good-bye, and thank you!

Well, the Ladies have come to the end of the road.

It's a funny thing. The very first post on this blog, way back in September 2010 by Sue, was a lament about Bento boxes, cookie-cutter shaped sandwiches, and love notes from mom tucked in among the theme toothpicks.

We didn't know how good we had it. Pinterest's huge popularity was still a year away. Bento boxes weren't the half of it, folks.

However, we all adapted. In January 2013 Sue moved on, and Nicole and Hannah joined the site. We added more recipes. We tried not to notice that people were taking the time to make Chewbacca out of pasta:

As time passed, we all got into the routine. Some kids moved on to bigger schools where they could buy lunch. Other kids started helping to pack their own, or developed preferences that made packing lunches easy (if not mentally stimulating).

We started finding it tough to come up with new topics. There are so many options for finding lunch ideas online now, that this space has become kind of redundant.

After much discussion, we've made the decision to finally bring lunch to an end.

It's been fun, and we've loved putting this together for you. The blog will still be here and we hope that both long-time readers and parents new to the packed lunch game will find laughs, tips, and comfort in our stories.

Here are some of our favourite posts:

Home for a Lunch

High School Confidential

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme

Slow Like Molasses

Roasting

Honeydew and Lemons

On behalf of all the Ladies, past and present, thank you. Thank you for reading, for sharing your own suggestions for lunches, and for offering your comments and feedback.

desperate times, desperate measures

Well, we missed last week. And by "we" I mean "me", and since I'm normally a stickler for meeting deadlines you can tell how bad this Winter That Will Not End is grinding me down.

My kids, after brief forays into interesting lunches, have retreated to "ham & cheese sandwiches every day, except Thursday, when we have pizza at school". I am so booooored with packing lunches. SO BORED IT IS TIME TO BE DONE NOW PLEASE.

On Monday morning I went to make lunches and realized I had completely forgotten to take a loaf of bread out of the freezer. I briefly toyed with the idea of keeping them home (nope) or heating up some canned soup and throwing it in a thermos (oldest would have loved it, middle would have starved, youngest would have needed a bath after lunch).

Obviously, none of these ideas would work. In desperation I boiled half a dozen eggs. Each of the three kids got a boiled egg or two, some cheddar cheese cubes, whole grain crackers, and cherry tomatoes. The usual two pieces of fruit to accompany it and a small yoghurt cup, and we had what I thought was a nice-looking lunch.

All three kids ate every crumb in their lunch. I was feeling pretty smug. I mean, that lunch was practically Bento-box worthy! Perhaps I would be freed from the tyranny of ham & cheese sandwiches.

Alas, it was not to be. Although 8yo and 5yo both said the lunch was "delicious!" and "tasty!" and "fun!", when I asked what they'd like on Tuesday they both said "ham & cheese sandwiches, please".

Oh well. It was fun while it lasted.

***

I have a trick that I've been playing on my kids for years, and even though two of them are now old enough to know that I'm totally snowing them, they still love it.

I buy plain, live-culture Greek yoghurt. No added sugar, no weird preservatives I can't pronounce. I drizzle it with a little honey and tell them it's just like Winnie-the-Pooh's favourite snack of condensed milk and honey.

Now, I know that condensed milk and plain yoghurt taste absolutely nothing alike, in any universe... but when they were very young, they didn't. All they knew was that if Winnie-the-Pooh would eat white dairy stuff with honey, they would too. The tradition has stuck. They call it "pooh-snacks" and take great delight in freaking out their friends by asking me for some after school.

This is a snap to throw together, cheaper and healthier than 'lunch box ready' yoghurt products, and endlessly customizable. Give it a try!

Pooh-Snacks

1/2 cup plain, live-culture Greek yoghurt
1 tsp honey
a handful of your favourite fruit

Mix it up, serve it. Make sure you call it a Pooh-snack or the magic doesn't work.

Mama Mia, Here We Go Again

It's official: my children have passed the stage where they want to give their classmates Valentine cards. Valentine cards are "lame" and "boring" and also, they don't want to give cards to people who aren't particular friends. Gone are the days when one could feel popular based on the number of cards in our construction paper mailboxes; these are the days when we either give to everyone, or give to no one. My children have chosen the "no one" option.

 

But that doesn't mean they want to be merely Takers in the classroom. They do want to be Givers, just not Lame-o Card Givers, apparently. What they chose to do, this year, is to send in cookies for their classmates to enjoy during the class parties. Cookies, in their humble opinions, are far superior to cards.

 

And so it was that I found myself making eighty-four sugar cookies in the shape of hearts. I packed off thirty-five for each class - making sure the teachers and aides could enjoy as well - and kept a few at home for the boys to gorge on. When I went to pick up the boys from school, a number of third-and-fourth graders came running up to me on the playground, to inform me that I am, officially, the "World's Best Baker".

 

Well. I feel I might just get myself a t-shirt with that emblazoned on the front.

 

The truth is, though, that I owe this title to my mother. This is her recipe for sugar cookies, and when I was a child my friends would all clamour for more of her cookies. She would bake them for every occasion and now I do too: heart shapes for Valentine's, ghosts, pumpkins and black cats for Halloween, bunnies for Easter, trees and snowmen for Christmas, stars for birthdays. My kids' friends gobble them down with admiration, just like my friends did for my mom. It's sweet.

