Raw strawberry almond balls

I made a mess of the kitchen. I may have broken the food processor. I didn't eat enough and am now suffering weakness, dizzyness and shakiness... But these were worth it.

My plan was to make homemade granola and put it in my breakfast yogurt.

It's 11:45. So that didn't happen.

I haven't made granola in so long I forgot the sugar and I didn't add my secret ingredient (black strap molasses). I have presented my granola in many forms on this blog so I'm only posting a photo.

But what got me completely sidetracked was homemade protein snacks... Like Larabars. Only I make balls. 

The basic mix is 1 part nuts to 2 parts fruit. Typically 1 of the fruit parts is dates. 

I purchased Baroody pressed and pitted dates at the Turkish store in Allentown for this project almost a month ago. It was $2.99 for 500 grams. And vacuum sealed so it was shelf stable. Not that dates ever last long enough in my house to rot.

I took about 1.5 cups raw almonds and ground them in the food processor. I placed those aside and mixed the following fruits in the food processor:

- 1/3 cup dates

- 1/2 cups raisins

- about 1/4 cup golden raisins and dried cherries

- about 1 cup dried strawberries

Now by the time this got mixed, the food processor was unhappy. So instead of putting the nuts back in with the fruit, I kneaded them into the fruit like working with bread dough.

Them I formed into balls. Golf ball size. Refriderate. About 125 calories each.

Buffy gets a workout

When my daughter started school, she announced that she wanted a Buffy the Vampire Slayer lunch box. That required some hunting on eBay. We paid something absurd like $17 for it but she's  still using it four plus years later.

She's been asking to pack, because she realizes school lunches are mostly crap. We haven't had much money in the grocery budget and school lunches are cheap-- especially since she qualifies for reduced cost lunch.

But today is Tuesday, and Tuesday is processed chicken crap day, usually some form of "popcorn chicken." I have plenty of processed crap here that the grandparents brought while child at the stomach virus last week. 

So I packed a lunch that combined processed with wholesome at minimal cost.  

So here goes:

- cloth napkin

- juice box

- danimals yogurt (blame the grandparents) with an ice cube since lunch is at one

- big old apple

- grandma's leftover meatloaf (homemade) with ketchup and baby leaf lettuce on one slice of Italian white bread (grandparents brought that too. I really need to start baking bread again)

- homemade, home canned dill pickles made from local cucumbers and dill we grew ourselves

She's really excited.

Juice box punch

My daughter now refuses to take juice boxes to school. I gave her a pitcher and a pair of kitchen scissors and told her to recycle the juice boxes into fruit punch.

She loved that idea.

Lunches

Child packed a lunch today of last night's leftovers, cashews, apple and carrots.

I got home from shopping and wrapped myself this bread-less sandwich of ham, havarti cheese, turkey and romaine.

Hello, Monday

After plenty of coffee and some baguette with various toppings (butter, almond butter, peanut butter or triple berry preserves), my morning got food productive.

I mixed child a serving of mango Noosa yogurt and mixed in some frozen blueberries for her school snack.

Then I read her the school menu and got, "Mommy, can I pack?"

Which is exactly what I was not prepared to hear.

But she didn't want to eat hot dog, turkey sandwich with cheese or PB&J and really I don't want her eating that. But it's cheap and easy. Which makes me ashamed that my family relies on it so much and I'm disturbed that our country doesn't put more effort into school lunch.

So I reheated last night's spaghetti and meat balls, dumped it into a thermal bowl and gave her a side of calamata olives that can go into the spaghetti or be eaten alone. Threw in a small tropical fruit cup too.

While the water was still hot (from heating the lid to the thermal bowl), I tossed an egg into it for the tortoise. Must have hit too hard because it cracked. But I salvaged enough quasi-cooked egg for our Blue. Egg (with shell for calcium), romaine lettuce and sliced pears.

Lunch today

Lunch choices at our local public school:
- pork BBQ rib patty on a bun
- peanut butter and jelly
- ham and cheese sub

My daughter asked me to pack her lunch.

- chicken salad (in a dish, she didn't want any wrap or bread product)
- the last fruit-nut ball
- a cup of tropical fruit salad
- home canned pickles and pickled carrots
- an orange
- juice box (100% juice)
- a tiny Hershey bar

Leftover Lunch

Child decided to pack lunch today. I packed her the pork leftover from Friday's meal in her thermal bowl. (Pork, pears, dried cranberries.) 3 ginger snaps. A small salad with croutons and Amy's Goddess dressing. A banana. Apple juice.

Packing Wednesday

Today's school lunch is whole grain mini chicken corn dog nuggets.

Um, no.

I packed my daughter popcorn for snack, butter bread, unsalted cashews and vanilla roasted almonds, homemade fruit salad with gala apples, white grapes, strawberries and mango nectar/raw local honey sauce, and a V-8 fusion strawberry lemonade (a treat)

Healthy Snacks

During a breakfast of open-faced Morningstar breakfast patties on half an English muffin with a sprinkle of cheese and a big glass of almond milk, my daughter looked at me and said, "I asked my teacher about the granola bars."

