mommy + me lunch box

One of my favorite bloggers is Ree Drummond aka The Pioneer Woman . I've been following her blog for a while. She now has a cookbook, a kids book, taped a Throwdown Challenge (Thanksgiving) against Bobby Flay and now have her own show on Food Network. She's real. She's a wife of a rancher. She's a mom of 4 kids whom she also home schools. And she's a great cook. We have tried out a handful of PW recipes and one of our all-time favorites is Chicken Spaghetti .  I made this when we hosted our small group from church at our house. We had a lot of leftovers (because I always seem to cook for a small army--a trait I learned from my mother) so guess what's in our lunch boxes the next day... Chicken Spaghetti w/melon and yogurt (Miss C)  So as I was packing Miss C's lunch I remembered that I had forgotten her fork every time we use that Thermos bowl. I grabbed a red fork and put it on the counter... but of course I forgot to put it INSIDE her lunch box....

Jelly Sandwich with apple, crackers, mozzarella cheese and vanilla cookies (all things round!) I went to a Pampered Chef party that a friend of mine hosted and I bought Cut-N-Seal. Its a round cutter that cuts your sandwich, but also presses and seals the edges of the bread. Pretty nifty. I can see making empanadas or  ravioli or homemade pizza rolls or homemade toaster strudel/pastry puffs.  Miss C picked that apple all by herself during a field trip to a local apple orchard. :) We also bought a 5 lb bag of apples. I'm sure we will not be able to eat all of it, so I'm in the hunt for a good apple crisp recipe!

Ham rollups using flat bread. Steamed carrots. with vanilla cookies, party/trail mix (no nuts), mandarin oranges Here is a picture of the cute HK bento I got from Ebay: My lunch is leftover cavatappi with my husband's spaghetti sauce. Once in a blue moon, we do a cooking blitz where we cook 3-4 dishes, worth 6-8 meals in one night and freeze them. Usually we incorporate one main meat ingredient (chicken or ground beef) into 3 or 4 recipes and double the recipe. For example, one night we bought ground beef in bulk. We made 2 meatloaves, 1 batch of meatloaf muffins, taco meat (2 meals), a big pot of spaghetti sauce (divided into 3 meals), and Cuban rice (a Filipino stew--don't be fooled with the name--with rice/gr beef/potatoes/carrots).  The freezer meals come in handy for those busy weeks. And we try to cook our favorite recipes for our freezer meals instead of trying out and freezing a new reicpe. I'll write more about that on a future post. I need cute b...

I have been asked numerous times why I started this blog. Why I take pictures of our lunches everyday. Why would anyone care? Well, below are my reasons... and if anyone cares, great! If you don't, then just move on... 1.) I have to. Miss C started preschool with "play&stay".  She goes to pre-k in the morning, then have a structured extended afternoon at the school. The preschool does not serve lunch due to state regulations so she needs to bring her own lunch. And she's not packing it herself. She's 4. 2.) I'm try to be healthy and 3.) save money by eating lunch at work everyday. I'm trying to break this habit of eating out for lunch all the time. And even though we are trying to be budge-conscious, we throw out  a lot of leftovers because we forget what we have in the fridge. While my husband and I do try to cook at home, it may not always be organic or extremely healthy. If things are on sale, we choose organic and healthier foods... but o...

Its been two weeks and so far so good.  I told my husband that I'd be surprised if I last 2 weeks... but I have not lost interest in this yet.  Much like with cakes, I look at food in a different way. "How can I make this (dinner or an ingredient) into something fun for lunch?"  I get my inspiration from sites like Bentobloggy , Lunch in a Box , and Cute Foods for Kids . And Pinterest . Oh, yes. Pinterest. If you have never heard of it, it is sort of a virtual pinboard. You can "pin" an image you find on the web on Pinterest on a board, then you can go back to that board at a later date and it will take you to the original website you got that image from. It sure beats right-click/save then trying to figure out what website that idea originated from. I have boards of recipes I want to try , stuff I want to do in my home , party ideas , and of course,  inspires bentos/lunch boxes , and many many many more. (Just ignore the "baby fever" board.) I can ...

Miss C's favorite Filipino dish is pancit. My mom (C's Lola {Tagalog for "grandmother"}) makes it all the time because its one of her most requested dish. Sometimes we get to come over and eat leftovers--and take more leftovers home! :)  Pancit Bihon is a very simple dish. It's flavored with just soy sauce so the flavor is mild and not strong and overpowering. It's not greasy and does not have a lot of exotic ingredients. A lot of our non-Asian friends and kids love this noodle dish. Pancit (Filipino Rice Noodles), watermelon, carrots w/ranch (dip transferred to a small container with lid because I totally forgot that this was going inside C's lunchbox) Pancit Bihon     (pan-sit bee-hohn) 1 package (8oz) thin rice noodles (bihon, or sometimes called rice vermicelli) 1 T oil 2 cloves garlic, minced 1 onion, diced 1 large carrot sliced/julienned (I use 1c precut matchstick carrots) 1 c shredded cabbage ...

Miss C's lunch consisted of leftover teriyaki noodles, with hardboiled egg (see below), watermelon kabobs, and frozen "gogurt".  My lunch consisted of leftover noodles, leftover chicken, and leftover egg that I peeled very badly and did not make the cut to be in the molds. I had been browsing lunch blogs for over a year now, and besides the "lunch box" bento idea, these egg molds keep popping up on posts from various blogs. So I bought some molds. Because they are too cute. Then I ran into this YouTube video on how to use the egg molds. The most difficult part of it was peeling the hot eggs, because you have to put the peeled egg into the mold while its still warm.