 

 

 

 

 

Mom's Old Fashioned Sugar Cookies

1 1/2 cup butter, softened
2 1/4 cups sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons vanilla
3 eggs
4 1/2 cups flour
2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoon salt

Cream together butter, sugar, and vanilla. Add eggs and beat together. Mix in dry ingredients. Divide dough into three balls, cover with plastic wrap and a) chill overnight, or b) freeze for later consumption.

When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees and line cookie sheets with parchment paper. Roll dough out to 1/4 inch thickness; cut into shapes. Bake for 8-9 minutes for a perfectly soft, chewy cookie. Cookies should be slightly browned around the edges.

Perfect Buttercream Frosting:

1/2 cup very soft butter
4 cups icing sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla
2-3 tablespoons milk

Beat butter with icing sugar, adding the sugar very slowly by 1/2 cup increments. Add vanilla and milk by tablespoon until desired consistency is reached. Add food colouring if desired.

Makes about 7 dozen cookies, depending on the size of your cookie cutters. Size does matter and don't let anyone tell you different.

A Lovely Lunch

It's Valentine's Day! Which, at this point in my life, who really cares right? Don't get me wrong: I am grateful to have found someone to love who is a fantastic partner and father, but it still feels like a manufactured holiday. This is good for said partner. It means my expectations are non-existent. That lucky, lucky guy.

I remember in high school, during the lead-up to every Valentine's Day students could order carnations of different colours (red for love, yellow for friendship, some other colour for a crush) and have them delivered to a person's homeroom. My self-esteem is still slightly bruised from the experience of sitting there for 5 years and never receiving a red carnation. Or even the crush colour. I got yellow from my friends once, I think. I was a late bloomer. It happens.

But my sad, pubescent love life is not really relevant on this lunch blog. The reason I bring it up is that I find kids and, yes, that includes teenagers, put a lot of stake in Valentine's Day. My youngest went off to school this morning, dressed in fetching shades of pink, her Valentine cards in her backpack with Hershey Kisses carefully taped on top.

My middle-schooler dressed and did her hair extra carefully in anticipation of attending a Much Music dance party at her school today.

And my high-schooler...I frankly have no idea what's going on there. He's 14 and male so communication is not his strong suit right now. There could be carnations, and a tender, bruised ego, but I will never know unless it makes it on to Facebook. That is reality.

Because kids are kids and they like to celebrate every "holiday", I have always made an effort to include something special in their lunch bags on Valentine's Day. In past years, I have cut heart shapes out of sugar cookie dough and lovingly decorated them. I have baked decadent brownies, also cutting them into heart shapes. I even have a giant heart-shaped cookie pan that I usually crack out at this time of year to make a really large chocolate chip cookie and then decorate with appropriately gushy decorations.

Guess what I did this year? Threw a few leftover Hershey's Kisses in each of their lunch bags and called it a day.

I don't think I ever appreciated how much extra time working from  home afforded me to do the little extras. In between writing projects I could easily whip up a batch of brownies, it was no biggie. Now that I'm working a traditional work day in an office, and trying to run kids to activities, get errands done and everything else in the evenings, time is a scarce commodity. Last night when I got home at 9 p.m., I did bake red velvet cupcakes, but they are for dinner with friends tonight. The kids are under strict orders to NOT TOUCH THE CUPCAKES. At least until after dinner tonight. And those cupcakes that I made? They were from a box.

I actually have a red velvet cupcake recipe that I love, but I just did not have the will (or the red paste food colouring) to make it happen. It's fine. These days I do what I can and the kids are fine. They know that love doesn't hinge on home baking. So today they will open their lunches to Hershey's Kisses and, whether the day is leaving them feeling blessed or bruised, I know that they will be happy for the surprise.

technical difficulties - please stand by

Sadly, a broken laptop has cut our intrepid Beck off at the knees. I can only assume she's holed up in the wilds of Northern Ontario, twisting hay to keep warm and cursing her phone's unsuitability as a blogging platform.

Regular posting will resume next Thursday, February 13th.

In the meantime, here are two videos of handsome British men interacting with Muppets, for your viewing pleasure. One features cookies and one features fruit, so it's kind of like lunch, right?

See you next week!

we all live in a yellow submarine

As this year has worn on, I've learned that what we as adults would find boring - the same lunch every day for weeks on end - is actually comforting to kids. We may not like packing the same dull lunches day after day, but they like eating them.

And so, my kids have settled into a routine:

Monday - ham or turkey & cheese sandwich with baby spinach, yoghurt or cheesestring, banana, one other fruit or vegetable
Tuesday - see above
Wednesday - replace "apple" with "bag of plain popcorn for school fundraiser"
Thursday - pizza from school, snacks from home
Friday - egg salad for 5 year old, ham or turkey & cheese for 8 year old

It's easy to plan for. I have my fun mixing up the fruit / veggies they get based on what's on sale or tasting especially nice in a given week. And they come home with empty lunchbags, so either they're feeding seagulls or I've hit on a winning formula.

