to taste

Blend until smooth.

Store in an air tight container in the fridge. Best eaten within a day or two.

 

Quick & Easy Peanut Butter Bars

1/2 cup peanut butter – I used Wild Friends Sesame Cranberry PB

1/2 cup maple syrup or honey – I used maple syrup

1 1/2 cups quick-cooking oats

1/4 tsp cinnamon

optional add-ins – about a handful of dried fruit, chocolate chips, nuts, and/or seeds

Add the peanut butter and maple syrup to a large microwave safe bowl and microwave until smooth enough to mix together. This took about 30 seconds in my microwave. You can also do this in a pot on the stove.

Mix well until combined and add the rest of the ingredients. Mix to incorporate everything together and dump into an 8×8 pan.

Press to form an even layer and let sit for a couple of hours at room temp before eating. This helps the oats to soften.

You can also roll the mixture into balls if you prefer.

Store covered at room temperature.

 

This super simple lunch contains fresh zucchini, carrot, and celery slices, more peanut butter bars, dates filled with Wild Friends Cinnamon Raisin PB, and a little chocolate.

 

The lunch pictured above contains one of my new favorite sandwiches: A flaky croissant filled with ham, thinly sliced Bosc pear, and Muenster cheese. If you haven’t tried that combo you’re missing out. It’s delicious!

If you do try it, slice the croissant, add the cheese and pop it in the oven for a few minutes until the cheese is melted, then add the ham and pear. That’s the best way, it just is.

To go with the sandwich, I added some strawberries, raspberries, and sweet peppers that I sliced in half and filled with tzatziki.

 

This lunch is packed in one of my favorite cheapo containers that I found at Marshall’s a while back. I think I paid less than $5 for this one and I use it all the time so it was worth every penny.

Not wanting to make another sandwich or wrap, I added chopped chives to softened cream cheese and then spread a little onto a few slices of turkey. Then I wrapped the turkey around a few of my homemade pickle spears and called it done.

Also included in this lunch are carrot sticks, broccoli, blueberry Belvita biscuits, sweet potato and brown rice crackers, and a couple of pieces of chocolate in this sweet little food cup. The sauce container holds ranch dressing for dipping.

 

I hope these lunches will inspire your own lunch packing next week. Seriously, try that ham, pear, and cheese on croissant. It’s so good!

Have a great weekend!

 

 

 

Daily Bento

10 Feb

Today’s lunch might seem odd… especially for a six-year-old.

What you see pictured above in Cam’s thermos are the reheated leftovers from last night’s dinner: Pumpkin polenta with roasted brussels sprouts.

I also roasted some cremini mushrooms along with the sprouts but Cam isn’t a fan of mushrooms so those didn’t go into today’s lunch.

I had a spur of the moment dinner idea last night and ran with it. Luckily it worked out and everyone loved it, especially Camryn.

She specifically requested that I send it for lunch today.

What kid asks for brussels sprouts for lunch?

She’s awesome.

In addition to her polenta and sprouts, I filled her Lunchbots Trio with fresh strawberries and tomatoes, sliced sweet peppers, a Babybel, and some cheese crackers.

 

 

 

 

 

Daily Bento

3 Dec

Lunch today is in one of our ELB Brights and consists of a chicken sandwich, strawberries, one single solitary grape, sweet pepper rings, and some veggie straws.

I smooshed a My Little Pony ring into the sandwich to cutify it a bit. I think that’s Pinkie Pie but I’m not totally sure.

Daily Bento & Snack

18 Nov

bento & snack

 

Hi!

How have you been?

What have you been up to?

You’re probably wondering where I’ve been.

No posts in over two weeks. What’s that about?

I’d love to tell you that I was on vacation or doing something so interesting and wonderful that keeping the blog current just slipped my mind but that’s not the case.

Unfortunately we’ve been dealing with strep for the last three weeks.

Three weeks people.

I swear my youngest is a magnet for whatever bacterial or viral scourge is going around. If it’s out there, she’ll pick it up and bring it home with her.

I learned recently that nothing will jerk you out of REM sleep faster than a little one screaming for you to come get them and carry them to the bathroom because they “can’t see out of their eyes” and they’re too dizzy to walk.

Needless to say that warranted a trip to the pediatrician which resulted in a throat swab and a prescription for antibiotics.

But not 24 hours after finishing her ten-day course of antibiotics, the strep came back. With a vengeance.

She’s now on her second ten-day course of a much stronger antibiotic and seems to be doing much better.

So… that’s what I’ve been up to.

Now that we’re caught up, let’s talk lunch!

Today is Monday which means that Cam needs snack. So I packed her a homemade organic blueberry and white chocolate chip muffin, some fresh pineapple, and a mix of pumpkin, sunflower, and flax seeds in the little rainbow box.

For lunch, she has four little sandwiches, Cheez-Its, a chocolate drizzled honeycomb flapjack from our Graze box, a fruit rope that I cut in half to fit in the box, some yellow tomatoes, and a few carrot coins.

Juice

30 Sep

Let’s talk juice.

Not store-bought, bottled juice that’s probably loaded with sugar, corn syrup and other artificial colors and flavors that we don’t need.

Actual juice from fruits and veggies. Nothing else added except for a few ice cubes and some filtered water.