Now let me set the stage for this. Third grade in our little community-based elementary school (urban setting and the kids theoretically walk to school), the third graders move to what I imagine is the last lunch. 12:05.

Unlike when I was in school, they get a snack break at 10:20. The state of Pennsylvania has mandated that each school pass a wellness policy.

Bottom line: snacks must be healthy.

Granola bars, Go-gurt and pretzels appear to be the most popular choice. According to my daughter, that is.

We take carrot sticks. Or homemade corn salsa and organic blue corn tortilla chips with flax, or fruit, or goldfish pretzels with dried cranberries, or graham crackers.

Etc.

The teacher has deemed the oatmeal "breakfast cookies" inappropriate because it smells, looks, tastes, sounds and quacks like a cookie.

My daughter wants to fit in. So she wants granola bars.

I make granola bars, homemade, but sometimes they look like cookies.

So I warned daughter that our granola bars might not work for school.

She asked the teacher.

Teacher replied that if *I* said it was healthy, it was healthy.

Yeah, me!

Random updates

School lunch today was "chicken rings" and school lunch yesterday was pork sausage on a whole wheat roll so my daughter packed.

Yesterday it was the last of the vegetarian baked beans and vegetarian hot dogs, applesauce with cinnamon, and broccoli with ranch to dip and carrot sticks.

Today I had a small flour tortilla and some organic corn chips packed with raspberry salsa, the leftover taco beans-meat-corn-garden peppers mixture in her thermal bowl, and fruit cocktail. Then she asked for carrot sticks.

How can you say no?

Meanwhile, I took a piece of lebanon bologna and put some horseradish on it and piled it high with fresh spinach. I rolled it like a wrap and ate it for breakfast because I was starving.

Daughter saw this and responded with "that looks good." I have promised to make her one (without horseradish) after school.

I have an appt with the periodontist today to see if my dental implant had properly matured. Not that it matters to me, since I can't afford the tooth for it.

I made myself a gorgeous taco salad for lunch: a bed of fresh spinach, a little white rice, the taco mix child took for lunch, raspberry salsa and then a few crumbs from the bottom of the bag of organic blue corn chips with flax seed.

Now I can brave the 20+ miles to the dentist. In the new-to-us car. On the highway. In a storm that may include high winds, torrential downpours and tornados.

Goody.

To have someone poke around at my gums.

Pork leftovers lunch

For breakfast, the daughter had fruit loops with unsweetened soy milk, apple juice, and a Morningstar breakfast patty.

She wants to pack lunch today, so I put the leftover veggies from Sunday's pork in the hot thermos bowl, made a sandwich out of the pork chop, and tossed in a punch 100% juice box and a rice krispie treat.

Friday update

Yesterday for dinner I let my 7-year-old daughter make one of my multigrain pizza crusts. I read the recipe out loud and she found ingredients, selected measuring spoons and did the measuring. We topped the pizzas with chicken (leftover from her earlier meal with the grandparents at TGIFridays), black olives, broccoli, pineapple and several kinds of cheese. It was the best pizza ever.

Today child had peach muffins and Very Vanilla soy milk for breakfast.

For lunch I packed her:
- leftover "mighty green soup"
- banana
- juice box
- cucumber slices
- dipping sauce for the cucumbers of 2/3 whipped cream cheese and 1/3 Goddess dressing
- ritz style crackers

Day 4 of school

I'm not one of those moms who likes school. I like having my daughter home. Getting a child ready for school
is the most exhausting activity in my life. I walk two miles by 9:30 a.m. and only half of that comes from the literal walk to school. The other half comes from the circles I walk and the stairs I climb getting child ready for school.

I'm wearing a pedometer today.

I fed my child a breakfast of Chobani black cherry yogurt, homemade granola, animal crackers and Very Vanilla Silk soy milk.

While she ate that, I could have joined her with my own yogurt. But no. It's chicken nuggets- ham and cheese- or - PB&J day in the school cafeteria and child requested a Mom-packed lunch. What'd I pack?

- 100 % juice "punch"
- leftover sizzling chicken and cheese from the TGIFridays dinner we had with my dad last night. That involved the hot lunch bowl.
- homemade fruit salad with tangerines, banana and raspberries (see recipe below)
- cloth napkin
- kid fork

Now, normally my fruit gets a Vouvray sauce like this:
http://angelfoodcooking.blogspot.com/2010/08/honeyed-fruit.html?m=1

But since child isn't a huge fan of white wine I adapted the sauce to this:
- 2 tablespoons Vouvray (sweet desserty white wine)
- 2 tablespoons local honey
- 2 tablespoons cran-pomegranate juice
- 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- 1/4 teaspoons juice of fresh raspberry juice from the bottom of the raspberry bowl (more if you have it)

First day of school preparations

Child had her first day off already yesterday, even though we survived the storm unscathed. One of the sending municipalities had issues so... No school.