BUT I'M BOOOOOOORED.

This week, store-made sub buns were on sale at my favourite grocery store, so I decided to give it a try. Mix things up a bit. I bought the buns and asked the boys if they'd like subs for a change this week.

"WOW!" said 8 year old. "Like from Subway?"

"I LOVE Subway!" proclaimed 5 year old.

Here's the funny thing. The toppings on their subs are exactly the same as what they've been having on their sandwiches. Turkey or ham, cheese, baby spinach, mayo, little bit of spicy mustard.

But they are on a SUB. This is COOL. The other kids in the class are, apparently, ENVIOUS.

We have a winner, folks.

Is it any less boring for me? A little, actually. It's nice to hear "mom, that lunch was delicious! Can we have it again?" Now I'm trying to think of ways to repackage other favourites. I guess it's all in the presentation.

Haters Going To Hate, Nicole's Going To Lunchmate

As you know, my children come home for lunch. I can count on one hand the number of kids who go home for lunch in our school of 520 children. I don't mind it; we are a twelve minute walk/ two minute drive to the school, so other than pattering back and forth to the school six times a day, and always having to schedule appointments in the space in between drop off, lunch, and pick up times, it's a pleasure. I like to see the kids in the middle of the day, they like to have a bit of downtime at home, I don't need to worry about them freezing on the playground when the temperature is only slightly above the minus-20 cutoff, and the dog is always happy when he sees his people come home, hopefully to accidentally drop a bit of lunch on the floor.

Plus, I get to serve the children a hot lunch*!

*Hot lunch meaning toasted bagel, plus non-hot fruit and cookies.

That's the drill from Monday to Thursday, anyway. Fridays are different because those are the days of early dismissal; the children finish school at 1:10. This means that they have a fifteen minute "nutrition break", and I need to pack as much nutrition as possible into that nutrition break for a couple of reasons. Friday afternoons mean long hours at the playground, hanging out with friends at home, or doctor/ dentist/ haircut appointments. In any case, they need to be sufficiently fueled for our free afternoon, but they also need to be able to eat quickly.

And so on Fridays I join the ranks of practically every other mother in the country, packing lunches that I am reasonably sure are going to get eaten. I make them "Lunchmates".

Before you slam your laptop shut or, less aggressively, click on the "close window" button, I have actually never purchased a Lunchmate in my life. I know there is a furor surrounding them and their lack of nutrition, not to mention the environmental impact. But I tell you this: I can really understand the appeal. I am someone who actually secretly likes getting meals on airplanes, everything in their little compact container. I loved getting hospital meals because look! A tiny thing of milk to pour on the little bowl of oatmeal, so cute! I also, less weirdly, like getting room service for the same reason. So I can really understand why Lunchmates are appealing: they're cute, they're neatly contained, and they require almost zero effort on the part of the lunch packer.

But! They are nutritionally deficient, the containers are landfill-bound, and they are also expensive. Here's what I do: I have two Bento-style boxes I bought at my local Co-Op. I put a bunch of crackers in the large "sandwich" part of the container. I put a stick of pepperoni (nitrate free!) and some carrots, grapes, or berries in the smaller parts of the containers. I put a couple of cookies, a muffin, or some banana bread in a separate container, fill a water bottle, and BADA BING BADA BOOM. Lunch. The containers always come home mostly empty and the children are ready for a Friday afternoon of fun and/or appointments.

The best part? The cost. Here is my breakdown for the cost of the lunch, not including the baked goods:

Crackers: $3.49/box. I get about eight servings out of a box. Cost: $0.44/ serving.
Pepperoni: $8.99 for a pack of 20. Cost per stick: $0.45.
Carrots: $2.99/ 2 pound bag. I worked this out to $0.23 per serving of carrots.

Total cost: $1.12. I don't know what Lunchmates cost but I assume it is much more for smaller, less nutritious servings. It takes me approximately five minutes to put together, which is more than zero minutes, but still pretty reasonable.

I got a case of January-itis

I am not a fan of January. It's the month that makes me feel incompetent; it makes me doubt my deepest, most ingrained skills. I have no gumption, and that extends to making lunches. The other day I fantasized about filling the kids' lunch bags entirely with popcorn. Maybe burying a full can of Coke in the popcorn. It would be like a nutritionally defunct treasure hunt. The kids would love it, to be sure, but the lack of protein and vitamins would result in a mood crash that would hurt me in the end. So I made pasta salad instead.

It didn't go well. I chose to boil shell-shaped pasta and when I rinsed one of the shells with cold water to test whether it was cooked enough, there was sneaky, sneaky boiling water hiding in the shell. NINJA water, that spilled onto my tongue and lip burning me painfully.

"I liked that pasta salad, Mom, but what was that weird stuff in it?"

"Oh, those were mama's taste buds baby. I didn't need them any more. Apparently."

Still, the pasta salad was good. I find that it's a nice break from sandwiches and thermos fare. And it's super flexible. Just boil some noodles (quinoa or rice would work too) and then chop up whatever veggies you have on hand and throw them in. Leftover chicken or salmon gives it a nice protein boost, if you have any. Then you can either mix in some bottled salad dressing (I used Renee's Greek) or you could mix up your own with a little olive oil, balsamic vinegar and a touch of sweetness - honey, sugar or even maple syrup would work.

