Weekly Lunch & Snack Menu

Here's what we have planned this week. After this week, we're planning on rotating in one hot lunch per week.

Also, I started noticing they have these really delicious "dwarf" apples at the store. They come in red and green and they are about half the size of a regular apple. I love packing these whole and not worrying about cutting up the apple and sprinkling on orange juice to prevent browning. Anything that saves time!

We do water with the snack and she buys milk for lunch.

Weekly Lunch & Snack Menu

Monday: HOLIDAY

Tuesday
Snack: Fresh blueberries & Yogurt
Lunch: Pasta salad (corkscrew pasta, olives, red & green bell peppers tossed with Italian dressing and McCormick Salad Supreme), Hershey's Kiss (gasp!)

Wednesday
Snack: Grapes, goldfish crackers
Lunch: Lunchbox Black Bean Dip (see recipe), pita chips, strawberries

Thursday
Snack: Unsweetened applesauce
Lunch: Whole wheat crackers layered with cream cheese, sprinkle of shredded cheddar-jack and ham, apple

Friday
Snack: Baby Bel cheese, dried cranberries (Craisins)
Lunch: Rice and grilled chicken breast (leftover over from the night before) drizzled with teriyaki sauce, cookie or leftover slice of cake or some other sweet goodie

Lunchbox Black Bean Dip

- 1 can black beans, drained and rinsed

- 1/2 cup mild salsa

- 1 clove garlic, chopped (can substitute a sprinkle of garlic powder)

- 2 tbsp. sour cream

- 2 tbsp. chopped cilantro (optional)

- Salt to taste

- Shredded Monterey jack or cheddar cheese

Mix first 6 ingredients in food processor. Process until smooth. Spoon a few tablespoons of teh dip into a small lunch box container, top with cheese. Pack alongside pita chips of fresh veggies for dipping.

Weekly Lunch & Snack Menu

One thing we'll all have to do at some point, whether it start in preschool or elementary school is begin packing our kid's lunches and/or snacks. Unless of course your child's school is a Food Revolution school and offers healthy, delicious food in the cafeteria every single day (Brookey's does, but she's not quite sold on it yet)! But for most of us, we'll be packing at least a few lunches a week for the kids. When you first start doing this, it's an added step at night and if you're not organized, frankly it can be a bit of a hassle, especially if you have more than one child to pack for! At that point, you'll be tempted to throw a Lunchable in their lunch pail and call it night. I'm sure you know how I feel about that :)

Since I am packing both a lunch and a snack for Brooke almost every day, I decided to provide you, from time to time, with my weekly list of what I'm packing. I just type it up on my computer every Sunday and each night when its lunch-packing time, I just pull up the document and start packing! I'm pretty much brain dead after 6pm, so this is a great help to me :) I won't post the list every single week, because I want to give you new ideas and I don't pack a "new idea" every single day--I repeat a lot!

It's easy to run out of ideas for healthy lunches and snacks, so I hope my lists will help give you some ideas. I keep it SIMPLE. Nothing fancy. I don't use cookie cutters and cut heart and flower sandwiches every day [although I do on special occasions like Valentine's Day!] I don't tend to use off-the-wall ingredients that are hard to find. You won't see a whole lot of sandwiches because Brooke is not really a sandwich type. And frankly, kids get tired of sandwiches very quickly. We buy milk from the school so I don't have to worry about it going bad in her lunch box. She also has a water bottle and drinks water with her snack. Enjoy!

Weekly Lunch & Snack Menu

Monday
Snack: Clif Kid Z-Bar (graham cracker flavor), grapes
Lunch: Half of a bean burrito (refried beans and shredded cheese rolled in a whole wheat tortilla), apple slices, cookie

Tuesday
Snack: Cheese cubes, multi-grain crackers, berries
Lunch-Lasagna (leftover from dinner), yogurt, cookie

Wednesday
Snack: Clif Kid Z-Bar (chocolate chip flavor), strawberries
Lunch: "Antipasto Platter"--Multi-grain crackers, string cheese, 2 slices lunch meat (turkey, rolled up), black olives, cucumber slices, grapes

Thursday
Snack: Cheese cubes, nectarine
Lunch: Quesidilla, apple slices, mini-prezels

Friday
Snack: Yogurt, banana
Lunch: Salami and Turkey sandwich on a soft whole wheat roll, Goldfish, berries

Sweet Potato Fries

Another kid-tested recipe! Actually, Will-Tested. You have no idea how ecstatic it makes me when that child actually eats something. With this recipe, he ate at least a whole sweet potato in one sitting. Of course, it had to be in french fry form. What kid won't devour a fry?? I am beginning to think I need to work on some other "fry" recipes....chicken fries, tofu fries, green bean fries??! Stayed tuned! :)

Baked Sweet Potato Fries

2-medium sweet potatoes, cut into 1/4" strips
1-tablespoon olive oil
1-tablespoon salt
Cooking spray

Preheat oven to 400. Spray a cookie sheet with cooking spray. Cut sweet potatoes into quarter inch strips. Put strips into a large bowl and toss with olive oil and salt.

