Friday, December 6, 2013

Simple Fall Harvest Pumpkin Lunches

Simple Fall Harvest Pumpkin lunches for "work" and school!
Halloween was over, but I got a special request for a pumpkin-y lunch!


For My Big Little Pumpkin
Simple harvest pumpkin school lunch for Kindergarten
UNREAL Candy peanut butter cup, GF PBJ, dye-free gummy heart; organic sugar snap peas, mini orange, apples
Wednesday, 11/6/13 - While at the pumpkin patch with Z's Kindergarten class, I found a bunch of fun dye-free Halloween-shaped truffles. So I bought one of each. But when I looked them up online to link to when I posted the lunches they were in, I noticed their pumpkin one didn't look like the one I had bought, so I kind of delayed using it. But the morning I packed this lunch, Z had requested it specifically. While trying to figure out if it would be safe like the others, I noticed that it had the same paper cup that a lemon one I'd bought had; one that I found out after we'd bought it wasn't safe. So I decided the pumpkin would be a no-go.

To make it up to her, I used a mini pumpkin cutter on a junk-free UNREAL peanut butter cup (available in the candy aisle at Target) to make a quick chocolate pumpkin. It was a mixed success. She loved it and accepted it in lieu of the dye-filled truffle, and one side of the chocolate stayed intact. But the rest crumbled and is tucked underneath... It may have been Photoshopped out to look cleaner. *cough*

Sandwich was cut with a pumpkin cookie cutter, and then lines and a stem were painted on with chocolate syrup to make it look less bland. And I remembered a heart this time!

To keep with the pumpkin theme, I put her apple slices in a silicone pumpkin cup, and a leaf pick in a mini orange to make it look pumpkin-y!

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For My Littlest Pumpkin
Simple mini harvest pumpkin lunch for a toddler
GF PBJ, gummy heart; organic tomatoes, sugar snap peas, mini orange, apples
E's sandwiches were cut with the mini pumpkin cutter, and she got a gummy heart too. Beauty Sweeties gummy hearts are all natural/dye-free, but they have dairy, so none for Mama! And probably no more for Baby, as her lactose/dairy intolerance is growing.

For the Great Pumpkin (Me!)
Simple healthy grown-up lunch
GF Glutino pretzel sticks, GF PB-honey sandwich, organic celery
w/SunButter and Enjoy Life mini chips, organic apples w/cinnamon
I haven't packed for myself much lately, and have been burnt out on salads. But I forced myself to pack something similar to the girls, rather than make myself sick cheating with crap-filled McD fries again. The fries are gluten-free since the hydrolyzed wheat protein they contain is so highly processed it no longer contains gluten, but they contain dairy which gives me digestive issues, and the oil they're fried in has TBHQ. (TBHQ is a petroleum-based, butane-like ingredient used as a preservative. It has been linked to asthma, skin conditions, hormone disruption, and in long-term animal studies to cancer and damage to DNA. Plus makes my little girl go bonkers and gives me headaches. Yum yum.)

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