Isn't that easy? And here's the best part: We're one lunch closer to spring.

Slow Like Molasses

The post-Christmas month of January - partly a relief (THE KIDS ARE BACK IN SCHOOL! THERE PROBABLY AREN'T ANY LARGE FAMILY GATHERINGS FOR MONTHS!) and partly a huge let-down because all we have to look forward to now are several more months of winter and  trying not to freeze to death. But let's stay positive: THE KIDS ARE BACK IN SCHOOL! And on a negative note, we must continue to feed them while they are at school and whatever early September enthusiasm I had for school lunches is long, long gone.

One of the things I like to rant about on Twitter - partly for fun and partly BECAUSE IT IS TRUE - is that people should eat more molasses. Yes! Stop using expensive corn-syrup-y cactus juice and instead use delicious, cheap, iron-rich molasses! I also like to rant about this in person.Obviously, I am very fun to know. I am also correct because molasses is excellent.

Also excellent: many years ago I sent away for a molasses cookbook offered for freeee by a molasses company and they sent it to me and it has been a delight and a comfort ever since. I've always thought the recipe for Frosted Molasses Bars looked delicious and last night I made them for school lunches today and WHAT DO YOU KNOW, they're AMAZING.


Frosted Molasses Bars
1/2 cup softened butter
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup Fancy molasses
1/2 tsp. vanilla
2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk
(The recipe called for 1/2 cup chopped walnuts and 1/2 cup raisins but of course I didn't add those because I am not a monster.)

Preheat oven to 350. Grease a 9x9 square pan.

Cream together butter, sugar and egg and add the molasses and vanilla.
Sift together all the dry ingredients add to the molasses mixture alternating with milk.
Bake for 35 minutes.

When it's cool, frost with a frosting made from:
3 c. icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup softened butter
2 tbsp Fancy molasses
2 tbsp milk (I needed more than this).

Cut into bars.

Queen of Sandwiches

Last night I didn't cook dinner; as I always do one night each week, I just threw together some sandwiches for the boys. Thursday is pizza day at the big boys' school, so they've already had a 'main' meal by the time they come home, and the toddler had leftovers for his lunch, too.

Dinner for lunch! Lunch for dinner! IT'S TOPSY-TURVY TIME UP IN HERE.

I made the older boys pretty much the same kind of sandwich they've been eating a lot lately - sliced turkey, cheddar cheese, and baby spinach with mayo and mustard.

This time, though, they were watching me make the sandwiches (usually I pack lunches very early in the morning, before they're even out of bed). Their input was both welcome and surprising, and reminded me that I should be involving them in the process more than I have been - even if it does mean the process takes longer.

Five year old requested honey mustard instead of regular yellow mustard, and wondered if pickles were possible. It never occurred to me that he'd want such strong flavours - he's the pickiest of my children, by far - but he loved them.

The 8 year old asked for sliced tomato and 'some of that fancy mustard'. A word on the fancy mustard - friends of ours shipped us a selection of mustards from Mrs. McGarrigle's for Christmas. (No, this is not a sponsored post, although I wish it were, if it meant a lifetime supply of their products because OH MY). Anyway, my favourite of the bunch is "Hot Whiskey", and who would put that on a sandwich for an eight year old? But I slopped some on, figuring I could eat the sandwich myself once he tasted it and hated it.

But he RAVED about that sandwich. RAVED. He was still talking about it this morning, and feeling slightly mournful that toasted bread for sandwiches is just not possible in a lunchbox. He also asked me to make sure I put "all those ingredients" on the week's grocery list so he could eat lots of "those delicious sandwiches" while he's on Christmas break.

I am The Sandwich Queen.

***

We're going on break now until January 9th. Until then, have a wonderful holiday season filled with laughter and love.

Welcome to the M&M Show

*taps microphone, clears throat*

Is this still on?

It's been a long time since I've been a Lunch Lady - it's been a very hectic fall for me! Here's what happened that's kept me delinquint over here:

1) I'm chair of the School Council/ Parent Association. I know, I'm a pretty big deal.
2) Our school Fundraising Coordinator quit prior to doing any actual fundraising, so I took on the role for our magazine campaign (no, not the icky one that makes kids sell x amount of subscriptions to win a crappy prize, the ccrp.ca one)
3) I co-coordinated a silent auction.
4) I went to Toronto for four days for Blissdom Canada.
5) I went to the in-laws' for Thanksgiving.
6) I ran the school's book fair.
7) Our SC/PA Treasurer was away for five weeks and so I was acting Treasurer.
8) I've been busy recipe writing over at the Yummy Mummy Club.

But I've missed you, you wonderful lunch-obsessed people! Thank you to the lovely guest posters - in case you missed it, how to organize lunch for three older children when you're days away from giving birth, and also how to put your kids to work making their own lunches, by the seven year old Mr. M. You two saved my vegan bacon, so thank you!

Vegan bacon, what is THAT? Gross. Sorry for the visual.

