Eight-Legged Lunch

Tuesday, 10/30/12 - We had a "practice time" at Little Gym for Baby in the morning, then straight to school for Z, so I packed her a lunch to eat during Baby's class and the drive to school. And since I was getting food out, I packed one for me too!

Sweet peppers, Ranch, strawberries, ham, cream cheese mini bagels, olives

Hot Peppers: Neither of us like peppers, but to set an example at a recent barbecue, I'd tried a mini sweet pepper with Ranch and didn't hate it, so I decided to try them again at home. So I packed some in Z's lunch, on the off-chance she'd eat them, with some Ranch in a mini muffin cup. I attempted to make a spider to sit on the Ranch, by cutting a large olive in half widthwise, then cutting the half with the big hole in it into eight slices to make legs. They all kind of sank, so it looks more like an octopus. Oh well.

Red Web: I added a spider ring cupcake topper to some strawberries - I was excited to find some in the grocery still, since I know they're no longer in season. 

Hamming It Up: I sliced some ham into strips and threaded them onto some spider picks in a silicone spider cup.

I'm Walking In A Spider Web: For the "main event," I spread reduced-fat cream cheese (I couldn't find a non-fat brand at the grocery without fake colors in it! Whuuuuck?!) as thickly and evenly as I could on a mini bagel, and etched in web designs using a toothpick. For the spiders, I cut a large olive in half for the bodies, then another olive into eight slices lengthwise for each spider. They stuck nicely into the cheese, and pretty much stayed put. This was not a lunch to trust her to cart around though! Mama carried this one to the car!

I tucked a Lunchbox Love note in with, because I love her! And I figured it would give her and the extra Little Gym teacher something to talk about while Baby and I were in class. Only there was no extra teacher that day. We got a last-minute* call that E's class was being combined with the older group 45-minutes earlier because the other teacher was needed to substitute at the other gym location. 

*they'd tried to call me much earlier, and left a message, but I'd forgotten about it after my shower.

Mama's "Spooky" Lunch

Cheese scraps, soy cheese, concord and red grapes,
green heirloom tomato, salt, sweet peppers, Ranch

I had saved some Colby Jack and Gouda cheese scraps (from her Vampire lunch and something else... can't figure out what though...) and topped them off with a slice of vegan soy cheese I found at a grocery store going out of business. I figured I'd give it a try. It's quite tasty! Just to jazz things up, I used a mini bat cutter on my soy cheese. Wheee!

I had a hugemongous green heirloom tomato from my CSA box starting to go bad, so I cut off all the funky bits and sliced up the rest. I put some kosher salt in a mini lion box, since I love me some salted tomatoes! It actually tasted quite a bit like bacon, of all things. Very yum.

I included some sweet peppers for myself as well, with some Ranch in an EasyLunchboxes Mini Dipper. Even though I had just bought them the day before at Safeway, they were already getting moldy. Ewww. So I had to cut off the tops to see inside to see if they were going bad (not something I wanted to discover after they were in my mouth!) and then excise off any gross bits. The orange and light red ones were tasty. THe dark red one was "meh."

Baby's Lunch

For Baby E, along with her bottle, I packed a re-usable little green pouch with some home-made plum-pear-banana frozen cubes and a kale cube. They thawed nicely by lunch, and kept our lunches cold to boot! We had some technical difficulties, including Baby not liking my food (*sad face*) but I'm excited to keep trying these pouches out!

Other than the peppers, she ate every last bite! Most of it before Baby's class was over too, which was a surprise. Usually she nibbles forever, and has plenty of leftovers for after school. And while she didn't eat the peppers, she did try a bite of both colors. Before drinking the Ranch. /facepalm

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