Spread sweet potatoes in an even layer on sprayed cookie sheet. Generously spray the tops with cooking spray (this is a key step to ensure them are crispy on the outside).

Bake at 400 degrees for about 20-25 minutes, flipping once. Fries should be slightly browned, slightly crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Serve with ketchup...of course!!!!

Healthy Cupcakes?

I am no Betty Crocker. But with a little help, I can scrape by and bake something my family will (usually) eat. In this recipe, I used a store-bought cake mix. Store bought cake mix is not the healthiest thing you can eat, I will admit that. It has additives (but no MSG!!) but usually they compose 1% or less of the ingredients. So it's not horrible. The sugar content is not awful--about 11 grams/cupcake. And if you choose to use the mix and doctor it up as I have, you get a balance of super healthy ingredients to cancel out the sugar and additives. It's all about balance!!

You'll notice there is tofu, yes, tofu in the mix that takes the place of 2 eggs. Flax seed is also added to take the place of oil. In fact, flax seed can be used in place of oil in most recipes. The rule of thumb is 3 tablespoons of flax seed = 1 tablespoon of oil. Flax is a good source of fiber as well as OMEGA-3 oils.

Enjoy!

Healthy Cupcakes
1-Boxed Cake Mix (I used Betty Crocker Strawberry--Brookey's pick!)
1- Egg
1/2-package silken tofu (about 7 oz)
1/3-cup ground (or milled) flax seed
1/2-cup water

Preheat oven to 350. Line cupcake pan with paper liners. Beat cake mix, egg, tofu and flax with an electric mixer on low speed for 30 seconds. Add water and beat on high another 2 minutes until well mixed. Fill cupcakes holders until 2/3 full. Bake for 15-20 minutes until done. Serve plain for with cream cheese frosting (recipe below).

Cream Cheese Frosting
1-package low fat cream cheese
1/2-cup powdered sugar
1-tablespoon milk
1-teaspoon vanilla
Food coloring (optional)

Let cream cheese soften to room temperature. Beat cream cheese, sugar, milk and vanilla with an electric beater until smooth and creamy. Add a few drops of food coloring for fun!

Fresh & Healthy

I find trying to cook fresh, healthy meals for my family extremely fun. To me, it's a challenge! Anyone can pop a frozen meal into the oven or order pizza, but it takes time, patience and effort to make healthful meals (that your kids will actually EAT, that is!). But isn't that what parenting is all about: time, patience and effort? I think we could all use those three things at any point in time when raising our kids!

I don't consider myself a health nut, by any means. If the kids are at a birthday party, I don't ration cake intake or freak out if their goody bag is filled with candy. We have Pizza Fridays and sometimes when Daddy is out of town, we'll even have ice cream for dinner! And when we go on vacation--forget about it! I just can't stress about every single morsel of food my kids take in, at every moment of their lives--that wouldn't be very educated, common sense-ical, now would it? But what I can do--for the vast majority of time when we're home and on our regular schedule-- is ensure what my family eats is as fresh and healthy as possible.

But what does "fresh" mean? Fresh cooking, to me, simply means that when you look at your grocery cart (if you do 1-2 big shopping trips each week), at least 25% of what's in there should be from the produce section. Fresh fruit, veggies, herbs. If you don't plan healthy meals ahead or have some healthy meal ideas in mind when you enter the store, you will never hit the 25% mark. It much easier to load up on processed and canned foods. Fresh cooking also means meals are, for the most part, prepared from natural--not processed--ingredients.

Believe me, I like a quick and easy meal as well as any other parent in town. My time is precious. However, if you do any label reading at all on packaged foods (frozen lasagna, for instance) you realize that you are eating more "chemicals" you can't pronounce rather than real, actual food. Now, whether are not all these "chemicals" or additives will really "kill you" or to the extent to which they are unhealthy, I will leave up to the scientists and dieticians. I just use my educated, common sense that tells me it's a much better idea to feed my family real food vs. foods laden with additives.Food companies can't develop a good enough flavor with regular ingredients, so they have to use a chemical to make or "enhance" their product. That's weak.