Today, we have a child-selected breakfast from the freezer: a corn and spinach muffin and Morningstar veggie sausage.

Since I have no idea if we have money in our lunch account or what they're serving, I packed child a lunch:
- peanut butter and Smuckers simply fruit seedless black raspberry on blueberry streusel bread
- pirate booty veggie
- fruit punch 100% juice box

Cheese-free nacho lunch

Today’s Lunch

Child had a choice for lunch. Buy the school’s PB&J or pack. If she packed, the choices would be: leftover spaghetti, beans and tortilla chips or salad.

She picked beans and tortilla chips. Or basically cheese-less nachos. I heated a small portion of the taco meat I froze last month and some black beans. I put them in the thermal bowl. Side dish of Wegman’s mango salsa. Tortilla chips.

I gave her an apple/peach Adam and Eve fruitables juice box and a banana.

Lunch packed.

Monday lunch

It's Monday and another hectic one...

It's the wee one's only day at school this week, a snow make-up day where they show them movies (so why make it up??). She wanted to pack. I can't blame her. Lunch choices right now stink.

• Berry Berry Fruitable juice box by Adam and Eve
• half a sandwich from the Target café: ham and swiss with the swiss peeled off, a layer of Nayonnaise soy mayo (vegan), and added some lettuce
• some veggie pirate booty (also vegan)
• a small piece of dark chocolate
• fruit snacks, that must have come from her girl scout leader because I have no idea how they got into the house

That's the closet thing I've ever packed to the "standard American diet" lunch.

Today's Zaatar Lunch

Yesterday's packed school lunch was a huge hit. Every scrap except for three spirals of pasta.

Today mimics yesterday's lunch. One of our new juice boxes, some cashews, some frozen blueberries and a slice of zaatar foccaccia.

Pasta and blueberry lunch

Devoured. Every scrap.

I love preparing leftovers for my kid's lunch. She loves the insulated bowl and the "hot food" from home. This month the school's normal two choices of hot lunch is reduced to one so it's lots of pizza, hot dogs and processed chicken products. The dairy factor knocks out many of them, and the alternate lunch is PB&J which she likes about once a week. She likes when the school serves tacos with lettuce and tomato, or chicken ranch wraps, or chicken salad, or even their garden salad (probably the days when a normal kid says "yuck.")

So, today I filled a bottle with some apple juice, a bowl with some frozen blueberries, and the thermal bowl with whole wheat rotini with broccoli and Morningstar breakfast patties (sausage) sautéed in olive oil, which Daddy prepared for me Sunday night.

Fruitable Juice Boxes

My daughter has had a problem with her thermos leaking. It's a two part problem: 1. she doesn't put the lid on tight enough and 2. she doesn't drink the juice at lunch time.

I had $6 in my checkbook this weekend when I used my debit card to buy an $8 bottle of medicine for her over the weekend so needless to say the budget is tight and my husband will be hanging on to that car registration renewal for another day or two to keep our checks from bouncing.

But school lunch at her school is extra nasty this month... and she wants to pack three days this week. So, I need to fix this thermos problem. I've already tried reducing the amount I put inside and she still "doesn't have enough time" to drink it.

Today I used a small water bottle. And I found $3 in my wallet so we went to Giant for juice boxes. Juicy Juice boxes were on sale 5/$10, so the cheapskate in me wanted those. But I noticed that the Adam and Eve juice boxes were 2/$5. I discovered a "fruitables," like a V8 Splash. They had three flavors, one was berry.

At 50 cents more a pack, that's 6 cents a juice box and child gets 10% of her vitamin A and 10% of her vitamin E. I wonder, is it worth it? They're only 66% juice versus 100 which leads me to ask, what's the other 34%? So I read the ingredients:

Adam and Eve Fruitables

• Apple Juice concentrate
• sweet potato
• butternut squash
• strawberry, raspberry and some other juice concentrate I can't read under the wrinkle in the plastic
• filtered water
• vegetable something (darn crinkled plastic)
• added vitamins

Once again, nutrition via processed foods. But if you're going to pick a juice box... 

Another no grocery, no dairy packed lunch

My daughter wanted to pack lunch again and not only have I still not gone to the store (trying to survive until payday which is an unrealistic endeavor) but we had tacos for dinner and had no leftovers. Sigh.

What's a mom to do?

Assess breakfast. Child ate heap of watermelon her grandparents brought, Graham crackers and unsalted cashews.

So... Lunch.

How does this sound?
- a thermos of plain soymilk
- a spoon
- cornflakes with dried blueberries from Forks Meditterranean  Deli
- green and red grapes
- the remaining mandarin oranges from yesterday
- sesame brittle from Forks Meditterranean Deli