canary in the coal mine

Saturday I went grocery shopping alone.

This is a big deal for me. As part of our family strategy for getting the kids to eat a variety of foods without kicking up holy hell about it, we plan our menu and do our shopping together. All five of us get up early Saturday morning and head to the store with our list. Some weeks, if there are big sales on stock-up items, we'll take two carts. The kids are pretty agreeable about the whole thing and it is quality time we spend together, but.

Shopping alone, even though it was only at the grocery store, was pure luxury. I felt like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman before that bitch kicks her out of the fancy store.

Choosing fruit for lunch snacks without the immediate input of the kids was tough, though. And nothing was on sale, except for mushy California strawberries - again - and two of my three kids flat-out refuse to eat them. I was getting a bit desperate when I spotted the canary melons.



The colour is so vibrant, they're hard to miss. They were nestled in between the mini watermelons ($4.99 and maybe enough for a day or two) and the honeydew melons ($5.99, OMFG). They were larger than the honeydews and $2 less. I was standing there in the produce aisle, dithering, when I noticed that on the UPC code sticker, in tiny wee letters, it said "yellow honeydew".

Since all three of my kids love honeydew melon, I figured this was my ace in the hole. I'd just tell them this was an extra-special yellow honeydew, how crazy! And then with any luck they wouldn't reject them the way they did the cantaloupe I bought a month ago.

Guess what? SUCCESS. They love it. I'm not sure why, to be honest - it doesn't taste anything like a honeydew, although the texture is the same. I actually find it quite bland. But all of them have been snarfing it down all week and asking for more. I've already packed Thursdays' lunches and there is still lots left, so it was good value for money, and it made a nice change from the interminable bananas / apples / grapes round we've been on lately.

One half-cup serving of canary melon contains 5g of fibre and 50% of your daily requirement for Vitamins A & C. They would be a tasty addition to smoothies or a fruit salad, too.

I got a ham that won't quit

My husband had a brain-wave at the grocery store this week. He bought one of those little hams, which was a crazy price on sale. Around $3, I believe. Then he cooked it and...you guys...tomorrow will be day THREE of lunches, courtesy of said ham.

Okay, okay, so it's probably a little high in sodium and not as nutritionally sound as, say, homemade hummus or organic, free-range, chicken salad sandwiches. But can I just say again, in case you missed it the first time: 3 days of lunches. I tell myself it can't be any worse than deli meat.

He threw it on the bbq wrapped in tin foil when he was grilling our steak and asparagus on Sunday night. Then Monday we packed it in their lunches sliced on whole wheat bread with some mayo, mustard and lettuce.

Last night I boiled some whole wheat rotini and turned it into greek pasta salad with chunks of ham thrown in, which they ate in their lunches today.

Tomorrow I think they are getting ham sandwiches again. Maybe it will be on white bread this time with cucumber slices. Just to mix it up.

It's not something I would do every week but this week lunches are a breeze, I tell  you, because: ham! Then Thursday is pizza day and Friday is a PD Day. Done and done.

What's for lunch tomorrow?

- (Forever) ham sandwiches
- Granola bars
- Pears
- Cheese rice crackers
- Sliced green and yellow peppers with dip

Discovering something that doesn't exist, or giving a monkey a shower.

When I was a kid I invited friends over to lunch, or I was invited to "eat over" at a friend's house, frequently.  Since this was in the eighties, my mom wouldn't know until I showed up with a friend in tow, or until I phoned from that friend's house.  My kids don't have this kind of experience: for one thing, I pick them up for their 55 minute lunch hour, and for another, there are very, very few other children who go home for lunch.

But the other day my friend - whose daughters do come home for lunch - was running a tight schedule, and it was pouring rain, and so I picked up her girls and took them home for lunch.  It was a festive occasion, so I broke the kids' sandwich-and-bagel rut and made pancakes.  It was, for everyone, so much fun.  The novelty of having friends over for lunch, not to mention having chocolate chip pancakes, was great.  Add to that an episode of Phineas and Ferb and being able to eat lunch while watching meant through-the-roof excitement.

It's funny, after-school play and lunch dates seem to be largely a thing of the past.  Our school day goes until 3:40, most kids have activities or schedules that don't allow for playtime after this.  It's fine, but until we have friends over I forget how much fun the kids all have.  Well, there are only three and a half weeks left of school - after that the whole summer is free for unscheduled playtime, and who knows?  Maybe even a few lunch dates too.

a plague o' both your houses

Lunches? Don't ask me about lunches. This is going to be a brief post, as I haven't slept more than a couple of hours at a stretch since last Friday because my 16 month old has pneumonia. I figure as long as the kids don't go to school Nelson Muntz-style with peanut butter smeared on a playing card, that I'll be ahead of the game.