So it's been a busy fall and early winter, and we've been trucking along as usual over in my house; the kids are still coming home for lunch, and their general lunch of choice is a) bagel with cream cheese or b) bagel with peanut butter. Hey, if it's not broke...

But last Friday was a PD day. I'm not sure why it was a PD day, with only two weeks left of school, and a few days off in the month of November, but since I'm not working outside the home it's not a big deal for me. In fact, it's nice, because then I don't feel the urge to change out of my sweaty yoga clothes immediately and make myself pretty for school drop off, because yes, I'm THAT mom who always has makeup on and hair done at drop off. Hey, the one time I didn't have makeup on, someone thought I was gravely ill.

In any event, it was a PD day, and I decided to whip up some pancakes for lunch. I have been feeling like a happy little elf this month, and in the spirit of Buddy the Elf I decided to throw some mini M&M's into the batter. Awesome, right? M&M pancakes! The boys were appropriately thrilled and dug into their stacks.

Somewhere around his third or fourth pancake, Mark frowned a little. "Wow," he said, "This is a really hard M&M. I think I should spit it out." I handed him a napkin, hoping I wouldn't have to go online about finding something weird in a package of baking M&M's.

"Hey, my tooth fell out!" Mark said, looking at his napkin. "I guess it wasn't an M&M after all!"

M&M Pancakes

3/4 cup flour
2 teaspoons sugar
1 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg, fork beaten
1 tablespoon canola oil
150 mL milk
handful of M&Ms - yes, that's an actual measurement. SHUT UP, it is so!

Mix together dry ingredients, then add the egg, oil, and milk. Stir until combined - a few lumps are fine, don't overmix. Fold the M&Ms into the batter. Drop batter by large tablespoons onto a hot griddle and flip when bubbles form and edges brown. Maybe don't serve to wiggly toothed children, unless they are desperate for a few extra tooth-bucks.

PS I mentioned this event on Facebook and some people misread it and thought *I* had lost a tooth, like a meth addict or something. NO, IT WAS MY NINE YEAR OLD. NOT ME.

All the small things

It's hard to believe we're in December already. That's approximately 60 days of lunches, if you're counting. Are you out of ideas yet? It's strange, but this year I don't mind the lunches so much. They used to be a thorn in my side but now I just get it done, you know? Children are creatures of habit, after all. So you can make the same things, over and over, throw in a new thing now and then, and you're good. Or at least that's how it works in my family.

Last week I made plain ol' egg salad but put it on soft, fresh white bread. Okay, so whole grain bread is healthier, but: Best. Sandwiches. Ever. Or so I am told.

A new treat now and then helps too. Last weekend we did an epic Christmas cookie baking session. We made these molasses ginger cookies that we make every year. I got the recipe out of Canadian Living magazine a few years ago and, seriously, everybody loves these cookies (Unfortunately, I can't find the recipe online now). They are the amazing and the recipe makes close to 100 cookies. I make the whole batch and then give them away as little tasty gifts over the holiday season.

We also made these Chocolate Caramel Thumbprint cookies. They are decadently delicious and so easy to make. Since my kid is nut allergic, I roll them in coconut instead of pecans. I also find they keep their shape better when you use a little less flour -- about a quarter cup less. A kid-sized thumb is perfect for making the indentation you need for the caramel, too. They are the perfect helping cookie and the perfect lunchtime treat while we count down the days to Christmas.

Sea Change

If you want to see active hubris, look at this post that I wrote last spring.

HA HA! I actually thought my teenage daughter would want to continue packing lunch to school! But she doesn't - at all - and keeping her well fed is an ongoing challenge that I'm not doing a great job at right now. So we have a cobbled-together mess of peanut butter and jam sandwiches (permitted again after a whole childhood of being forbidden by school rules) and the occasional $5 to spend in the cafeteria and I don't know if we're going to make it.

Even if we could afford it - and we can't - eating fast food or in the cafeteria every day just isn't good for her. But skipping lunch - her other new favorite option - is even cruddier for her and this is a skinny kid ALREADY and what can we do? This is a hypothetical question, I suspect, because I think the answer is that we're just going to muddle through.

Her dad told me about getting an unexpected phonecall from her one lunch hour earlier this fall - she had gone out for lunch with a group of friends but the line-up at the restaurant was far longer than expected and could he come and take them to a further restaurant, please? So he did and told me later on that the girls - girls he's known for a decade -  all looked pale with exhaustion and suddenly lanky and tall and talked about how hard it was to get up so much earlier and how different the classes were and so full (after a childhood spent in a school with the same 90 kids) of strangers.

You couldn't get me to be a teenager again for a million dollars and my kid is going through it right now - largely with grace and largely with kindness and I'm trying to keep in mind that for all of the changes this brings into my life, it's even harder for her. And she is well worth figuring out the whole bothersome mess of school lunches all over again, with as much grace and kindness and peanut butter sandwiches as I can give.

branching out

The lead-up to the holidays is always a fun time to go grocery shopping.

So many treats on the store shelves! So much candy and chocolate and fancy cheese and fancier cheese and weird snacking meats and nuts in the shell and...

Yeah.

