Working lunch

My love of food I think stems from the fact that in 30 something odd years of eating it there are still flavours I have never tasted. I still remember tasting things for the first time as a child; for example the first time I ever had beef bourguignon, chili and (believe it or not) tuna with vinegar and not mayo were all experienced at my friends house. I remember her not eating her dinner once and I wanted to take it off the side and eat it for her, how weird is that? The thought of her not eating this (what I thought) was a fantastic meal appalled me. The first chimichanga I ever ate was also with this girl's family in this dark restaurant which was very cool and exciting and I'm sure I loved the food too.
I still remember the name of the ice cream I used to order once a year at my sisters birthday dinner at an Italian restaurant, it was called the San Reamo (not sure of the spelling now) and I always had a prawn cocktail before it.
The opportunity to have a new experience from all over the world with a relatively small cost appeals to me and for me it would be very sad to have to eat the same thing week in week out....urgh. For some reason this lunch made my brain spew out that last couple of paragraphs....
On that note here is my lunch today:

This is a common 'study' lunch for me for when I have to eat alone, I hate to eat alone unless it's Cadbury's Whole Nut or Walkers Cheese and Onion then that's a whole other post about comfort food.  When I have to eat and listen and type at the same time I like to dip and snack without a lot of effort.
I have hummus with roasted red peppers and pine nuts, pita chips, 1/2 an apple sliced, broccoli (I've decided I like it raw and not at all cooked), carrots and grape tomatoes, cubes of cheese (cheddar/monterrey jack and colby), and the new PB&J trail mix from Costco which is oh so yummy; it has dried and sweetened strawberries, cranberries, mandarin oranges, peanuts and almonds.
Oh the chocolate is a strawberry filled Ghiradelli square.

Basic lunch box

There's nothing exciting about these lunches I'm afraid, just a basic lunch with some of the boys favorites included.

Here DS7 has cucumber slices and celery sticks with ranch dressing, a clementine, turkey on a whole wheat roll and strawberry yogurt.



DS5 has cucumber slices with mini carrots and ranch dressing, a clementine, turkey on a whole wheat roll and strawberry yogurt.

Catch up!

I've been really busy this week so this post will be mainly photos of lunches!

DS7 - Peanut butter sandwich, Greek yogurt, cucumber and tomato salad and brownie.



I love it when they come home like this.

DS7 - Hot dog, cucumber, mango and grapes, cheese sandwich, yogurt.

DS5 - Hot dog, cheese sandwich, carrots and cucumber, grapes.

My snack box: mango, peanuts, grapes and carrots.

DS5 - Carrots and ranch, tuna and tomato pasta, hard boiled egg and a breakfast cookie.

DS7 - Nut butter cookies, grapes, tuna/tomato/cilantro pasta salad, apricot and apple sauce.

DS7 - Cheese sandwich on homemade Oatmeal Sunflower bread, pirates booty, vanilla yogurt with blueberries/blackberries/strawberries and grape tomatoes.



The first lunches of the year

I took the boys grocery shopping with me today.  This is not something I like to do because I love to grocery shop and they don't.  However, I did have a plan.  Armed with breakfast cookies and the grocery circular I let them eat in the car on the way and tell me what they'd like for lunches from the ads.
We actually had fun when we arrived and I'm happy to say we left with a cart full of great food choices.

So here are the boys lunches for tomorrow, chosen by them.

DS5 has a cold sesame noodle salad from Sneaky Chef with added carrots, crushed strawberries topped with vanilla yogurt, cucumber/carrots/tomatoes with ranch to dip and a mango and grape salad.

DS7 has a cheddar cheese sandwich on 8 grain bread and the same as DS5 for everything else.

DH has an avocado salad sandwich, an apple, vanilla yogurt with crushed strawberries, carrots with ranch to dip, grapes and 2 breakfast cookies.

New Year

There's nothing like a new year to get one motivated and organized.  At least for a month or so anyway.  I'm sick to the back teeth of over eating and drinking and feel like I did more of both in the past 2 weeks than I did for the 6 months prior to that....URGH.
I have therefore spent the past couple of days perusing my new (and extensive collection of old) cookbooks and clearing out the pantry, fridge and freezer.  The result has been some fresh tasting, real food, healthy meals, and snacks including a spinach and goats cheese quiche, breakfast cookies, breakfast burritos, bread rolls, soup, and a fridge stocked with fruit and vegetables to start us off as we will go on.

The breakfast cookie recipe I make is from 30 Day Gourmet's Big book of freezer cooking and I love it.  It seems that every time I make these cookies I don't have the right ingredients and yet despite several substitutions they come out the oven perfect every time.  This time around I used banana baby food instead of apple sauce, and I ground up some apricots, prunes and raisins instead of using craisins.  I also added 1/2 cup ground walnuts instead of chocolate chips, raw sugar instead of brown, and they are delicious.  I make them a regular 2 inch cookie size and package them 2 per snack bag in the freezer.  I love them frozen because it keeps the crunch, they are very much a cake type cookie otherwise which always reminds of dropping your cookie in a cuppa....not a good thing...not that anyone else seems to care!  The photo only shows half the cookies, the rest were in the oven still.