Second School Lunch

Yesterday my daughter was quite clear with what she wanted for lunch. Today she gave me leeway to surprise her. Today's lunch was strawberries and bananas in a thermal cup, one carrot (she likes them whole so she can eat them "like a rabbit"), one marinated chicken drumstick (that was still kind of frozen when it left the house, I hope it thaws in time), one organic raspberry lemonade juice pouch, and some mixed nuts. The mixed nuts are an emergency protein since I'm afraid the chicken might be frozen or even that I should have packed two.

Meatballs Fortano/First school lunch

Today was the first day of school.

For my daughter, we packed:
- peanut butter and blackberry jam on homemade cinnamon raisin bread
- banana
- white grape raspberry juice in a thermos with the same juice made into ice cubes to keep the thermos cold. They were Christmas tree ice cubes.
- About ten animal crackers
- a banana
- two Swedish fish

We packed something similar for my and my husband's lunch. Except we had cupcakes instead of Swedish fish.

For dinner, I got some tomatoes and basil from the garden and made bruschetta before I left for school.

When we got home, I got two everything bagels out of the freezer (last two). I thawed and toasted them, put the last of the cheddar cheese on them, and melted it. I stirred some grated romano into the bruschetta and piled the bruschetta on the bagels.

I got the leftover basil-mango-meatballs from the freezer and served them with the bruschetta bagels.

My daughter called this meal, Meatballs Fortano. She said the bagels reminded her of forts.

Angel's doughnut holes

I decided to try the doughnuts I've been thinking about for a week. School starts Monday here so we only have a day or two left to do something crazy.

This is the recipe from Cooks.com that inspired me:

HOMEMADE DOUGHNUTS from COOKS.COM

1 c. milk, scalded
2 tbsp. butter
1 tbsp. sugar
1 tbsp. brown sugar
1 pkg. yeast
3 c. flour
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1 egg
Confectioners' sugar

Pour milk over butter and sugars; stir until melted and cool to lukewarm. Add yeast, stirring until dissolved. Sift flour, salt and nutmeg. Gradually add half the dry mixture to milk; add egg and beat well. Add remaining flour and leave dough in warm place for 1 hour. Knead gently, roll to quarter inch thickness and cut into diamonds. Allow to rise 30 minutes to 1 hour. Fry in deep fat, 375 degrees and dust with confectioners' sugar or use confectioners' sugar glaze if desired.

As you can imagine, I deviated from the recipe.
I didn't scald the milk. Merely warmed it to near boiling in the microwave. Matter of fact, I used half soy milk and half two percent milk.
I didn't sift all the dry ingredients together, I simply put two cups of the flour in, mixed it, added the nutmeg, mixed it, added the egg, mixed, added the other cup of flour and before I mixed it I added the salt.

I used about 3/4 to 1 cup of canola oil in my smallest sauce pan to fry these suckers, and I could have probably used a little less than that, more like the 3/4 cup mark. Because I made doughnut holes usually slightly smaller than a golf ball that was plenty.

For toppings, my daughter's favorite was local honey and powdered sugar. I liked brown sugar and cinnamon. I even made an "adult" doughnut by thickening the honey white wine sauce from the fruit salad the other day and then rolling it in granulated sugar. I made cocoa doughnuts with baking cocoa, chocolate sprinkles, granulated sugar and powdered sugar. And mix every other combination among them...

End of August trip to Aldi

Had $26 plus change to my name. So, I went to Aldi.

Spent $26.36 (and will need to go to the store before Monday to get bananas for Lil Miss's school lunch)

Got:
- 2 bags tortilla chips, 99 cents each
- Broccoli crowns, 1.39
- Graham crackers, $1.25
- Kid Cuisine chicken dinner, one, at $1.79 (we have leftovers for our dinner tonight that are spicy so we thought we'd spoil her with some processed junk)
- Hazelnut nondairy creamer, $1.99
- 2 boxes of baking soda, 49 cents each
- Spinach rigatoni or something like that, $2.99
- chopped pecans, $2.89
- apple juice concentrate, 92 cents
- harvest vegetables in the steam in bag, 4 servings, $3.49
- flour tortillas, 99 cents
- white grape raspberry frozen juice concentrate, $1.24
- evaporated milk, 69 cents
- chicken and dumplings soup, 2 cans, $1.39
- Eggs, 99 cents

Progresso Dinner

Ah, tonight we had Progresso reduced sodium pot roast/beef vegetable soup with more biscuits from lunch. So no recipes. It's chilly, gloomy and I'm wounded.

Veg BLT

My in-laws left at 11:45 which left me 22 minutes to whip up lunch, when we're low on groceries and I strained my back.

I had my daughter help me whip up a batch of skillet biscuits, all with unbleached white flour as I'm out of my specialty flours of wheat and rye.

When my husband got home, he sliced a tomato from the garden for me and got the spring mix ready. My daughter got the mayo. I put a drop of olive oil in the small frying pan and dropped our last four slices of Morningstar Vegetarian bacon in the pan and covered them with a pinch of organic four color pepper.

We assembled the little sandwiches and they were yummy. For dessert we had warm biscuits with blackberry jam, and my daughter-- so enamored with these fluffy biscuits-- requested a THIRD, this one with peanut butter and jelly.

Cucumber Sandwiches

After I pulled my back today, my husband made one of my favorite summer snacks for me:
Cucumber sandwiches!

- Cream cheese
- cucumber
- It's a dilly

on crackers or bread.

In this case, on multigrain/rye crackers.