Like sick toddlers everywhere, he thinks he wants food, but he doesn't know which food it is that will make him happy. Certainly not any of the foods I've packed for him. Even standbys like flavoured yoghurt and sweet watermelon don't seem to be working.

He takes one bite, screams deep in his chest, which brings on a bout of coughing. He shoves the food at me (or onto the floor). I take the offending thing away. He points at the lunchbag and screams "MOREMOREMORE". I try something else. Rinse. Repeat.

Blissfully, my older kids have settled into a nice routine where they want a sandwich, either yoghurt or cheese, a couple pieces of fruit, maybe a granola bar or something. Like Sue said last week, maybe the reason why the bog-standard bag lunch exists is because it really is what works the best, for most people.

Lunch Break

I was away on a business trip last week and the lovely Sue stepped in to write a post, which was fantastic. Not only did I not write a post last week, I barely packed a lunch. I think I must have packed Monday's lunch but that's the last lunch I remember, even though I was back for Friday lunches.

This past weekend was the May Two-Four long weekend in Canada, the unofficial kick off to summer. So today is the first day of school, the return to packed lunches. However, after cuddling and reading with my youngest last night for an extended period, I came downstairs to find the lunch sacks out and (mostly) packed. Further, my daughter informed me that they had a definitive plan on the other items they were going to add in the morning.

Um...what?

Did I fly through a worm hole on the way home? Is this my alternate, button-eyed, Coraline-esque family? I don't know what is going on, but I like it. I suspect it won't last but I'm going to enjoy it while it does.


What's for lunch today?

I don't know! :)

Things I Feel Guilty About

A few weekends ago, we zipped over to my grandma's house on her birthday and visited with her and my aunts and mom and my three-year-old first cousin (he's spiffy!) and I mentioned the lunch blog, I think, because one of my aunts asked me if I make my husband lunch.

.... no?

There's no real REASON why I don't, beyond him not WANTING me to very much. He leaves really early in the morning and he likes the time to himself in the unusual dusky quiet of the still morning rooms and he also doesn't want me grouching around making him peanut butter sandwiches, I suspect, and so his lunches tend to be either leftovers or purchased salads and he's perfectly content with the way things are (OR SO HE CLAIMS). I still managed to instantlly feel guilty, though.

My kids go to school with a family with a perfect mom. She sends her kids imaginative, healthy, tasty lunches everyday and my kids speak wistfully of their lunches, with their fruit kabobs and interesting homemade dips and HOMEMADE BREAD EVERY DAY I AM NOT KIDDING and I feel weary just listing this. I spend a lot of time - well, enough - making and packing lunches, but it seems that I still have even more time to make and pack myself generous servings of guilt about this ONE THING. And our moms could just send a sandwich and an apple - imagine!

The reality of school lunches is that although I likely could (and should) try harder, I probably won't. Time in the morning is too short and after I've made supper in the evening I have no interest at all in thinking about future meals looming ahead of me and so I guess my comfort - and it's not actually a comfort at all - is that time in the mornings is short and so is childhood and my oldest child has four years left at home ahead of her and in no time at all I won't be packing lunches for anyone and I'll have a shelf full of school lunch cookbooks gathering dust, never used.

The Flash and The Worm

It's Wednesday night at 9PM and I only just remembered that I'm responsible for a post today.

You can imagine how committed I am to packing lunches right now.

My 7 year old is in Running Club at school. Running Club days are NUTS, as far as lunch packing goes. "Pack me a BIG LUNCH, Mom" he tells me, "I get SO HUNGRY on Running Club days".

And he does. He's like The Flash, my skinny kiddo. He eats. And eats. And eats. His metabolism is running on overdrive. He needs to eat constantly just to maintain his baseline energy levels. Add in a couple of kilometres of running before lunch, and gym class, and I'm contemplating buying him a bigger lunch bag.

Today was pizza day, so he had two slices of cheese pizza, a banana, a cheesestring, a greek yogurt, grapes, and a pear. Then he had a snack when he came home. Then two large helpings of spagetti for dinner, and a piece of leftover chocolate birthday cake, and two glasses of milk.

Did I mention he's only seven? And weighs only 50 pounds and can still wear size 4 shorts because he's so tall and skinny?

Yeesh.

Tonight I got him to help me pack his lunch. He asked for a whole carrot, cut into slices. Sure. I prepped it and he packed it neatly in a container. "This will be perfect," he said, "they'll really like these."

???

They? They who? Am I feeding the class, now? WHO WILL LIKE THESE CARROTS?

Mealworms, that's who. The class is raising mealworms, and apparently mealworms like to eat carrots. So in addition to his usual ginormous lunch, my son is off to public education tomorrow with a baggie of carrots, all prepped and ready for mealworms to eat.

Mark your calendars, folks. May 15, 2013 - the day I packed a lunch for mealworms.