Since MSG (Monosodium glutamate) is my personal villian, I've been reading labels a lot more in an attempt to knock it out of our diet. Once you start reading labels, you will be shocked at what foods have MSG! Here are some...just to name a few...

Doritos
Cheetos
Breakfast Sausage (Jimmy Dean and others)
Chick Fil a Sandwiches (my fave!)
KFC-Chicken
Most any "flavored" potato chip (i.e BBQ, Sour Cream and Onion)
Knorr's Powdered Vegetable Soup Mix (Spinach Dip STAPLE! Hello!)
Onion Soup/Dip Mix
Ramen Noodles
Ranch Dressing (ARG!!! I was so mad--Brookey LOVES Ranch!)
Most Canned Soups

For the most part, my kids have tried pretty much all of the above "food" items....and love them. Rightly so!! They are yummy! I would have never gotten through college without my $2.49 case of Top Ramen! But the list above is not "food"--basically it's chemicals, passed off as food.

I have been taking it upon myself to find healthy, fresh alternatives for some of these most-loved items. The first one I tackled was Ranch dressing since it's a family favorite. I will post my version of "Ranch" in the next post. Until then, start reading labels...remember, LESS ingredients=less chemicals=a much more fresh & healthy diet for your family!

What in the Heck Are You Feeding Your Kids?!

As a teacher, not only do I work with kids and get to know their learning styles, I also work with parents and I am exposed many, many parenting styles. These parenting styles are usually blatantly obvious and are reflected--loud and clear-- in the behavior of their kids. While parenting is a mystery to us all and no one is the perfect parent, there are certainly EASY things we can to do be better parents.

One of those things is being aware of the food we're feeding our kids. I work with students diagnosed with ADHD every day. By no means do I discount this diagnosis at all-it is definitely real and debilitating to many students. However, when I see the lunch boxes of these students composed of items such as soda, cookies, gummy candy (it says 100% of Vitamin C in the label!), chips, and candy bars, it makes me rethink some of the underlying causes of "hyperactivity." My mornings also start a Starbucks located near a local high school. I see freshman and sophomores (i know they are this age since their PARENTS accompany them, driving the car) ordering double mocha venti lattes and caramel frappachinos. Am I old school?? Tell me, am I?? I didn't have my first cup of coffee until I was a out of college, working as a slave in the advertising industry until 2 in the morning! I needed a boost! What 15 year old needs a venti of anything???

My point is: Parents, use a little Educated, Common Sense Parenting-action and get yourself some good recipe ideas so you can put some healthy food in your kids. Does it take a little longer to make a healthy lunch for your kid as opposed to throwing lunchables and soda into their backpack? Maybe, if you don't plan ahead. But you're a PARENT--by Week #6 of your baby's life, you should have learned that parenting takes a little patience--so get over it. But in the meantime, here are a few healthy lunch/meal/snack options for kids aged 2-102 (and they are ALL kid-tested by my 3 year old test-chef, Brookey!):

- Wine Country: Cheese cubes, whole wheat crackers, grapes, rolled pieces of lunch meat (turkey, ham, salami)

- Asian Invasion: Teryiaki chicken pieces, brown rice, shelled soybeans (edamame)

- Little Italy: Spaghetti and turkey meatballs (use leftovers from dinner!) OR make a meat sauce with tomatoes, ground turkey or lean beef and red/green pepper and serve with pieces of french bread for dipping

- Napa Valley Meets Tuscany: Caprece salad--sliced tomatoes and mozzarella, sprinkled with salt/pepper and basil, drizzled with a little bit of olive oil and balsamic vinegar

- California Cusine: Grilled chicken, avocado and lettuce rolled in a whole wheat tortilla and fresh fruit

- Baja Fresh: Refried black beans, ground turkey, brown rice, cheese, mild salsa wrapped in a whole wheat tortilla OR mix refried black beans, cheese, tomatoes and low fat sour cream together, serve with low fat tortilla chips for dipping.

- Middle Eastern: Hummus (Brookey's personal fav!) and whole wheat crackers or pita chips, grilled chicken/mayo/lettuce/tomato in a pita pocket

- Pasta Salad: curly pasta mixed with fresh veggies and low fat Italian dressing

- Smoothies: Mix 1 cup of fresh or frozen fruit (berries are great) and 1 cup of low fat vanilla yogurt in the blender

- Flowers and Grass: Add a few drops of green food coloring to whipped cream cheese, top with diced red pepper, serve on whole wheat crackers

Some of my favorite resources for cooking with kids:

- First Meals by Annabel Karmel
- Deceptively Delicious by Jessican Seinfeld
- Quick Fix Meals by Robin Miller
- Weelicious.com