Muffin Tin Monday - Mellow Yellow

I'm still s-l-o-w-l-y getting through the color themes, left over from before she stopped posting weekly themes!

When my brother was born, he was severely jaundiced, and we had the biliruben lights installed on his crib so he could come home. My mom made a lot of "He's my mellow yellow fellow" jokes, and sang snippets of "They call [him] Mellow Yellow..." Hence the title of this MTM. It's just something that's been stuck in my head, like, forever, whenever I think of "yellow."

Mellow Yellow

Banana, PBJ "sun"dwich, frozen corn;
Baby Belle cheese "sun," hummus, pita chips

Since I don't have a yellow silicone muffin pan, I chose yellow striped paper liners (and turned them inside-out so we can see them!) [I may or may not have used photo editing to make the colors *pop!* I'll never tell!]

Half'-'nana: A trick I learned from another mom who brought half-'nanas for preschool snack is to use a knife to make 3-4 small cuts in the peel, just deep enough to go through the peel. This way, the little ones can peel them easily,  even if they get an end without the 'stem' to pull on. [I take it to another level when I cut bananas into thirds when at my sister's house, and slice all along the length of the peel on the middle segment, and call it a "boat." Then, instead of fighting over who gets the stem end (which they're more familiar with for unpeeling,) they fight over who gets the banana boat.]

If I had been thinking, I would have cut the peel more and peeled and fanned it out into a sun shape. Ah well.

Sunny Sammie: For the sandwich, I used our home-made mango-strawberry jelly to go with the peanut butter, since it was the yellowest spread that I have. And soooo yummy! I have a cutter set with mini-cut-outs that snap on to each of the larger cutters for making perfect sprinkles or powdered sugar designs. I just used my scalloped circle one to cut out a smaller scalloped circle from one of the bread slices so that the jelly could be seen.

Insert Corny Joke Here: Yes. That is a hint of green in the corn. I couldn't find a bag of just frozen corn, and when I was at the store, I didn't buy any yellow veggies, since I'd decided to use corn. I didn't want to hassle with a squash, and she hates the yellow wax beans. Plus we were all out, and Fred Meyer didn't have any anyway. But all we had was a bag of mixed veggies. So I had to pry each kernel out, one by one. So I got a little sloppy near the end. Turned out to be moot, since she never touched them. Which was kind of a surprise. Normally she's all about the frozen veggies. I'm guessing it was a grains day for her, since she kept asking for mac-n-cheese, and actually ate her sandwich. And the chips.

Sunshine Cheese: For the sun cheese, I carefully cut around the wax on the back of the cheese, and then sliced it into strips. I trimmed the edges and cut the strips in shorted halves, then cut grooves roughly evenly around the cheese (in the wax still along the sides) and jammed them in.

Hummus and Chips: The (garlic) hummus and (Stacy's parmesan, garlic and herb) pita chips were a last-minute addition to fill space. I remembered that I'd had something else planned, but couldn't remember what.

I had the lunch assembled and photographed before remembering to add a decorative food pick. I tucked a disposable paper flower pick from World Market into the hummus, and set the lunch down in front of Z to take another photo, but she had already snatched and dismantled the cheese before my camera finished turning on.

The first thing she said, upon seeing this meal was "You brought me SUNSHINE for my lunch!" Worth. It.

She was able to correctly identify all the foods (well... she called the sandwich a donut, but she hasn't been eating her lunch sammies lately, and has refused to try my mango jelly, so I figured she might try it if I left it as "donut.") I was super impressed that she could identify the hummus. Not that she ate any. She ate the pita chips ("I want to eat them plain,") a few bites of the cheese (a shocker. I figured she'd snarf it down first thing,) and the sandwich (despite realizing that I was trying to trick her into eating my mango jelly. I called it a "donut sandwich" later, and then she went "Heyyy.... is that mango jelly? I didn't want mango jelly!" Damn, she's good! She even identified an ingredient she's never even seen before. But I told her to try a "no thank you" bite, and reminded her that she had agreed to a "yellow" beautiful lunch, and mango jelly was the only yellow kind we have. She tried it and ate the whole thing. Scoooore!)

I finally remembered the part of the lunch that had been niggling at my subconscious during the whole prep. I'm still kicking myself over forgetting the yellow raspberries that I had bought *specifically* for this meal. Even though they were about 10-seconds away from moldering into oblivion. Normally, I would have just passed on produce that potentially ooky, but I really wanted them for this. Ugh. I knew I had something in the fridge waiting for this lunch. I managed to pick out some keepers and wash off any surface mold and she ate some the next day.

Other healthy yellow food ideas: apples (yellow skinned or peeled,) squash, yellow peppers (she hates them. I hates them. So I don't bother trying to get her to eat them anymore, since it means *I* have to eat them.) Saffron rice, yogurt or milk with yellow food coloring or unsweetened yellow Kool-Aid powder (or True Lemon.) Pineapple, yellow carrots, "white" wax beans (they look yellow,) macaroni and cheese, scrambled eggs, yellow raisins, yellow sweet potatoes, yellow onions, apricots, pears, papaya.