2x2 Muffin



Chicken & mixed vegetable stuffed corn muffins, grapes, pineapple, oatmeal cookies



GoGo Squeeze, corn muffins stuffed with chicken and mixed vegetables, marshmallows, oatmeal & chocolate sprinkle cookie, and oatmeal raisin cookie

65th Day of School Lunch

65th Day of School Lunch

Corn pasta, carrots, ants on a log, and GoGo Squeez.

Mani was in our bed again last night, but it was "only 2am" so this time I made him go get in his bed.  I have to remember to talk to him about this because the most he will ever do is ask me to come lay in his bed with him until he goes to sleep. And that's only when he has taken a nap and can't get to sleep.  That's one thing I wish I could change, all Mani needs is a 30 second nap and he's up all night.  But, I'll just be thankful that the preschool days of when they made him take a nap are over.

48th Day of School Lunch



48th Day of School Lunch

I decided that my goal this week is to make Halloween theme lunches, we'll see how it goes.

This lunch is all about the candy corn, corn beef sandwich with candy corn face, Chex, pretzels, and candy corn, grapes, and a Vanilla Cake muffin. 

46th Day of School Lunch

46th Day of School Lunch

Kiwi, caramel corn cake, and corn pasta with peas and butter.  I still haven't made the trip to Whole Foods.  I will go after work today, despite the fact that it will be extremely crowded because of rush hour.  However, I'm going to think positive.  I will find a parking space immediately and they will have five loaves of brown rice bread.

45th Day of School Lunch

45th Day of School Lunch

Turkey and lettuce meat rollups, half of a pastrami sandwich because this was the last piece of Mani's bread and I used all the turkey for the meat rollups, GoGo Squeez, and Chex and pretzels.

I didn't make the trip to Whole Foods this weekend because my cousins from Texas were in town.  I had a great time, lots of laughs and reminiscing, but now I'm forced to go to Whole Foods during rush hour.

This will be my post on What's for Lunch Wednesday,Week 21.

38th Day of School Lunch

38th Day of School Lunch

Half an orange, pretzels and Corn Chex cereal, apple, and a turkey with jelly sandwich.

Cereal was always a go to snack when Mani was younger.  But then he grew tired of it and asked me not to buy cereal, so we rarely purchase cereal now.  However, I purchased the Corn Chexs because I wanted to encourage Mani to drink more soy milk.  But he tried them and said he didn't like them anymore. 

I didn't want them to go to waste, so I thought I would add them to lunch and see if  he would change his mind.  When I told him to bring his lunch box to the kitchen after school, he walks in and says mommy can you please fix me some more of the pretzels and cereal, it was so so good.  Yay, mommy scores.

36th Day of School Lunch

36th Day of School Lunch

Today for lunch Mani has corn spaghetti and peas with dairy free butter for sauce, celery with soy nut butter, and an apple. 

I had big plans to make a checkerboard apple, hence the lovely line down the middle. Well, one of these days I will have the time and patience to make a checkerboard apple.  I admire the mothers who make lunch the night before, but mentally I don't fell his lunch is fresh unless I make it in the morning.  Besides its been part of my morning routine for the past 3 years.

34th Day of School Lunch

34th Day of School Lunch

Carrots, cantaloupe, the last of our Ian's gluten free chicken nuggets, and marshmallows. I usually make Mani's lunches in the morning while he is still asleep,but he was woke today and requested this lunch. Everything was so orange, so I thought I would add animal picks. I was trying to count how many animal picks I had, so it turned into a bit of an animal yard, lol.  I'm going to buy a box one of these days to organize my picks.

32nd Day of School Lunch

32nd Day of School Lunch

I wanted to make a light lunch for Mani today, since he was sick yesterday at school, so we have a piece of light brown rice bread, carrots, corn fettuccine pasta, and peas inside an elephant divider.

31st Day of School Lunch

31st Day of School Lunch

Ants on a log, an apple, turkey and spinach sandwich with a turkey crown cutout, and my version of a chocolate pretzel treat.  I take Glutino gluten free pretzel sticks and dip them in soy nut butter and then I roll them in sprinkles.  Although, now Mani likes the Enjoy Life Foods boom CHOCO boom crispy rice bar. I may try melting one to see if he actually likes pretzels with chocolate.

I posted this on "What's for Lunch" Wednesday, Week 18 and this week is really great because for every post a food item will be donated to a Texas food bank, how cool is that.

22nd Day of School Lunch

22nd Day of School Lunch
"1st Pizza Lunch for Mani"

Mushroom, spinach, and ground beef pizza on rice crust, vanilla cake muffin, and cantaloupe.  This is the first time I sent pizza for lunch for him and I wasn't even going to send it this time but he asked for it.

The crust is one from Whole Foods.  I'm going to take a picture and post it so I will not forget what brand it is because it is definitely a keeper.

20th Day of School Lunch

20th Day of School Lunch

Bacon and lettuce on white rice bread, carrots, cantaloupe, and vanilla cake muffin.

Mani actually surprised me yesterday and asked could we bake something again for him like the past weeks.  I had an unofficial goal of trying to bake or make something special for him on the weekends.  But I didn't really expect him to notice (silly of me), so now I guess it's an official goal.  Which I haven't decided is a good thing or a bad thing. 

