Muffin Tin Monday - Last Minute Dinner

Once again I hadn't planned ahead for a cute or creative Muffin Tin Monday meal this week, and put it off until Sunday, when we were going to be gone all day for my niece's birthday party.

Asleep in the car on the drive home from the party.
Deely Boppers on her head, and lollipop drool down her seatbelt strap!

So I figured I'd have a second week in a row with no muffin tin meal. Ah well. But after dropping my husband off at the airport for a business trip, Little Z asked for warm hot cocoa. (She's very sensitive to heat. If it's just right for me, it's too hot for her. She can sit happily in a cold bath forever, but if I make it the coolest level of hot that I'd be able to tolerate, she screams that it's too hot. She also specifies 'warm' for hot dogs too!)
I didn't want to give her hot cocoa since she hadn't eaten her dinner that my husband had heated up for her before we had to get him to the airport. So we compromised. She could have (warm) hot cocoa with a "beautiful dinner." Since I had no plans, I let her choose everything. Except I included her uneaten dinner.

Leftover pork chop, String cheese, Carrot (peeled,) Strawberries

I opened up my muffin tin cupboard and showed off her options. She chose this insect one I haven't used yet that I got on eBay ages ago, when I first started doing MTMs.

I didn't try and put something in each cavity, since she'd be going to bed soon after, unlike other days, when I make these for lunch and she can snack on them throughout the day. I also used less of each food, since she hadn't been hungry much all day, so it just wasn't an "eating day" for her.

She had really enjoyed the "chicken" pork chop from Saturday night, so my husband heated up a leftover one for her for dinner Sunday too. He ate leftover meatloaf and I had leftover lasagna. Yum!

She chose carrot as her vegetable, which is good, as the green beans had gone bad and I couldn't find any broccoli. I guess I could have fished out some frozen veggies in a pinch. She wanted me to peel it, but she didn't want me to cut it. At all.

She chose a string cheese stick instead of mozzerella or Colby Jack cheese, which made my life easier, and she refused to allow me to cut it into nibblets. In fact, I had to threaten to withhold the (warm) hot cocoa to get her permission to take the wrapper off and take a picture of her meal!

And this is why (warm) hot cocoa is such a pain in the keister for me. She eats it like soup. And gets it all over whatever adorable little outfit she has just worn for the first time ever. And destroys it. So now I've wised up and have a stash of ruined clothes that most families would call "paint clothes," but we call "hot cocoa clothes."