There's Some Pooh On My Lunch!

Wednesday, 7/25/12 - Lunch for the girls while babysitting at my sister's. And no. I never get tired of poo/Pooh references.

The first week (of three) that I went over to watch my nieces for a few days, the sandwich lollipops had been a huge hit. The second week I was only able to be there for one day, and my sister was able to get back from work before lunch, so she fed us. But Tually had requested more lollipop sandwiches, so I promised her I would make them again when I came back the third week.

Since the girls were quiet and amusing themselves, I didn't bother disrupting the chi by showing them my sandwich stampers and having them argue over which one to pick (it's faster and easier to just pick one and make as many of the same shape as possible. That way if I put the spread on the wrong piece or something, I can just grab another to pair with it. And I don't have to worry about even numbers on each slice of bread. I was able to squeak out five heads from each slice of wheat, and six from the white.)

I Got Some Pooh On My Plate!

Orange: Pilu, Green: Tually, Blue: Z - PB-Chocolate pretzel-pop sandwiches,
broccoli, carrots, raspberry-banana skewers

Shhh. Don't tell the kids, but all the white bread sandwiches actually have wheat slices on the bottom! And the wheat only had heels left, so these are all heels turned fluffy-side-out!

I chose baby carrots and broccoli for the veggies. You'll notice Z's broccoli is bigger than the other girls'. My nieces are hit and miss on what they'll eat that's green, so I just gave them a smaller expectation and no pressure, and they gobbled it all down!

I chose the Pooh-head cutter since it's bigger and rounder-y-er, so easier to cut first and add spreads to after, versus the little skinny-shaped ones. All three girls chose peanut butter plus the Dark Chocolate Dreams PB I had brought over to use up (it's tasty, but we have roughly 153 different jars of spreads, and Hubby was getting a leeeeeetle cranky about it!) Since I only had six white-bread shapes, I gave my nieces most of them. Z eats wheat bread no problem.
Other than having to cut each slice separately before adding fillings (for best results) and thus being stuck with a gabillion little pieces of bread to try and spread stuff onto, I love my sandwich stampers! If you put a small pretzel stick in between the layers of bread before pressing the imprint stamper down, you can make fun little "sandwich pops" too! You can also do this with those pie-crust-shape cutter things, some fondant cutters, as well as any plunger-style cookie cutter with a push-down imprint design (like the Williams-Sonoma ones - but you'd need popsicle sticks for the bigger shapes.)

I brought some of my fancy skewer picks to jazz things up, since I know from past experience that my picky nieces tend to eat more and are willing to try new things when you give them a weapon fun tool to eat them with. My sister wanted me to have them eat up the raspberries (she has a whole thicket of bushes, and they can't keep up with their supply!) so I chose them as the fruit, and added little wedge-y banana bites to help keep them from sliding off. They continued to use them to eat the rest of the berries throughout the day, and I left some extras I had brought so they could do it again sometime.

Baby and I shared the rest of the banana. She was super excited to be eating "big people food."

(effects filter using Instagram)