Kimmens Tree Muffin Tin Meal

Monday, 12/19/11 Lunch - With only a few days to go before my c-section, I hadn't planned on doing much of anything. Especially after the scary dizzy spell that morning while making pancakes (which is why there's no pictures or post about my awesome pancakes. I was trying to power-through and get her fed so I could go lie down!)

But at lunch she wanted a "pee-duh buddah-huddee samwich" (I love how she sounds when she's stuffed up!) I decided to make it cute with a cookie cutter, just for fun. And it all kind of exploded from there.

Kimmens Tree MTM

Apples, carrot sticks, PBHoney w/Ms, yogurt w/sprinkles,
pistachios w/Ms

The apples and carrots are fairly self-explanatory. I had some. I cut them. 'Nuff said.

The sandwich was cut using a special tree cutter from a cream-filled sandwich-cookie set I got on clearance at Target last year. It's a small cutter, and I managed to make both halves from one slice of bread. (The cutter is very shallow, so I cut the bread first.) The cutter is covered at the top, and has the three circles as a cut-out if you flip the cutter over. It's so you can see the yummy cream filling in the cookie sandwiches from the mix that came with the set. But really, I just bought it all for the cutter! Instead of leaving the PB and honey showing through, I fished out some green and red MandMs to stick in the holes.

I had originally planned on using a star-shaped cutter on some Colby Jack cheese, but found the holly and berries sprinkles while digging through my "Misc Xmas" supplies bin (it has the silicone liners, paper liners, picks, sprinkles, etc. Anything that's not a cookie cutter.) I decided to add them to some Green honey yogurt. The honey sweetens the yogurt plenty, but back when I first started getting the Greek yogurt, I had been getting plain and putting honey on it, so Little Miss seems to think that additional honey is a requirement for yogurt, unless I add in some unsweetened Kool-Aid powder for color and flavor, or add sprinkles!

Since I already had the Ms out for the tree, I tossed some in with her pistachios, as her 'treat.'

I got the cute silicone tree-shaped liners from a baking set on clearance at Target after Christmas last year (although Tovolo makes a cute set with some other holiday shapes. It's totally on my wishlist. Hint hint.) The tree pick came with some Reindeer cupcake liners also on clearance from Target last year. I put them all in some random Tupperware knock-off thing we have that I normally only use for transporting steak knifes or other short sharp utensils for my cooking classes or something. It's shallow, so virtually useless for storing a bunch of food. And it's kind of long, which makes it a pain to store in the fridge or freezer, since it takes up so much space and doesn't stack well. But for this, it made the perfect dish. Everything fit nicely without me having to worry about balancing it all on a plate, and it wasn't too deep for her to eat out of.

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First thing she did was grab the sandwich and pop the Ms off of it. When I asked her if she was enjoying her sandwich, she said "Oh. I thought it was a cookie," and put it back. Doh! But then she squealed with joy as she found the spoon.

And dug right into the sprinkles yogurt!

She ate the entire sandwich and asked for another (I just made a regular half-sandwich, rather than a fancy tree again.) She ate all her yogurt and apples and pistachios. She ate maybe half the carrot sticks. And no MandMs! She said she doesn't like them! *gasp!* But she asked for seconds on the pistachios too. And then saw the almost-empty bag of Pirate Booty on my desk and asked for some of that too. Which is how I got her to eat any of her carrots, to be honest. But whatever. She ate them!