Funny thing though, this is also the time of year where you start seeing slightly more exotic fruit on offer in the produce department. Things that are coming in season halfway around the world, like the humble but always delightful clementine (or mandarin orange, depending on where you live). All of a sudden you can get 4lbs of easy-to-peel balls of orange happiness, and who doesn't love one (or two) of these sweet little bundles in their lunchbox?

This time of year you also tend to see deep discounts on pomegranates. Now, I love pomegranates, but I've spent years trying to decide if the game is worth the candle; to wit, if it is worth my time and energy to sit there painstakingly picking the seeds out from the membrane.

Then I saw this video, and I thought if this works, it will change everything:



GUYS, IT WORKS.

In mere minutes (fun ones, too - spanking a pomegranate is hilarious for some reason) I had a big bowl of tasty little nuggets of sweetness. The kids loved them. My husband did, too. And because I didn't have to pick out each individual seed with a stickpin (yes, that is one suggested method) or roll it around in a bowl of water for a thousand years (the most commonly-seen method) I didn't mind sharing.

They are nice in lunches as part of a fruit salad with some slices of clementine / mandarin and some grapes - also an item usually marked down in the run-up to Christmas. They're packed with fibre and are one of the prettiest foods going.

Pomegranate = WIN.

We also tried persimmons this week - another fruit that tends to go on sale this time of year. They're still pretty pricey, but I was feeling chuffed from my success with the pomegranates so I figured I'd give it a go.

You eat a persimmon like an apple; just take a bite. I sliced mine first because I was sharing it and the peel is much thicker than an apple, so I'd do that. The flesh is very smooth and with a creamy texture; the taste is sort of reminiscent of an apple and a pumpkin together, but sweeter. My suddenly-very-picky five year old loved it, as did my two year old; my eight year old said it was "pretty nice" but declined to take any in his lunch. Two out of three? I'll take it.

Persimmon = PARTIAL VICTORY

Next time you're in the grocery store, give some thought to trying one of the "holiday fruits". Slip some into your kids' lunches and see how it goes. You may start a new tradition (and trick your kids into eating some extra vitamins while you're at it.)

Expectant Lunches

Today we have a guest post from the southern US. A friend of the Ladies is due to deliver any day now, and having a newborn AND school-aged kids presents its own unique set of organizational challenges. She's got it cased! And agreed to write a post for us while thinking labor-ish thoughts (I took out the "u" because she's American. Cross-cultural sensitivity is important.)

***

Every Sunday night for the past three weeks I've done the same thing: pack five snack bags for the oldest son, prep half of five snack bags for the girl, and fill a lunchbox with random goodies for the preschooler who firmly believes that he, too, is going to school and needs a lunch. Here and there I've assembled lunch "side items" as well. This level of organization and preparedness is not natural to me. I'm just paranoid. I'm paranoid that I will go into labor with child number four, and I'll have no time to make sure that the children are taken care of in my absence. My preparedness has left me a million weeks pregnant, but it's also taught me something that I should have already known: Advance preparation actually makes morning life so much easier. Let me say that again, because frankly, I'm shocked that this is the case since I've lived so long on coffee, adrenaline, and a lead foot motoring toward the city center each morning:

Advance preparation actually makes morning life so much easier.

Just let the above statement soak in for a minute or two. I'll wait for you to digest this, fellow adrenaline junkies. If you're one of those perfectly organized moms who has "known this all along" (sarcastic air quote emphasis mine) then just go watch this video of some kittens eating lunch with a monkey while the rest of us mull this over.



I mean to tell you that I am pretty darn impressed with how quickly I can roll out of bed, get kids into uniforms, shove breakfast into their mouths, and load them into the car each morning when I have these snacks and lunches staged and waiting. Today is a great example: I awoke startled to discover it was already 7:15. Bleary eyed, I wondered if I could get us out of the house in a mere 20 minutes. It might not have been pretty, and the two big kids might have been eating double chocolate gluten free muffins in the car at 7:30, but thanks to those snacks and lunches mostly prepped we made it with time to spare.

This evening I'm spending time in between contractions putting together a few more snacks and lunches. I'm taking a little more care because now I'm starting to feel the impending guilt of being away from the children while in the hospital. My kids have different tastes and dietary requirements, so it's pretty important to me that I make sure they are set up with snacks and lunches that they can and will eat in my absence. I feel like children have so much demanding their focus in school - not just the school work, but the dynamics of discipline as well as social life. Making sure they have food that doesn't throw them curve balls, but rather comforts and represents a taste of home is in many ways a comfort to me as I send them off for the day without me. It sounds a little bit sappy, but I do want them to have good food experiences while I labor, deliver, and hide in the hospital begging for extra ice and pain medication.

To wit, my middle child really enjoys the making of lunch. I don't do it very often because I'm an impatient hag who is guilty of valuing speed over what I really do know could be valuable time with my eight year old daughter. The girl, Peep, has recently discovered that she likes tuna salad, but we've struggled with the right way to transport it to school. On a sandwich? By lunch the cold pack has sogged out the bread. Our best strategy has been to pack the bread in her sandwich case, put the tuna salad in a small container on the side, and add a plastic knife for spreading. This approach to packing lunch has really worked well. Tonight I let her make the tuna salad herself. I didn't prod, fuss, fix, or really help her except to remind her what ingredients a girl from the southern United States might use.