This weekend was busy, my little sister flew in town for her best friend's wedding and of course I wanted to spend as much time with her as possible. So the last thing I wanted to do last night after fighting the terrible traffic to the airport was bake something.  But we he compromised and we made the Chi Chi's corn cake mix.  It was the quickest and easiest thing and Mani was very happy and he enjoyed  helping me.

Once I made the mix I figured I would cook the fish for today's dinner.  I'm glad I did because the only thing on Mani's mind as we left out for school this morning was going to the skate park again after school.  Yesterday was his first time going and he felt very intimidated at first but he finally was able to go down one small ramp and he was happy, YAY.

19th Day of School Lunch

19th Day of School Lunch
"Doggie Woggie Theme"

Today's lunch has a dog theme, watermelon, dog bone shaped mango, and in the doggy container is corn spaghetti pasta with red sauce, ground beef, and zucchini.  I also included two of the "Wonder Balls" that I had frozen.  I didn't taste the Wonder Balls before I put them in, so I hope they didn't suffer any freezer damage. 

I didn't want the Ziploc container to get stained, so I used the top container to one of the very first bento boxes that I purchased for the pasta.  I had started to throw the container out on Tuesday. My son never used it because it was too complicated, and I lost the straps that attached on the side when we moved.  But I'm glad I didn't because it worked out perfectly in this lunch.

I decided to post this lunch for What's for Lunch Wednesday  week 16 because although I'm quite happy with Mani's first pizza lunch the picture sucks and its just not that cute.  Besides I'm happy I finally used this container so I don't have to feel bad about wasting money and I'm proud of my mango dog bones, its not easy to make dog bones from a very ripe mango.

17th Day of School Lunch

17th Day of School Lunch

I decided maybe I could sneak one in on Wednesdays.  We'll see what he says when he gets home today.  Today's lunch contains cantaloupe, watermelon, Vanilla Cake muffin, carrots, and soy nut butter and jelly sandwich.  And since I can't use cheese for quick decorations, I used deli turkey to make the airplane on top.

This will be my second post on  What's for Lunch Wednesday.

16th Day of School Lunch

Muffin from yesterday, apple, corn on cob, turkey and lettuce meat rollups.

Guilty replacement

To make up for the bad cookies last night, I made these muffins/cakes for Mani this morning. This is his first cake mix and still his favorite.  But this time we added two very ripe bananas, 3 "eggs", omitted  the oil and only added enough water to moisten the mix maybe 1/4 of cup. They turned out great and smell so good. They made quite a few muffins.  I will freeze some and see how they turn out.

This mix was also a 50% off table find from our last visit to Lil's.

Betty Crocker Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

In the oven now, and I already see our mistake. I used crisco instead of butter because I didn't have any of the normal dairy free butter I use to bake. My son thought the mix looked a little dry. So I thought I would add some water like the crisco website said. Big mistake the ones before the water was added turned out good.

The only reason I tried to make these with out the butter was because we went to a barbecue at his grandfather's house and normally he never has any dessert. But this time he had caramel cake and Mani was sad he couldn't have any. He said we were all lucky and that he was tried of not being able to eat things. His grandfather gave him a plum and he was sort of fine with that.

Mani really wants to like chocolate but he just doesn't care for the taste.  However, that doesn't stop him from begging for chocolate.  I always feel guilty and buy it, even though I know he won't like it.  The bag of chocolate chips above are the ones from the mix that he made me sift out.  

12th Day of School Lunch

Didn't wake up when I should have, however, I am quite proud of myself because I cooked three meals last night. We are just going to forget that I planned on doing this Sunday. So today and tomorrow I don't have to go home and cook Yay Me!!! I know I am going to cook shrimp on Friday, I just need to figure out what to cook for Thursday.

Anywho, back to lunch for today, a slice of brown rice bread, a strawberry, grapes, left over broccoli from dinner, left over corn from Saturday, and corn fettuccine. Wow that's alot of corn. I forgot when making this that the pasta is actually corn pasta, which Mani is so in love with. I actually love it too, but it too expensive for the whole family to eat. A box cost $7.99, now compare that to the box of whole wheat pasta that I purchased for $0.88. The store owner also said that the penne is also excellent I will try that next time.

This is the first time I put broccoli in his lunch we will see if it comes back untouched. I have high hopes because he said it was really good after dinner last night. I found the broccoli on sale. I got two big bushels for $1.00.

I couldn't help adding the picks, we'll see what he has to say about that.

10th Day of School Lunch

It's have Fun Friday so the only healthy item is the apple. Mani found a box of Ian's gluten free chicken nuggets on our last trip to Whole Foods. I'm so glad he did because now I don't have to waste money on the Ian frozen dinner that he would only eat the nuggets out of and the rest would go to the trash. So this lunch contains the Ian chicken nuggets, Lucy's cinnamon thins, chips, ketchup for the nuggets in the little container, and an apple I tried to make look like the turtle shell design, but as you can see I was in too much of a hurry for perfection.

When he saw the Lucy cookies, he told me he didn't like them any more. We haven't been able to fine a ready made cookie that he likes since they discontinued his favorite cookie from Glutino. This was the closet thing to it but maybe he will eat this box if I include them in his lunch. But like his crackers he just gets tired of them and just stops eating them all together. I have a box of Betty Crocker gluten free chocolate chip cookie mix at home that I'm going to try. Maybe the weather will not be that hot and we can bake them this weekend.