Don’t have a juicer? Neither do I.

But if you have a good blender, you can make juice.

Just throw any combo of fruits and veggies that you like into your blender along with a few ice cubes and enough filtered water to get things moving and you’re good to go!

You can use pretty much any combination of fruits and vegetables. Here’s the concoction that I came up with this past weekend, just based on what I had in the crisper:

1 cup of kale leaves

1 carrot – peeled and chopped

2 apples – cored and chopped

1/2 cup of pineapple (I used crushed because that’s what I had in the fridge)

3-4 ice cubes or a handful of crushed ice

1/2-1 cup of filtered water

Directions:

Put everything into a blender and let it whirl around for a couple of minutes at least so that everything can get incorporated really well.

Pour the mixture through a fine mesh strainer lined with a couple of paper towels or cheese cloth. Or if you had to throw your fine mesh strainer away because your kids kept swatting each other with it or trying to make a helmet for your cat out of it, than just line a regular strainer (with smaller holes, preferably) with a couple of paper towels and strain.

I don’t like pulp in my juice so I had to strain 2-3 times to get things nice and clear but if you don’t mind a few little kale bits, than once should be just fine.

Yes, that juice is the color of dirty ditch water but I promise, it doesn’t taste like dirty ditch water. Not that I can say from experience what dirty ditch water tastes like but I’m pretty sure this tastes better.

If the color makes your kids turn their noses up, pour it into a thermos and serve it to them that way. You can add more pineapple if you think it needs more sweetness.

Remember, you can use any combination of fruits and veggies that you like so if you just can’t get over the color of my glass of juice, you could always make a more visually appealing juice out of any combination of pineapple, watermelon, berries, citrus, apples, carrots, plums, apricots, and beets.

Whatever you decide to use will be much healthier than anything you can buy in a bottle.

* With Halloween coming up, I can’t help but think that this juice would make a great party drink for kids. Just pour some into clear glasses and call it “Swamp Muck” or “Cauldron Juice” or “Wicked Witch Sweat” or “Hazardous Waste” you get the idea. 😉

Daily Bento

23 Sep

Cam is home sick today.

We made it exactly one month from the start of the school year before she was taken out by some nasty cold germs.

Apparently this funk is going around because lots of other kids are out of school right now too.

She was kind enough to share with her father too so he’s currently in bed with the covers pulled over his head.

Whenever those two are sick, they only want my veggie soup, so I made a big pot of it last night so that they could have lots of leftovers to get them through the next couple of days.

It’s a great way to use up veg that may be a bit past it’s prime but still useable.

I normally don’t care much for soup but I love this one. I think it’s the beans and pasta that make it so yummy.

The recipe is below.

 

 

Cam has some of her favorite veggie soup, a couple slices of french bread for dipping, and a piece of pineapple upside down cake for lunch in her ELB today.

It’s been rainy and gloomy all morning. Hopefully I can get her to curl up on the couch after lunch and take a nap.

I’m not counting on it but a girl can dream.

 

Cam’s Favorite Veggie Soup

onion

garlic

celery

bell pepper

carrots

kale

28 oz. can of diced tomatoes

4 cups stock or broth (I use veggie)

small pasta like Ditalini or Stars

1 can of white beans (northern, canellini) rinsed and drained

1 bay leaf

seasoning to taste (salt & pepper, oregano, Italian seasoning – whatever you like)

 

Directions

Slice all vegetables about the same size and saute them in a little extra virgin olive oil until tender.

Add canned tomatoes with juice, stock, kale, and seasoning. Bring to boil, then reduce to simmer and put a lid on top.

While the soup simmers gently, boil a pot of water for the pasta.

Just before the pasta is done, add the beans to the soup and remove the bay leaf.

When the pasta is done, drain, and add to each soup bowl. How much pasta you add is up to you.

Pour the soup over the pasta and enjoy!

I don’t leave the pasta in the soup because it turns to mush. I keep it in an air-tight container in the fridge and just add it to each bowl of soup as I need it.

 

There are no measurements or amounts because this is another one of those no-recipe recipes. You can adapt it to suit your taste. If don’t like something, leave it out. Add as much or as little of everything as you like. Just make sure you have enough liquid to cover everything by a couple of inches.

 

 

Daily Bento

17 Sep

It was really cloudy this morning. I’m sure you can tell from that picture.

We had a veggie salad for dinner last night. I just tossed some of our favorite vegetables (fresh corn, kale, shredded carrot, tomatoes, and red pepper) with some green goddess dressing. Each of us had a big bowl of veggie salad with a piece of crusty bread on the side for dinner last night.

Some of the leftovers of last night’s dinner made their way into Cam’s Yumbox today along with half of a Honeycrisp apple, cheese flowers, pomegranate and pepper chips, and a Biscoff sandwich cut with our Funbites cutter. She also has a fruit rope cut into thirds in the little treat/dip cup.

Daily Bento

11 Sep

I told Camryn last night that I would be making muffins for breakfast this morning and she immediately asked if I’d put some in her lunch today.

So in her Easy Lunchbox, she has two blueberry muffins, a flapjack from our Graze box, a few yellow pepper rings in the cute little kitty box, some pineapple, and sliced celery.

This is actually quite a bit of food for her so whatever she doesn’t finish, she’ll have for snack after school.