Tuna Salad:
1 can of your favorite brand of tuna
1-2 TBS Duke's mayonnaise (having a brand you love is important!)
1 stalk of crisp, fresh celery (diced)
1 TBS sweet pickle relish
dash of celery seed
salt/pepper to taste

I'm not going to insult y'all by telling you how to mix up tuna salad. This does make 2 generous sized sandwich portions which is my way of saying that I just successfully conned my daughter into making my lunch in advance. See how everyone wins here??

To recap: Some of you got some amazing advice about how doing things in advance actually increases personal efficiency. Some of you had the opportunity to watch an inter-species luncheon. Mostly, all of us got the chance to reflect on exactly how a perpetually exhausted and frazzled mother of three manages lunch preparation while being approximately 7,000 weeks pregnant.

A microwave would make things simpler

At least twice a week, while making lunches, I fantasize about buying a microwave for my kids' classrooms. Or at least for two of them: the logistics for the high schooler who moves from class to class would be ridiculous. Plus he'd probably be embarrassed, since pretty much everything I do is embarrassing now.

Of course, you can't just buy a microwave for one classroom. So would it be a microwave for all kids in the school? Can you imagine the line up? That leaves the alternative for buying many microwaves for the whole school population to use, which is financially prohibitive, really. Plus, you know some kid would microwave their spoon and cause some sort of injury that would result in a lawsuit. And so my microwave dream evaporates, like steam rising off of reheated soup. :)

"What about a thermos?" you may be asking yourself. Well, yes, that's the alternative. I do send thermoses, of course. But despite the labour intensive process of boiling the water to heat up the thermoses, heating up the food to scalding and getting the lid on before any of that heat can escape, it's not quite the same. I open up thermoses at the end of the day to find abandoned pasta or soup, those last few bites that just weren't hot enough. That never happens with microwaved food.

I recently discovered the joy of turning stereotypical hot food into cold-food lunch awesomeness. I'm talking about taco salad. Whenever I make tacos we always have some of the meat filling leftover, so why not use it for lunches the next day? Now you could heat it up and put it in the thermos, but it's actually really good thrown in a cold salad. It's one of my favourite things to eat for lunch at work.

I like to send the various components separate, so the cheese doesn't get all soggy and lettuce doesn't get all taco-meaty. I have these multi-compartment containers so I can put torn up lettuce in one spot, with any kind of veggies I have on hand thrown in. Then the shredded cheese goes in its own compartment and, in the third, the leftover taco meat (or, if you're vegetarian, you could put chickpeas or some other kind of bean in there). I put some ranch dressing in another container and, if we have any, a few nacho chips to crunch up over the whole mess at lunch time. It takes 30 seconds to throw all the components together at lunch time and then you're eating taco salad. No boiling water required.

Speaking of tacos, do you use the little spice package from the store to make yours? I used to and then I discovered this recipe in a milk calendar over 10 years ago and it has been my go-to every since. I find it milder then the spice mix and my kids love it.

Make your own taco filling

1 lb ground beef (I actually use ground turkey for tacos - leaner and still delicious)
1/2 medium onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced (if you don't have garlic, leave it out. It tastes fine without)
1 tbsp. chili powder
1 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 cup milk
1/3 cup tomato paste (or ketchup. I often use ketchup because I always forget  to buy tomato paste)
salt and pepper to taste

Brown the meat. Add the onion, garlic and spices. Cook for about 5 minutes, until the onion is tender. Stir in the milk and tomato paste (or ketchup!). Then you just let it simmer for 5 or 10 minutes until all the liquid is absorbed.

It Is My Turn To Post, Which Is Why It's Late

I was sick! Wretchedly sick with a cold although now that I'm better it's sort of hard to remember that I spent much of the week staggering around with a fever and complaining dramatically to my poor long-suffering husband. And I didn't have to make THAT many lunches this past week, because I cleverly infected my children as well and they mostly just lay around asking me to make chicken noodle soup (the "good" kind that comes dry in packets and that Gwyneth Paltrow would never, ever feed her children).

But I also made homemade lentil soup, which is one of my children's very favorite things and which causes ANOTHER one of my children to burst into horrified sobbing so you be the judge of whether or not your kids will like this. It packs nicely in thermoses for lunch, if your children are more like my first child and if they're more like my youngest it will also give them an excellent story of childhood hardship for when they're older and build their character:

M's Lentil Soup
1 quart chicken stock (although if you want this to be a vegetarian soup, add vegetable stock or heck, just another quart of water)
1 quart water
1 pound dried red lentils
2 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
2 medium onions, diced
3 garlic cloves minced
1 tsp dried oregano
a sprinkle of black pepper
1/2 cup olive oil
pinch of salt
and any or all of the following:
2 large tomatoes, de-glopped and quartered
a red pepper, diced
a green pepper, diced (and you can continue adding other colours of peppers, if you'd like. You're free!)
2 large carrots, peeled and diced

In a large pot, bring the chicken stock and water to a boil. Add all the other ingredients at once. Bring the soup to a boil, TURN IT DOWN and let it simmer along for... a while. Half an hour? Stir it once in a while and make sure it doesn't burn. It's done when it's cooked and it tastes better after a day or two in the fridge but it MAGICALLY the best tasting lentil soup ever.

Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater

It's October! When everywhere you look, someone is putting 'pumpkin spice' into something and selling it at a premium.

I'm as big a sucker for it as anyone. There is something about that smell that instantly transports me to the woods behind the house I grew up in, wearing rubber boots and rustling through the ankle-deep leaf carpet. In buying that over-priced latté, I'm trying to recapture that feeling.

Whenever I see a recipe for something I like with the added deliciousness that is pumpkin pie spice, I get inspired to try it.

First step? Mix up your own pumpkin pie spice. There are about a zillion recipes online but this one is my favourite. Just mix everything up in an airtight jar and pop it in the cupboard.

3 tbsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp nutmeg
1.5 tsp ground allspice
1.5 tsp ground cloves

The nice thing about making your own is that you can adjust the various components to your own personal tastes.

What does all this have to do with lunches? Well, just after Thanksgiving Julie van Rosendaal posted a recipe for "Roasted Sweet Potato Gingerbread" on her "Dinner With Julie" website - and lo, you can use canned pureed pumpkin instead of sweet potatoes.

*cue angels singing*

I whipped up a batch on the weekend, using some leftover canned pumpkin (WHY is there always leftover canned pumpkin?) and WOW. We had some warm right away with a dollop of vanilla ice cream and it felt like a luxurious treat. It has since gone to school in several lunches, and it's perfect - not crumbly, and still moist & delicious several days later. It's a nicely festive little dessert option for the week before Halloween, and pumpkin is packed with potassium, Vitamins A & B, and is rich in anti-oxidants.

Take THAT, Starbucks.

These Apples Are Delicious (as a matter of fact they are, she said)

Can you BELIEVE that it is mid-October? Can you believe that October is MORE than half over? Me either. It feels like school just started and then - whoooooosh - here we are.

What's been going on for lunches around here? Same old, same old. The kids are still coming home and eating the same exact lunches that they have for years - bagels with cream cheese or peanut butter - and I'm still packing the same rotation of snacks for them to take to school: cookies, loaves, muffins with fruit or veggies on the side. If it's not broke...

The one fruit I never pack for school snack is the one fruit I always had as a child, and that is the much-loved and celebrated apple. Whole apples are hard for my kids to eat due to chronically loose teeth and time constraints, and sliced apples are just too BROWN. I know, I know, if I sprinkled them with lemon juice they would be fine, but I'm more of a "well, you can eat them after school" kind of mom. I'll happily bake everything from scratch, but apparently lemon juice on apple slices is just too much for me to handle.

It's too bad they don't have apples at school because I currently have sixty pounds of apples in my cold storage right now, along with forty pounds of Concord grapes. I just got back from Thanksgiving at the in-laws', where fall means fruit, beautiful, quality fruit. We're all enjoying the fresh flavours, but the time to enjoy the grapes is limited, and I have a plan.

Remember my not-so-secret love of fruit leather? Remember how my husband romanced me by buying me a food dehydrator? Do you see where this is going? HOMEMADE GRAPE AND APPLE FRUIT LEATHER. I see the future and it is going to be all dehydrating, all the time, at least for the weekend. I haven't quite figured out the measurements yet...and I haven't quite figured out how to make the leather thick and chewy rather than thin and roll-up like, but it's all part of the experience. As someone at Blissdom Canada said a few weeks ago, I CAN DO ANYTHING IF I BELIEVE I CAN. Well, I probably can't become a professional athlete or a supermodel or someone who has to work with small children, but I am pretty sure I CAN make fruit leather.

Stay tuned - I will let you know how it turns out! In the meantime, I'm going to go eat some more Concords and stock up on teeth whitening strips.

The fruit drought

I bought a honeydew melon the other day and when I cut it up for lunches it looked lovely, pale green and firm. However, when I ate my serving at work the next day it was disappointing. The texture was wrong, a signal that melon season is over. Period.

Of course, we have seasons for a reason. There was a time when people only ate local fruit in season. So you enjoyed your two weeks of strawberries and then it was over, unless you had the skill and foresight to do some preserving. 

Now we can get all kinds of fruit all year long. Mangoes in March, nectarines in November:  I definitely partake. It's hard to eat only apples, pears and bananas for 8 months straight, though our lunches do skew towards these fruits in the winter months. So when it's cold and blustery and I have non-local fruits in the fridge that may have questionable texture, I make fruit salad. Because, really, who doesn't like fruit salad? It's a welcome change in the lunch box and it adds some variety to our fruit-eating repertoire. After almost 6 tedious weeks of making school lunches now, I'll take variety wherever I can get it. 

Simple Fruit Salad

1/2 cup grapes

1/2 cup diced apples

1/2 cup melon (watermelon, honey dew or cantaloupe)

1/4 cup of blueberries

1 tsp maple syrup or honey

1 tsp lime juice

Mix all together and chill.