Today's lunchbox

As my desire to do well and my inspiration increase, I would like to commit to blog more often and about more everyday things our lives are made of, here and at ParentingIs.. .  Before I begin:

          I got a Pink Line!  We did it!

Today's lunchbox.

My goals was variety, inspired by my own thoughts about Paleo for kids and a fellow blogger's piece of wisdom:

Pack lunches every day with some of their favorites. Even if these lunches are a little less than ideal, don’t worry about it. Sending them with foods that they don’t enjoy will only intensify cravings and bring attention to the difference between their lunch and the yummy junk food lunches at school. But if they are satisfied with their lunches then they can keep focused on their friends at lunch time and not on their friend’s lunches.

Appetizer:  carrots & cauliflower with ranch dip - our favorite staple appetizer.  I use these tiny little 2 oz saucers I managed to buy in bulk, similar to salsa cups at Mexican restaraunts, so it's easy to send any kind of dip along.

Entree:  my excellent lamb recipe - leftovers from the other night.  The kids love the tender texture of lamb, the sweetness of the pineapple and the variety of flavors contained in the recipe.

Desert:  blackberries (whatever managed to get home from Costco - most of the box was gone by the time we were at the cash register!)

After school snack.

Today we are going to swim school, which is always a challenge: those damn vending machines!!!  The only way to beat them is to compete with them.  What I have with me needs to be at least as good, so I could use the power of my personality and love to convince them to forego the atrocity.

First, I analyze the appeal of the vending machine: sweet tooth, starch, convenient snackables, attractive packaging.  Now, I make the plan to outpace the enemy...

• Sweet potato chips from Trader Joe's. Perhaps not an A+ from the health perspective - but they are yummy, starchy, convenient, snacky.
• Strawberries - even vending machine snacks shouldn't be able to compete with the sweet appeal.
• Can of whipped cream.  Why?  It's simple.  Whipped cream is fun to squirt, fun to eat, and looks  amazing on top of strawberries.
• Final idea: shredded chocolate.  Don't know if I can pull that off... But if I do, we are seriously having a picknick of all picknicks!

Vending machines - beware!

Adjustments to dinner

Dinner tonight is cubed steak.  This is not too bad, except that it is likely to be a completely lean cut of meat, insufficiently filling unless you are planning to eat a mountain.  Not only is that unhealthy (too much protein is not a good thing, especially not for kids or pregnant mommies!) but I found, it is boring on the palate and very unsatisfying.

I guess, I need to make dinner more fun:

• Bacon garnish (see the second of five ways to add fat to a meal).  This means, I better pick up some uncured bacon at TJ's today!
• Vegetable salad.  Our favorite: tomato, cauliflower, bell pepper with olive oil/lemon juice/cumin dressing.  The key there: chop veggies into tiny pieces, so you can enjoy multiple flavors in every bite.
• Roast carrots.  Oh, yeah, that's another easy favorite:  toss carrots with olive (or better coconut) oil, salt, pepper & favorite herbs, stick in the oven at 400F for 25 minutes.  Out come roast carrots!

Time to execute.